Moody's: Platform Stability

During my internship at Moody's, I worked on several key initiatives aimed at improving product stability, enhancing system performance, and supporting a significant infrastructure migration.

Role

Product Management Intern

Timeline

10 weeks, Summer 2024

Tools | Skills

Jira, Confluence, Asana, Miro | Stakeholder Management, Agile Methodologies

Team

Platform Stability Squad

Results

Performed user acceptance testing to enhance platform stability for the Research Views product, reducing critical errors by 8.2%
Developed Cloudflare redirection policies for legacy URLs, leading to a 13% reduction in unwanted legacy server traffic in one month, significantly boosting system performance and reliability
Conducted comprehensive user interviews, synthesizing insights into actionable feature recommendations for the launch of the Rated Scorecard tool, enabling clients to generate risk profiles based on Moody's Rating Methodologies
Led agile ceremonies and managed Jira issue tracking, ensuring alignment with OKRs and optimizing engineer task prioritization

Background

Platform Stability Initiative

My main priority for this project was to enhance the overall health of the Moody's Dot Com (MDC) by ensuring the core product remained fully functional in the case of a catastrophic failure. As part of the Platform Stability Team, we focused on eliminating critical errors associated with legacy monolith APIs and replacing these outdated components with scalable, long-term solutions.

Here's how we did it:

Create Legacy Content Store (LCS)

Proxy implementation that serves cached responses from Legacy Monolith, reducing load on monolith

Deprecate, Reimplement, or Migrate

Handling each 2424 Legacy Monolith controller on a case-by-case basis, considering long-term future

Cutover and Deploy

DevOps tasks: update routing for Kong to use LCS, deploy new AWS services, implement OpenSearch

Initiative #1

2424 Dependencies

As part of company efforts to transition off the legacy 2424 server, our team conducted initial discovery work to identify and map various endpoints within legacy controllers managed by other squads.

Achieving Cross-Squad Alignment

My challenge was to align other squads with the platform stability initiatives. To successfully support the company's migration away from the legacy servers, it was essential to gain buy-in from all parts of the business.

Step 01: Stability Squad's Discovery Work

We completed initial discovery investigation, identifying various API endpoints owned by different teams.

Step 02: Digital Insights Summit Into Conversation

Taking advantage of an in-person summit, I engaged with cross-squad PMs to gain insights on their roadmaps and introduce upcoming stability efforts.

Step 03: Follow-up Call

I then scheduled kick-off calls with each squad to establish timelines and clarify expectations.

Gaining alignment proved particularly challenging due to several factors:

Securing Leadership Support

To unify the squads in their commitment to stability and ownership of migration efforts, I met with leadership and upper management to advocate for the Stability Squad's work stream. Our department had established guidelines to fully migrate off legacy servers by the end of 2024. We needed to clarify this deadline and secure leadership support to effectively encourage collaboration with other squads on these initiatives.

During this meeting, I found it highly effective to present the Stability Team's overall progress, highlighting the team's achievements over the past two years and emphasizing the cumulative impact of our daily efforts.

Insight 1: Stakeholder Management

I successfully secured leadership support to prioritize stability efforts across all squads, aligning our roadmaps for the end of the year. This initiative provided me with valuable lessons in effectively managing stakeholders with diverse priorities and perspectives.

Initiative #2

SOLR Retirement

In support of retiring SOLR from our core product, I initiated an epic focused on transitioning 'sector' summary pages from our CreditView (CV) product to OpenSearch.
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'Sectors' serve as the primary filter for users to refine their search for credit rating data, and summary pages are the first view they encounter when applying these filters.

Process

I broke down this large initiative into smaller tasks, consistently asking myself key questions to ensure I stayed focused: Why am I creating this widget inventory? How will this artifact benefit developers? What are my goals for this story?

Big Picture

Keeping the overarching goal of reducing legacy traffic in mind helped me ensure the artifacts I created were aligned and clear. It was also motivating to see how the objectives of this single epic interplayed with and contributed to broader company initiatives.

Insight 2: Storytelling & The Larger Picture

While this initiative was just one piece of the broader company migration puzzle, it helped me understand the small building blocks necessary to achieve goals outlined on the roadmap.

Takeaways

Collaborating with Diverse Stakeholders

Successful initiatives relay on cross-team collaboration. Engaging stakeholders early and fostering open communication helps align goals and ensures everyone is invested in the outcomes.

Interning at Moody's has taught me the crucial skill of translating goals effectively between business leaders and engineers. I learned to highlight the strategic vision that resonates with business stakeholders while addressing technical feasibility and practical implications for engineers.

Iteration and Flexibility

The agile methodology promotes iterative development, allowing teams to adapt quickly to changing requirements and feedback. Regular stand-ups and refinement sessions fostered an open environment within the team, where I felt comfortable communicating blockers and challenges while also appreciating the team's accomplishments.