SDC Management Framework

In 2021 the Nobel Prize laureate - Daniel Kahneman and the coauthor of the Nudge theory - Cass Sunstein, have proven and described in detail that all of us are prone to thought pattern mistakes (biases) and thought distortion because of significant noise (world conjuncture, our mood, weather, recent events, etc.). At the Software Development Company, we do not want the mood, opinions, or idiosyncracies to affect the management decisions. We want to be data-driven, unbiased, and less "noisy" wherever it is possible. We want our decisions to be backed by science, and we want to be entirely transparent with our colleagues. To achieve this, we have spent around a year building up and validating the management framework called the "SDC Management Framework." The framework consists of seven core components, each of which is described below. It was built specifically for "remote-first" companies like ours, where the physical office is a "nice to have" thing rather than a must.

PRD and UI Design Standards

These are the documenting and UI-UX design standards that our product teams use in their work.

File: PRD Example | Article: How To Write PRD (In development)
File: UI Design and Prototype Example | Article: How to Design and Prototype (Case Study)

Hiring and Onboarding

At most, we spend 24 working hours for the initial screening of candidates. Right after that, we contact them to inform them whether we want to proceed with them or not. Depending on the role, there might be a couple of interviews or one interview + test task. Once the assessment is finished, we take 24 working hours to consider the decision and then inform the candidate about it. You can find a complete list of the effort we put into each candidate here:

SDC hiring board.
Also, if you're interested to see the activities we conduct for each colleague in the first six months of their work with us, have a look at the

Colleagues Onboarding and Support board.

Career Path

This document shows one of the components of The SDC Management Framework, called the “Career Path.” With this component, we address the following concerns of our colleagues:

Standardization of the professional characteristics of our colleagues;
Roadmap for professional development;
A clear understanding of steps required for reaching the next responsibility level;

Managerial benefits of using this component are:
Hiring interview simplification. We know upfront what we are interested in while interviewing the candidate;
A clear, data-based explanation of why we consider a candidate fit for a particular position;
Ability to see the average professional level of colleagues across the departments and the whole company.

All the positions described below inherit responsibilities and requirements from the lower levels. For instance, SE2 should meet the requirements and be able to perform the responsibilities of SE1 and SE0. It is also important to note that when we talk about responsibilities inheritance, we mean that the person should be able to conduct the listed activities per need.

The only generic requirement for all the positions is that the candidate should be approved for this role by the SDC management team.

Full Version PDF
Software Engineer PDF
QA Automation Engineer PDF
HR Specialist PDF
Product Manager PDF
Project Manager PDF

Management Roles and Responsibilities

This document shows one of the components of The SDC Management Framework, called the ‘Management Roles and Responsibilities.’

With this component, we bring a clear understanding of company managers' responsibility zones to all the company members. We also use this document to understand which new managerial position we should open next.

SDC Management Roles and Responsibilities PDF

In-house Communication Flow

This document shows one of the components of The SDC Management Framework, called the 'In-house Communication Flow'. With this component, we show the regular communication topics between management chains of the company and in-house teams. This component aims to bring clarity to the understanding of colleagues' communication nature. It also aims to maintain team members' expectations and show that the higher management is always open to suggestions and any other discussions (The link between 'Everyone' and Company Affairs Team, HR Specialist, and COO).

SDC In-house Communication Flow PDF

Project Processing Regular Workflow

This document shows one of the components of The SDC Management Framework, called the 'Project Processing Regular Workflow'. With this component, we aim for the following:

Show the general practice of working with the stakeholders and how we handle the project from the very beginning. We want our team members to share the same knowledge of this business aspect even if they're not directly involved in it;
Lower the threshold for the newcomer managers, so they can quickly grasp what's going on and understand the side (osmotic) communication they witness on our regular calls.

SDC Project Processing Regular Workflow PDF

Team Availability Management

This document shows one of the components of The SDC Management Framework, called the 'Team Management Availability'. We've implemented a system that allows our team members to see our colleagues' availability (vacation/day off) and request those via Google Sheets. The purpose of having an in-house solution instead of purchasing ready-made products is:

We use the data from the spreadsheet to make various calculations in other in-house tools
We can modify it in any way we want + integrate it with almost any software we use;
It is easy to set up;
It is free.

SDC Team Availability Management PDF

SDC RIO Model

This document shows one of the components of The SDC Management Framework, called the 'SDC RIO Model'.

This complex component allows us to get the data about any of the company colleagues in three dimensions:

Responsibility (daily updates tracking);
Involvement (the % of a person's involvement in company projects);
Opinions (colleagues' opinions about each other, in the form of indexes).

We built the last metric specifically to monitor the in-house atmosphere of the company. Since we genuinely believe that having a healthy in-house atmosphere is paramount for a great company, we've chosen this metric instead of various 'performance analytics' systems.

SDC RIO Model PDF

Babken Gyozalyan - 'RIO Model' and 'Team Availability' components co-author
Anna Papazyan - 'Hiring and Onboarding' workflows co-author
Karen Melkonyan - Visual design
Natalie Adulyan - Brainstorming, concepts validation
SDC mentors team - Research, concepts validation, 'Career Path' development
Released for Public: 30.11.21