Following the successful launch of a mobile app portfolio, then a two-month success story building the BBC’s core HR product from scratch, I led the brand new Web Apps team to build out a range of apps for staff. There was a long list of requests from people across the business, as well as immediate needs to plug holes where products were no longer fit for purpose, or where they no longer worked on modern browsers. I did three things to scale up the team and allow us to deliver exceptional apps.

• I didn’t start immediately with growth and hiring. Instead, I led the existing engineering team to build out reusable libraries of components, and structure our codebase in a way that meant we could streamline how we built products and perfect our end-to-end release processes before we considered growing.

• I championed our existing engineers, setting up clear career progression plans and working with them to ensure there was a path ahead for them, and working with them to identify skills gaps within the team.

• This meant that I could hire knowing what code bases we were looking for and what skills would support the team and fill known knowledge gaps.

Through successful release of products, the department’s reputation grew, and underperforming related product teams were merged into my department. I hired diligently, and slowly, meaning we could focus on onboarding effectively and manage our changing processes as we went. I learned that junior staff were not always useful early on in scaling, and ownership over functions was the most effective way to motivate and maintain pace. Aside from teams being merged into my department, I had slow but steady growth, going from a team of 2 to a department of over 10 within 3 years, without losing our culture and without losing our effectiveness.