From Solo Engineer to Leading 200+ at UC: Real‑World R&D Management Lessons

0‑5 People: Demand Management & Culture Foundations

In May 2013 the author left a promotion at Ericsson to join UC as a senior engineer, tackling the group‑buy navigation product. After intense overtime and a product shutdown due to poor requirement analysis, he reflected on the importance of understanding business needs and began self‑studying demand analysis, eventually formulating ten key questions for team training.

5‑12 People: Project & Time Management

The team faced a critical ticket‑grabbing project with chaotic coordination across three cities, leading to unclear progress, frequent delays, and communication breakdowns. After the project manager left, the author stepped in, introducing visual progress tracking, risk assessment (MiniRisk), rigorous demand pruning, refined version control, efficient meeting practices, and smoke‑test automation.

12‑70 People: Efficiency & Quality Management

Tasked with integrating multiple sub‑teams, the author discovered inconsistent onboarding, diverse tech stacks, and lack of unified monitoring, which caused frequent outages when external sites changed. He emphasized rapid, low‑cost business launches, built a core matrix team, established end‑to‑end monitoring, created a shared front‑end framework (Scrat) and back‑end BaaS platform (NAPI), and launched a one‑week onboarding program for new hires.

70‑200 People: Organization & Business Management

During international expansion, the author merged six regional teams into a single unit, learning that a "savior" mindset hinders integration. He adopted long‑term planning, shifted from team to organization management, codified culture, standardized hiring processes, and introduced talent‑assessment methods, while continuing to drive technical innovation.

Afterword

The author reflects on continuous rapid learning, the necessity of self‑driven problem solving, and gratitude toward mentors and colleagues who shaped his four‑year UC experience.