How an internal developer portal can anchor your team through a re-org

In the past two years, thousands of employees have been laid off, with hundreds of tech startups and juggernauts alike in the throes of downsizing and reorgs. In response to the economic downturn, one enterprise OpsLevel customer that operates a digital freight network realized that they could rely on their internal developer portal (IDP) to reprioritize and simplify, while offering leadership an idea of resources and capacity for better decision-making. As they continue to navigate the rough waters, OpsLevel has been a critical anchor for their team, so we sat down with an engineering manager of infrastructure to understand how.

First, can you give us a brief overview of your team and its responsibilities?

“As an engineering manager in the infrastructure org, my team is responsible for building internal products for engineers at the company, who then build for our customers. We drive consistency and best practices across the entire engineering org, so UX/UI engineers can stick to the standards even if they don’t exactly know what they are.”

“Originally we started using OpsLevel to work towards service maturity, track microservices, and improve developer experience, but today it’s proving to be critical in keeping us organized and prioritized in the face of some unfortunate lay-offs and reorgs we’ve done.”

How has the recent economic downturn impacted your engineering teams?

“First and foremost is the size. Some teams have shifted around, while others have been eliminated entirely. Previously we had about 200 engineers, but are sitting with much fewer today. The challenge is that we’re covering the same surface area as before, but with less personnel.”

“Leadership encouraged us to really suss out what we could eliminate, simplify, and reprioritize to cut costs and keep everybody focused on top business-critical priorities in the face of so much change. OpsLevel is something that has helped us keep it all organized in the shuffle, especially because we were already using it as a foundation for daily work long before the economy took a turn for the worse. Right away, OpsLevel helped us to a deep dive to figure out ‘hey, what systems do we own today, do they provide value, and can they be consolidated or deleted?’”

How does OpsLevel help keep your engineering teams organized in the face of constant changes?

“OpsLevel makes it much easier to capture and codify that knowledge, and shift ownership around without adding a bunch of manual work. So as engineers start interacting with a repo or service they don’t own, that is maybe new for them, they can easily get a review or search for details about who to contact with any issues. Without something like OpsLevel, you just end up looking at a bunch of outdated documentation, or pinging people in Slack before you reach a dead end.”

How else has OpsLevel helped you adjust during a re-org?

“There are a few ways we’ve really leaned into OpsLevel at this time beyond ownership, like driving awareness for team priorities by way of adding certain key checks to drive simplification and best practices, while removing others that are no longer a top priority.”

“As a manager, I think the burndown charts are awesome so I can take them to leadership to show them how fast/slow progress is coming along in certain initiatives and campaigns. I can also use them to make data-driven decisions about where we need to add or remove resources based on where we’re at.”

“Broadly, it’s been wonderful working with OpsLevel so far. We notice a tangible difference with respect to the developer experience, which is really important in this time when we want every employee to feel engaged and valuable. I only see us using it more as time goes on.”

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Want to learn more about how OpsLevel can help your team consolidate legacy knowledge and reprioritize engineering initiatives? Start a free trial, or connect with our team.