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As we work towards approaching problem solving in an effective manner, share with us a time when you encountered an impactful problem, and the innovative steps you took to overcome it. Let us know, by posting your story on Padlet and you will stand to win a Google Nest Hub - 2nd Gen this Q1 2022 Townhall.

You can also like or comment on any of your colleagues’ posts to show your encouragement and support for them.

You may refer to the sample story on the right for your post. please note that your story has to include your company email address at the bottom of the post, and has to be submitted by Monday, 7 March, 6pm (Local Time).

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Open to all Shopee and SeaMoney employees

Registration for Townhall is mandatory

Padlet post has to be made by Monday, 7 March, 6pm ( Local Time)

Only 1 post allowed per employee

Not to share any confidential data, i.e. performance data, metrics

It is recommended to include pictures, gifs, or videos in your post

Post has to include your company email address at the bottom of your post

All posts are subject to approval by the Townhall Committee before they are showcased on Padlet

If chosen as a winner, your story will be featured during the Townhall

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Despite my anxiousness, I was tasked late last year with something that was out of my specialisation - Project Management. It was a request I had raised with my manager earlier during our 1-to-1 sessions as I wanted to hone my skills which she confidently delegated to me thereafter. As I was always involved in the later stages of planning, I possessed minimal skills and knowledge. I was overwhelmed at first when I did not know what to do. Later part, I realised that the key was to break down each step and to segment out my priorities so that I could branch out the solutions and steps to proceed from there. Using a step-by-step approach would better organise my tasks and hence a clearer view of what needs to be done.

user.99@shopee.com

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I had the honour and opportunity of being a part of the team behind one of Shopee's most popular in-app games, Shopee Candy.

While preparing for the regional launch of the game, we received feedback that the professional voice effects for combos in the game ("Good!", "Great!", "Perfect!" etc.) were not up to standard and incorrectly translated. They needed to be redone within 3 days, but re-engaging the voice actor was going to cost more time and money.

Faced with a risk of delays, we needed a solution for this challenge, and I decided to try something creative. I sought the help of my partner who kindly agreed to use her voice for the game. Within one evening, we recorded the updated sounds in a "homemade studio" built using furniture and blankets from our home, and the recordings turned out better than the original professional files!

Overcoming this obstacle, we met our launch deadline successfully and I am proud to have played my little part in Shopee Candy's success. Those homemade voice effects are still used today, and you can listen to them in the video above!

jonathan.lee@shopee.com

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Being in an ever growing organisation, we may face problems at various points of time and having good problem solving skills is a key part for everyone’s work, regardless of function and title. In my team, I perform UAT on apps and platforms, such as the launch of in house system where we use to build and automate lifecycle campaigns across all regions which greatly improved productivity and reduce reliance on external tools, and new app landing pages designed for Shopee users to have a more customised and targeted content recommendations. Even simple feature launch such as adding images to PN and ARs requires a great deal of testing to ensure optimal UI.

When I was newly tasked to oversee UAT, I faced the problem of having to manage several UAT at the same time which often resulted in inefficient multitasking. Often, I found myself working all tasks with equal urgency and felt overwhelmed at times which I realised was not a sustainable approach. There were requests from various teams on different features and results in testing delays when there were overlaps in timeline. I had a chat with my team lead who advised to prioritise and also took note of the problem solving methodology.

I started to structure the main problem and prioritise my tasks. The 2x2 matrix came in handy to plan the UAT requests, which are urgent and not, so we can focus on the key features first. I also made use of tools such as Gsheet to plan the UAT calendar and JIRA to organise UAT requests. Feedback was important and I discussed with stakeholders on how to better improve the process and eventually streamlined a UAT flow which significantly improved productivity and well-received by the stakeholders.

Prioritisation has greatly helped me to better manage tasks and be more productive. I also realised good problem solving is a continual process and it not only impacts you but also people you work with as we share and feedback to improve and innovate.

yiling.zhao@shopee.com

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If there is no existing solutions to your problems, create one.

