Being a team leader isn't simple. Managing large groups of people, setting clear lines of communication, and keeping projects on track can feel overwhelming for many. However, under the right leadership, teams can overcome technical and practical challenges, collaborate effectively, and meet their project goals.
Software engineer Dona Maria Jose knows exactly how to make this dynamic work.
With experience at companies like Visa, Microsoft, Dropbox, and Slack, she's led multiple teams through complex projects, delivering features used by millions of users. Through these experiences, she's developed a set of strategies that help her teams collaborate remotely, detect problems early in development, and test ideas quickly to deliver quality products while saving time and resources.
Dona's Journey
Dona's interest in programming began with a 6th-grade summer class that introduced her to the basics of coding. This early curiosity grew into a passion for technology, which eventually led her to pursue a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Arlington.
Shortly after graduating, she landed a position as a software engineer at Visa, where she was tasked with improving the code quality of the legacy systems that power the company's millions of daily transactions. She went on to work for Microsoft, where she led the building of a dashboard that provides businesses with valuable metrics and insights into their customer behavior. As head of the project, she directly oversaw all development stages, from designing the dashboard to setting up its data pipeline, marking her first experience leading a team on her own.
Following her work at Microsoft, Dona joined the file-sharing platform Dropbox, where she took on her most ambitious project to date: enhancing the platform's multi-file organize feature, which allows users to organize their files automatically into folders based on different categories. This project was crucial in honing her leadership skills, as she worked simultaneously with multiple cross-functional teams, including developers, designers, UX testers, and marketers, gaining first-hand knowledge on how to guide large groups toward a shared goal without losing focus or momentum.
Dona used three key strategies that were instrumental in bringing the project to life and have since shaped her approach to team leadership:
1. Refining Ideas Through Prototyping
Dona and her team took an iterative approach to development, creating early versions—or prototypes—of each feature. These prototypes allowed them to test ideas quickly, gather user feedback, and refine the design step-by-step, ruling out what didn't work and focusing on what users actually needed.
This process was especially valuable when developing custom filters for Dropbox's multi-file organize feature. By testing different options and listening to user feedback, the team fine-tuned the design to be as intuitive and accessible as possible. When the feature was officially relaunched, users could easily move files into different folders based on variants like personalized keywords, size, file extensions (like PDF or DOCX), and latest modification dates.
2. Catching Bugs Early in Development
Dona also established regular "mini bug bashes"—focused testing sessions where people from different teams come together to perform lengthy tests on a feature, inspecting it meticulously to detect any software bugs at each milestone of development.
Under this system, the project was divided into phases, each representing a significant step in the development cycle, with a bug bash held at the end of each one—once all bugs were identified and fixed, the team would move on to the next phase. This incremental approach was crucial to resolving issues as they arose, preventing them from snowballing into larger problems in later development stages, and reducing the risk of critical bugs in the final release.
3. Streamlining Backlog Management
Finally, Dona focused on streamlining the project's backlog, which is essentially the list of all tasks necessary to launch the project successfully. Traditionally, teams would gather to estimate the time required for task execution. But Dona reimagined this process by introducing an asynchronous method, allowing team members to make these estimations independently at their convenience.
This approach, commonly known as "async backlog grooming," allowed team members to review and refine their work at their own pace while saving time that would otherwise be spent on group meetings—a huge advantage for a project with multiple teams working across different time zones. By giving every member the flexibility to work on their own schedule, Dona managed to save significant time while keeping the project on track.
Building Thriving Teams
Since her time at Dropbox, Dona has achieved industry-wide recognition for her work in tech, including receiving the Claro Silver Award for Technology in 2024. Today, she's a Senior Software Engineer at Slack, where she's in charge of maintaining the platform's backend, with a specific focus on key features like the Activity tab and other notification systems.
Dona Maria Jose's work shows that managing large teams doesn't have to feel overwhelming. By staying focused on practical strategies like delegating individual tasks, detecting and fixing issues early, and refining ideas through iteration, she's figured out how to lead teams to success.
For anyone looking to optimize time and resources in group projects, Dona's approach offers a practical roadmap to overcome common challenges, stay focused, and deliver quality solutions.
If you want to learn more about Dona's work and her strategies for leading teams, follow her on LinkedIn or visit her official website.
