mehack

Originally printed on the Synthesis Studios blog on 12 June 2008.

We were never huge fans of titles around here, but if push came to shove, I could tell you that Jeremy is a Senior Architect, Jessica is the Director of Operations, and I’m the IT guy. The roles, however, that we take on while working on a project is what’s the most important, and we work really hard to make sure the exact right person is on the project, regardless of his or her title.

Even if somebody is not technically “assigned” to a project, we like to think that everybody gets his or her hands, brains, and heart into a project because everybody at Synthesis isnaturally curious. It’s not uncommon for one of us to peer over a shoulder and say, “Hey! What are you working on today?” After that, suggestions start to fly on ways to tear it apart and put it back together again to make it awesome. It’s all part of making sure we build the best things we can.

Not all of our roles are used on all of our projects, and not all of our roles have a person that is strictly assigned to them — in fact, these are more like hats that people wear, but we all find ourselves wearing particular hats on particular projects. A few of these hats include:

Project manager
This is the “Get It Done” role, making sure everything is done on time, and everything is kept to a budget. This person also works really closely with our clients to keep conversations going, make sure that our relationship is a real collaboration, and that the decision-making is shared.

Product manager
While the project manager makes sure that we get things done on time, our product manager is there to suggest ways to make your product better than you thought of. Whether this means market research to better understand where its going to go and who is going to use it, or if this means suggesting that we should do user studies before we go any further — the product manager is trying to look at the process through your glasses and in your shoes, just with a bit more experience on how Synthesis works. This is the creative lead.

Prototyper
Sometimes an idea is still just an idea, and needs more thought before it becomes a reality.Ormaybe there are just too many questions surrounding its feasibility — this is where the prototyper comes into play, literally deciding to test a proof of concept by dropping something off a building, or mocking it up in gum wrappers (both true stories). The questiontoask is, “Can this even be done?” The goal of the prototyper is then to answer it.

Architect
Because our projects are unique, and diverse, our architects pride themselves in having the experience, education, and instincts to make sure that weare designing somethingrobust and extensible. It takes skill to make sure that you can design something that can be tested (and not just in the way of putting it out there and hoping it doesn’t break), that will last, and that when you come up with that next novel improvement, its not that hard to get it slotted in there.

Engineers
Finger to keyboard, solder to soldering iron, whatever it takes — these folks do it. Synthesis has a really wide breadth to these people from software, to electrical, to mechanical. These people also really like to work in teams as it means that they can look over each other shoulders. They can test each others code. They are always trying to one up each other, and that’s to the benefit of all involved.

Testers
Bash that thing to bits, and figure out how to make it better is really the mantra of somebody who has to wear this hat. Ideally, this person hasn’t seen any of the code or schematics of what was written, but his or her goal is to behave like a regular person using the product and just be really hard on it. And then feed it back to the Engineers.

And finally, there is somebody like me. I’m where the buck stops, and the final call. I’m here to make sure it all works like a well-oiled machine.