3 ways my eng team eliminates productivity-killing tasks

How we sync information across environments and tools (including Jira!) instead of copy-pasting.

Betty Huang

Software Engineer at Coda

3 ways my eng team eliminates productivity-killing tasks

By Betty Huang

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Engineering · 4 min read
Maybe it’s because most of us watch too many shows and movies, but the image of an engineer huddled over a computer hacking away at their keyboard undisturbed for hours on end is seared into our collective cultural brain (I blame you, The Social Network). Those scenarios surely exist, but what’s far more common in the life of a modern engineer are scope meetings, emails, Slacks, Jira tickets, update requests, and so on and so on. Ok, some actual code is being written, too. In short, software building can too often have little to do with, well, building the software. One of the reasons I appreciate being an engineer at Coda is that there’s a focus on trying to mitigate the time spent on these necessary—but sometimes productivity-killing—tasks. And that’s in part because we’re building the actual tools to help do just that, like giving makers the ability to sync information across environments. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me step back for a minute and define some parameters.

Define the parameters.

 There’s a good chance you’re familiar, but when I say “sync” it’s simply a shorthand for synchronize, as in things happening at the same time. Easy enough, right? Not necessarily the case when it comes to software. In fact, it’s actually a fairly complex problem, and it’s something at Coda we’ve put a ton of effort into because we believe it has incredible value. We believe teams need a true “single source of truth.” In other words, one place where no matter what happens, this information is up to date. In practical terms, you can think of it as the copy-paste killer—no more tedious transferring of Jira report statuses for every meeting.

Reduce the busy-work.

 I want to give you a quick glimpse into how syncing has improved our work as engineers here at Coda.

1. One source, multiple views.

 We run much of our work through an engineering team hub built in Coda. It includes all the key pieces of a well-run eng team: feature roadmaps, OKR tracking, check-ins, and more. While it’s a single source of truth for the engineers and everyone else on the team, we still often need to disseminate pieces of it to other teams. One instance is an executive’s request for a project’s status. You don’t want to share the entire hub because they usually don’t require that level of granularity. At Coda, we use Cross-doc—which is an easy way to pull the key data you need from a table in one doc, and incorporate it into another—to make sure they’re getting that high-level overview and not questioning our team on why that P3 bug fix hasn’t happened yet. Bonus: It’s especially helpful in those instances where you accidentally input the wrong piece of information. Using Cross-doc means all you have to do is update your single source of truth and it’s instantly updated for executives as well.

2. Fewer interruptions.

 Copying and pasting information is one of my least favorite tasks, which is why I’m particularly fond of our Packs and their support for two-way sync. Simply put, it means data is mirrored between two different sources, with any modified new or existing data being replicated across both environments. My motivation comes from having a strong dislike for Slack messages saying, “What’s the status of...?” We avoid a lot of that here at Coda by, again, referencing that single source of truth. Because with the Jira Pack, I’m able to make sure everything is kept up to date in both my Jira dashboard and our engineering hub within Coda. This syncing makes it much less work when the status has changed yet again, say after deployment went through. Instead of copying and pasting a million things over and over, you do it once, and it cascades across all environments. An anxiety moment turned stress-free! It also helps to avoid those cases of “oh shoot, I shared the wrong information to the wrong place,” because the place I’m updating is the same one that others are checking.

3. Just the necessaries, please.

 Even though engineering and sales are very different teams, they’re ultimately building toward the same goal (or at least they should be). That's why we work hard to keep everyone informed company-wide since poor communication can really hinder everyone’s progress. For instance, using sync pages—which instead of sharing your entire doc, allow you to pick and choose the pieces that people are able to see (and edit)—we’ll often give our account executives a peak into what new features we’re roadmapping. These shared pages make sure they’re clued in as they meet with potential partners. But maybe we’re still workshopping a few ideas, so instead of giving access to our entire hub, we only distribute the pages that have our locked ideas. Therefore, instead of creating an entirely new doc every time they ask, we update the page in our doc and their instance is changed immediately, meaning they can be sure it’s always the most up-to-date version. This coordination is incredibly helpful in decreasing the number of instances in which I have to context-switch—and as any developer knows, that is a massive focus destroyer.
These are just three examples, but it feels like the possibilities to remove roadblocks and up efficiency are endless. Syncing has been one of those (work)life-changing experiences. Because instead of getting pummeled by wave after wave of requests and copy-paste sessions, our team is able to ride right on top of them with ease. And if we keep the metaphor going, you could say Coda’s sync capabilities are our surfboard. 🏄 So, if you’re curious to see if Coda can help improve your development process, I recommend exploring the engineering hub I mentioned above as your starting point. Happy building and thanks for reading!
Explore Coda’s engineering hub template

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