Glasswall uses freelancers from Upwork to help accelerate project delivery. Some benefits of using Upwork include being able to quickly scale engineering capabilities up or down as needed, enhancing their capabilities by delegating work, and keeping costs low with minimal onboarding needs. Glasswall aims to measure the value gained from using Upwork to ensure it exceeds the costs, and defines processes for requesting, approving, and managing projects and resources from Upwork.

1. Glasswall Engineering
Using Upwork for Projects

2. Upwork - Why
Glasswall have integrated the use of Freelancers from the platform Upwork. We
have set a monthly budget to make use of to help us accelerate on delivering
project work. Some benefits and reasons for making use of this platform:
On Demand Engineering - Elastic
• We pay Upwork Freelancers by the hour. As such, when we
need a burst of engineering capabilities, we can spin this up on
demand and then wind it back down when work is completed.
Enhance ourselves
• As an FTEs, there is a never ending to do list of work. In order
for each of us to achieve more, we can scale ourselves by
defining good briefs of work and delegating them.
• By-product : Opportunity for everyone learn about managing
projects and people.
Cost Effective
• Very low on-boarding cost.
• No domain knowledge upskilling / induction needed.
• Low risk - if the person does not deliver in the first few days,
end the contract
Scale Glasswall
• There is a limit to how much work we can achieve without
complimenting ourselves with additional resources. We
increase the amount of project delivery Glasswall can achieve
through good utilization of Upwork

3. Upwork - Considerations
Like all investments,
we need to make
sure there is a good
ROI.
The value gained
needs to exceed the
cost spent.
Cost is not just the
money we pay to
Upwork, but also the
time our FTE’s spend
in scoping and
managing the work.
We need to practise
getting good and
efficient at defining
work well. Work
should not need
strategic thinking or
internal domain
knowledge by the
worker to deliver
once delegated to
them.
Should save us time
and money, not the
opposite
We need to measure
the work being
delivered and access
output quality
(Context specific!)
It is up to the Business
Owner to scope the
project, get it approved
and scheduled. Work
with the Upwork PMs
to resource the project
appropriately and
track it on Jira.
Measure the work
being delivered.
Feedback and drive the
project direction. Be
accountable for the
project delivery and
the associated cost.
‘It doesn’t exist if you
don’t measure it’ -
Person from Upwork

4. Upwork - How
1. Create a Project and some Feature on Jira here:
https://glasswall.atlassian.net/browse/PROGRAM-27
a. The Project needs a good Summary and
Description
b. The Features’each need a good Summary
• By reading the Project and Features,one should
have a grasp of the project scope and what is
trying to be achieved
c. The Project needs the following links:
• Has business owner - This will link to you
• Has technical owner - if applicable
• Has customer - This will link to an internal or
external customer
• Has focus - This is either: Tech Debt, Support
Customers or Commercial Opportunity
2. Include in the Project description the following:
a. Estimated resource count
b. Estimated resource skill level/cost
c. Estimated project length
• 1 sprint = 2 weeks
• 2 sprint = 1 month
• 1-3 months
• Up to 1 year

5. Upwork - How
3. Present the Project Brief at the Technology
Forum meeting.
a. This will allow for discussion, feedback, refinement,
validation etc
4. At the Tech Forum we can update the Project
status to either:
a. Needs more details - To be refined by the Business
Owner
b. Needs approval - To be approved by TLT and Exec
5. At the Tech Leadership Meeting we will review
and submit a list of projects to be approved by the
Exec team for the following months execution.

6. 6. When reviewed, the project status will change to:
a. Scheduled, if it is to begin in the next round of
projects
b. Not scheduled - to be scheduled at a later date
c. Not approved - Project not approved
7. When a project is approved and scheduled the
business owner can work with an Upwork Project
Manager / Luke to kick off the project:
a. Resource the project - Preferably from our talent
bench
b. Slack channel
c. Ensure appropriate program schema and mapping
Upwork - How
8. It is then up to the Business Owner to utilize
the Upwork PM to ensure all work is captured,
tracked and updated on Jira
9. The business owner is encouraged to present
progress at the Tech Forum and
delivery/completion at our All Hands meeting

7. Upwork - Additional Services
Project Management
We currently have three project managers from upwork. They help facilitate project kick off,
progress and delivery. They schedule meetings, get updates from Upwork resources, and manage
the Features / Stories and tasks on Jira, ensuring all work is captured in our Schema.
• Alona has now joined Abbas’s
team and is focusing on IT
Support and Infosec.
• She is also available to help with
some administration tasks like
onboarding / offboarding,
company surveys and general
upwork staff management.
Alona
• Is currently managing a
number of operational,
strategic and engineering
projects. She also manages the
admin for other Upwork staff
members, upwork staff
management.
Tatevik
• We have recently hired a
Technical Project Manager who
has a background in engineering
and will help manage more
Technical Projects. The first set of
projects will be for ICAP.
• On success, we can expand this to
help manage more projects in the
Cloud and Core departments.
Doviana

8. Upwork - Additional Services
Design
To make use of the upwork design services, request a task in the slack channel #upwork-services-design
It will be up to our Upwork Designers to create and track these tasks in Jira:
https://glasswall.atlassian.net/browse/PROJECT-148 -
Upwork Services Design
Examples of use: Infographics ; Icons ; Marketing material

9. Upwork - Additional Services
Jira-Administration
✓ Jira maintenance can be time consuming and tricky!
✓ We now have 2 dedicated Jira Admins, Dario and Mariel are have been trained in Jira Editing and can help us customize our Jira
schemas and workflows.
✓ These resources are not to be used for adding Projects / Features / Stories etc or keeping Jira up to date.
They are used to:
Add new Projects and
Issue types to Jira
Editing
workflows
Customising fields and
screens available within
issue types
Creating
filters etc
To use them, head to the Jira Admin channel on slack and make a request. They will create and track their work
on jira here: https://glasswall.atlassian.net/browse/PROJECT-128
Jira Evolution and Maintenance

10. Upwork - Additional Services
By now you have all seen the power of Jupyter Notebooks for running Playbooks, Manipulating Data for consumption,
reporting, measuring and visualisation of graphs
We have a Program of projects on Jira dedicated to this
https://glasswall.atlassian.net/browse/PROGRAM-32 - Data Science and Reporting - Measuring People, Product, Projects
If you would like some Notebook work done, feel free to add a Story under the appropriate Project / Feature. If an
appropriate Feature does not exist, you can add that too :)
This squad meets every Tuesday and Thursday to review progress, feedback and prioritize the next set of tasks to work
on. Anyone can ping Luke to request to join this meeting and discuss their notebook requirements
Types of work include: Reports per Person, Project, Product, Team, Squad. Playbook engineering. Reports are currently
generated from any data which we have in Jira.
*Coming soon - Tasks on request in Jira Channel*
Notebooks and Reporting

11. Upwork - Talent Bench / Finding New Talent
✓ We have spent time and effort building
up a bench of Talent on Upwork who
we know and trust.
✓ When new projects are requested, we
would ideally select resources for our
existing talent bench:
*WIP* - Request feedback from Business Owners on
project completion, review and rate rources delivery
and enrich the skill set of each.
Share with Business Owners and Hiring Managers:
Our bench of
talent
Their associated
skill set and
ratings
Current
utilization and
availability
We do sometimes need to find new talent and skill sets, when this is the case, we have a dedicated resource from
Upwork who can assist with this. They help refine the Job Post and add suitable candidates to the shortlist of
proposals for the job. Your Project Manager (or Luke) can assist with these requests.