What's the Company Culture Like at Imprivata?

What recent decision best reflected your values — and what changed as a result?

Recently we faced a challenge with our automation framework's optimization for running lengthy regression test sets. Because of the run time we were unable to use this same framework for detecting issues in a timely manner during feature development and automated test results were lagging behind manual results. I think that the best solutions come from the people closest to the work, so I challenged my automation team to distill the larger test sets into a set of smoke tests that would take one hour to run. Within a few weeks they collaborated with the quality engineering team members to identify the most important tests to run and had a set of smoke tests executing that identified issues before the manual QE testers discovered the defects. This improved overall confidence in our test automation and provided feedback to feature development teams within a business day of a build.

What collaboration habit keeps work moving — and how do you measure it?

The QE leadership team is constantly reviewing test result data to determine how we can improve our efficiency. Our legacy product is the backbone of our business with over 20 years of development history and a ponderous development process. In order to maintain forward momentum in a quarterly release cadence, we must carefully consider what to regression test and we must also do our best to maintain a specific time block for that testing. By reviewing past test results and comparing them to known code changes, we are able to make data-based decisions on where we can ease up on testing with lower risk of escapes into the field. 

Successful collaboration in the process requires respecting the voices and concerns of each participant, recognizing that with such a feature rich and mature product no one person can be the sole subject matter expert. So if one of those leads lacks agency, we risk negatively impacting our customers.

How do you recognize impact fairly — and what’s the return on investment?

As a manager of a mid-sized team I have the luxury of being close enough to everyone's work to call out their impact on a personal level through shoutouts at team meetings and on Slack channels and in one-on-ones. I subscribe to the notion that everyone values personalized recognition of a job well done, sometimes more than the monetary recognition we might provide with a spot bonus. I measure the return on that investment by my retention rate. There are various factors contributing to that rate, but I would argue that personalized recognition by one's supervisor is a large factor.