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If there is no existing solutions to your problems, create one.

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Many people have been wondering how the ticket assignees for our Jira Service Desks are being maintained. In most of the product lines, Project Managers are the ones responsible for the backend configurations. However, all these manual work could potentially cause some human errors, or the updates might not be able to be done on time due to Project Manager's busy schedule.

Having experienced through both mistakes, I initiated a new workflow such that the entire process can be fully-automated. The Dev-on-duty (DoD) information are firstly being retrieved from our all-new DoD System, passed through the PJ Portal, and lastly the updates are performed daily to the corresponding Jira Platforms. The solution could eliminate the unnecessary manual work, and we can ensure that all the tickets raised by reporters will be assigned to the correct DoDs. The journey has also taught me how we can design solutions that can fit all, if not most of our customers.

I would like to express my greatest gratitude to both the DoD System & PJ Portal developers for making this happen. They have proven to me that teamwork makes things work, even though both developer teams are coming from different offices. It's truly my honour & pleasure working with all of them.

taumeng.lim@seamoney.com

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Many of us are fixated on dealing with day-to-day workload and emergencies. Yes, we are aiming to automate most of our BAU in the sense that this routine work can be done by a machine. Even some of the work is already automated, we need to often ask ourselves does the market still has the need to continue this BAU or does this BAU help with local in having a better performance. This is when the problem comes in.

There are small sellers in every market and some of them are having a high cancellation rate (can be dropshipper) which can bring risk to Shopee's reputation and buyer experience. During the recent review, the intervention program shows no significant reduction in cancellation rates. Hence, how can I help improve the metrics? By crafting the problem statement and structuring the problem with the support from data, the Pyramid principle really helps me through this reinvention. Our team is utilizing the 5-step problem-solving approach and working with the talented cross-function teams to keep improving the metrics and reinvent ongoing programs for the local market.

winnie.lawsy@shopee.com

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As of last year, I have graduated from my university and started my very first full-time job with Shopee/Seamoney. It was very overwhelming and tough, especially with the huge changes going around within my team. I was new to the role and it was a role that I did not study in my university, making it harder than ever. I am not going to lie, but the first 6 months were the worst, but I managed to pick up the pace and find my way again.

As I progressed and learnt new things, I realised some of our tools were limited. One of my product managers asked for a Gantt chart so that we would be able to see our progress better and understand where we stand in a project. I tried various ways with tools available to chart out a simple Gantt chart. But none of them was flexible enough to be able to be used for the intended purpose within my team. So instead of finding templates after templates, I decided to make my own, using Google Sheets.

With a bit of research, I managed to create a very simple Gantt chart that meets the needs of the team. Does it need more improvements? Sure. But does it fulfil its intended purpose? Yes. Happily, I shared this Gantt chart template with my manager and he was impressed with it and asked if I could share it with other teams too. I agreed and there were positive feedback as well as feedback on what can be improved. I was glad that I was able to make such a simple tool to be so useful within my team and other teams. On top of creating this tool, I also gained some new skills by coding a little in google sheets, learning the many possible functionalities and features within it.

I would like to thank my product managers for openly giving me feedback on my project management skills and allowing me to take the opportunity to get out of my comfort zone to do something that adds value to our team and others.

lois.ngmhm@seamoney.com

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Interesting Concepts comes from all of us

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Interesting Concepts comes from all of us

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My backend engineers had an interesting concept for a new project, and I was tasked to be its frontend developer. Back then, I joined Shopee fresh out of college, the project concept was new and there wasn't much manpower nor time budget for it. We started with 2 backend developers, 1 project manager and me as the sole frontend developer. I had no web-design knowledge, no context of the project and nobody in my department to seek technical help from as I was the first frontend developer in the department.

