Improving iOS Intangibles with Tactical
Article Summary
Medium's iOS team was scattered across product teams, causing their codebase and user experience to fragment. Their solution? A biweekly meeting format borrowed from holocracy that transformed how they ship.
Alaina Kafkes from Medium Engineering shares how their iOS team uses 'tactical' meetings to maintain code quality and team cohesion despite being distributed across different product squads. The structured format creates space for engineers to address pain points beyond sprint work.
Key Takeaways
- New engineer feedback at tactical sparked complete Swift migration from Objective-C
- Meeting format: check-ins, crash reviews, tensions discussion, and action items
- Newcomers contribute immediately, proposing modular architecture and process improvements
- Tactical builds trust and custodial mindset beyond individual sprint goals
Critical Insight
Regular role-specific meetings empower small, distributed engineering teams to collectively improve their codebase, developer experience, and product quality through structured collaboration and shared ownership.
