Our team was presented with a time management problem. All projects took “too much time” in the contract and payment phase. Projects got delayed which ultimately cost more money or took more resources before launching. At the same time the HQ office changed the way business cases were approved. I got the opportunity to lead the process revamp.
I tackle this problem in two ways:
1. By introducing Purchasing Orders (PO), it reduced the contract requests by 50%, because in Mexico a PO acts like a legal agreement. With that, the team didn't need to wait 14 business days on a contract draft.
2. By establishing a schedule management, we came to the conclusion that a contract took 11 business days of more to be signed by the vendor. With the proper feedback to the vendors, we got quicker responses.
The net effect of this project was that the internal feedback of the process improve significantly, and more projects were released on time.
Date: July 2019
Client: Riot Games
Category: Project Management
Alquimio
Software Development for a local team
While I was leading the revamp on our business case approval and contract generation process, our team needed to resolve a purchasing order generator for the LATAM region. The Mexico and Santiago offices were merging, which meant standardize the services on both places. While this was happening, we found out that the Santiago office had an outdated PO generator which was difficult to use. I lead the software revamp to make the application to meet our new necessities.
The biggest challenge was that the development team was located in Chile, while I was working at Mexico. The distributed team needed rules and team agreements to be able to deliver the product regardless of the separation.
By using a Kanban to list our stakeholder’s product needs as backlog requests, we were able to work under a scrum framework to deliver the website even though the scope was not well defined.
From generating only one type of purchasing order only covering one country, the new site host both Mexico and Chile users, with their independent vendor list, create PO’s for the two offices and 4 monetary currencies. With this changes we were able to create a new budget threshold and establish that all expenses minor of 10k USD can be backed up with only the purchasing order. This decision decreased contract requests by 50%. The team could just have the project running in two days with a PO, than wait 14 business days on a contract (within reason).
Date: June 2018
Client: Riot Games
Category: Software Development
Live/Play
When dreams come true
Sometimes we get projects that allows us to meet and bond with people with the community. Our team was requested to provide logistics solutions for the creative team to film the 5th episode of Live/Play, about three known people in the League of Legends community to tell their story and experience with the game.
I got to coordinate Gumaee’s travel from Venezuela to Mexico for the recording. She was very excited, but her family felt wary about the situation. At times, dreams sound very good to be true, and Gumaee’s parents thought this was a human traffic situation instead of a documentary. I decided to talk from formal channels, give my personal twitter account with my picture, give the address of the office (even though it was not allowed at the time, the team agree on this particular case), and invited the artist’s mother to come with.
When they finally agreed, I send all the information for the flight and hotel so the rest of the family could know where they would be. The airplane took 8 hours and as soon as they arrived at the office, I lend them my phone so they could call home. Gumaee’s dad cried, relieved that they were okay, and her daughter’s dream was true.
This is a project I’m very proud of, because it was a chance to meet a remarkable person. You can see her story here.
Date: September 2017
Client: Riot Games
Category: Events Logistics
Challenger Jackets
The most prestigeous prize
The HQ team deliver us amazing orders: the best 200 players out of 1 million in the Latin America North server would receive a prize jacket.
I led the global logistics to import the jackets from Taiwan, organize the information for each player and distribute them. Logistic solutions were needed because it was only one jacket per person.
We utilize vendor sourcing techniques to find a broker service that guided us during the importation. Sadly, they weren’t able to deliver the prize to the players in Venezuela. These jackets were so prestigious that Colombian game communities offered us to cross the border to Venezuela and deliver the jackets themselves.
There was no need, in our vendor search we came across to UPS, the only domestic mailing service that still delivered to Venezuela. By the next esports final, I saw several players taking photos with their challenger jackets.
Date: June 2017
Client: Riot Games
Category: Global Logistics
Infinity Esports
Hello darkness my old friend
In 2018 we had two esports teams in LATAM that were invited to the International League of Legends Championship series in South Korea. An event that tops the NBA’s rating with millions of viewers. This time I was coordinating Infinity Esports players with their visa permits to be on the tournament in the opening match. You see, the visa was important because this is a job for the team, and per South Korea law, they needed a permit.
We only had two weeks to get the permit (don’t get me wrong, this at Riot Games was plenty of time). Half of the first week got by getting the paperwork, including South Korea’s Riot Games office company registration, office registration, etc. By Thursday, they players and I went to the embassy, and they told us the visas would be ready next Friday.
For the team to go to South Korea, train and be ready for the opening match, they needed to travel that week on Wednesday. The players were so pissed that they told us “If you don’t get us there, we are going to blast Riot Games on social media”. I called every day to state the urgency of this process, and the embassy told me to stop calling, or the visas would be cancelled. I would have to wait until Tuesday for them to call me and notified me on the visa’s expedition date.
I exposed the problem to the team so we could have a plan B if it was needed. It was a tortuous wait, but on Tuesday I got notified: the visas were going to be ready on Friday. I raised my hand and we action our plan, which was changing the bracket of the opening match with another team and let Infinity Esports get there and train for another day. The players were happy because they didn’t have the nerves to open the competition on his debut at an International Tournament. It also added days for them to train and study the other teams. At the end, the team won the play-in phase, the first team form LATAM to ever be that far on the competition.
After this, the esports team created an event’s calendar and my team managed that schedule for this problem to never happen again.