Having some background in art, I knew that I could get inspiration from my surroundings. I started to actively observe the aesthetics of the tools my colleagues were using. I also listened to their rants during lunches and group chats. I raised their concerns in my meetings and asked a fellow designer, from another project, questions and asked for feedback. I learned that most developers prefer dark themed products (in IDEs, terminals and even installed dark theme plugin in their browsers). WCAG colour contrast is extremely useful for deciding colours as different people prefer different orientations and sizings for their window. I tried my best to incorporate these designs into the product.

The project was successfully launched in 6 months. My data engineer friend texted me that he was thankful that there was finally a product that uses dark theme. That project has now been utilised and expanded for 2+ years across several countries. After its successful launch, my backend developers and my boss then recommended me to design for another product which was also launched with good feedback.

Interesting problems and innovative solutions comes from all of us. It could be a rant, a repetitive action, a behaviour or usage preferences. Nowadays I don't do design anymore, but the experience will carry on with me in my problem solving.

daphne.won@shopee.com

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As one of the members of Shopeepay, we are spending our main effort recently to revamp our system and make it compatible with all countries' requirements in the end.

Being the PIC (Project-in-Charge) for one of the wallet's main features is a very challenging task for me because not only it's an important business line but I'm the first time in charge of a big project. In the beginning, lack of experience makes me not being well to plan my time effectively. After consulting with other senior members, I realized some key points like having a meeting always makes the discussion more efficient, Booking some time slots to reserve the time for the personal work that needs high concentration, ...etc.

I would like to appreciate all colleagues who help me overcome the challenge before. Those suggestions are really helpful and relieve my anxiousness a lot. Honor to spearhead this project and cooperate with all the team members.

chiayu.lin@seamoney.com

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That Team Engagement Fund doing what it was meant to do. Bring us closer despite the distance!

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A Question Of Motivations - We’re In This Together!

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A Question Of Motivations - We’re In This Together!

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As my team’s first Data Quality Analyst, it was no surprise that my learning curve was steep. Coming from a non-IT background did not make the transition from a boot camp student to a techie any less easy.

My team collaborates with our colleagues in other regions’ local teams to create accurately labelled data needed to create machine learning or deep learning models (a program working in the background) which automatically sift through user-submitted ID documents to predict if they are authentic or not. Such models save the effort of said colleagues who would normally have to look at these, many times thousands of, documents each day before approving them -- a truly tedious process!

An issue I noticed was that work on the data had sometimes fallen short of quality and at times was put behind schedule. Given the also tedious nature of data labelling, this came as no surprise to me. But accepting the situation as it was was  not in anyone's interest. I set out to solve any issue within my control.

What I soon found out was that given our local teams’ numerous responsibilities, data labelling was often prioritised behind the approval work which was more urgent -- the very work our models were being built to reduce! And the reason for that was that our colleagues doing the actual labelling process often did not understand the purpose of the work they were doing in a way that made sense to them (we are not building ‘a model’, we are building ‘a system which automatically reduces approval work’). It was a problem of unaligned motivations which was thankfully easy to fix!

Thanks to the support and autonomy given to me by my manager, I immediately set out to change my team’s SOP to ensure that all colleagues were vividly aware of what they were creating labelled data for. I also started working much closer with them on an individual level to ensure that problems with quality were resolved before they had a chance to become gargantuan, and planned schedules for our work around their urgent responsibilities, like being on standby during campaign periods.

Since these changes had been made, our work has since started to be completed in a timely manner and with much better quality, reducing the need for do-overs. We used the Team Engagement Fund to buy snacks from sources overseas late last year to celebrate our deeper collaboration together.

While I am still rummaging through Confluence, scratching at my head while pounding at my keyboard each day, it looks like that non-IT background will continue to be of good use!

PS: For the inclined, find out what the Identity Verification team does in the Seatalk forum post: Team Feature - Reg Data Science (Identity Verification) posted on 2021-11-23

bryan.chongsr@shopee.com