How Hetzner Cloud Transformed Their Project Management For Engineering

Meet The Company

Hetzner Cloud is a leading provider of cloud and hosting services, offering a range of highly scalable and affordable cloud solutions. Founded as a subsidiary of Hetzner Online GmbH, a German company established in 1997, Hetzner Cloud specialises in delivering virtual private servers (VPS), storage solutions, and managed hosting services to businesses of all sizes.

The company operates state-of-the-art data centres in Germany, Finland, and the USA, with recent expansions into Singapore to serve the Asia-Pacific region. Hetzner Cloud is known for its high-performance infrastructure and their services are designed to cater to a wide range of use cases, from small-scale applications to enterprise-level deployments, making them a popular choice for developers and businesses looking for reliable cloud hosting.

At the time of our engagement, Hetzner Cloud had around 70 team members across a dozen internal teams.

The Challenge

From the beginning, Hetzner Cloud has put a strong emphasis on agency and independence for its engineering teams. Each team is free to organise the daily work on their own and can use whatever tech stack they deem most useful. Hetzner Cloud also operates fully remote.

The high degree of autonomy for teams means that everyone can work according to their preferences, but it poses various challenges when it comes to cross-functional collaboration, shared responsibilities and longer-term planning.

When we started out collaboration, we had no intention to change the underlying team culture which has made Hetzner Cloud so successful.

But it also was clear that in order for Hetzner Cloud to keep scaling and managing an ever-growing suite of interconnected tools and services, better collaboration across teams was necessary.

What’s more, Hetzner Cloud is part of a large enterprise, so any solution needs to fit into the larger picture of strategy and data security of a big organisation.

The main question we had to solve during out initial Notion Consulting engagement was:

How can you introduce a company-wide project management while preserving team autonomy?

How we structured the Notion Consulting Process

Hetzner Cloud had already partially adopted Notion and built out a first system draft that was already partially in use.

For projects like these, where we work on a “living system”, it’s crucial that we don’t interrupt the day-to-day operations. In these situations, we usually opt for our Seven Day Sprint Model.

Here’s how this Notion Consulting approach looks like in practice:

1. Weekly Sprint Cycles: We implemented weekly 60-minute check-in calls with the project manager and the leadership, who in turn was responsible for communicating changes to their teams. In these sessions, we discussed and aligned on suggested changes and selected 2-3 priorities for the upcoming sprint. This agile approach ensured we were always working on the most impactful tasks.
2. Small Focus Groups: We held regular small focus groups with 2-3 leaders to dive deeper into specifics of the workflow. This helped us build a deep understanding for different work preferences and made sure that we were building the right solution.
3. Immediate Impact: By focusing on short sprints, we were able to deliver meaningful workflow improvements from week one. This eliminated any lengthy ramp-up and helped to increase buy-in from the team.
4. Real-time Issue Tracking: Throughout the project, we kept an Issue Tracker in Notion to coordinate priorities and give everyone on the team an easy way to highlight bottlenecks or add feature requests.
5. Direct Communication Channels: We joined Hetzner Cloud’s collaboration workspace tool to establish a direct line of communication with the entire team. This allowed us to provide real-time updates on changes and quickly address any questions or roadblocks.

Our Seven Day Sprint Model is tailored for fast-paced environments like engineering and SaaS, where every minute counts. It’s perfect for teams that already have a Notion system in place, since it doesn’t interrupt the day-to-day operations.

By combining short sprints, direct communication and individual focus groups, we were able to build a cross-functional project management system that respected the high degree of team autonomy while building the bridges necessary to scale Hetzner Cloud.

Implemented Solutions

Our solution was built on three key elements:

1. A two-layer project management system separating planning from execution
2. A flexible Notion setup for engineering teams
3. A balance between “Single Player” and “Multi Player” systems

Building A Central Project Management For Remote Teams

The first step in our process with Hetzner Cloud was all about the high level structure of their project management system.

Instead of diving head-first into the build, we took our time to evaluate various models to find the best fit for their unique situation.

Ultimately, we landed on a two-layer project management system that separated the planning & reporting phase from the action phase.

SCREENSHOT WHIMSICAL

The above flowchart shows a simplified version of this approach.

Under this design, larger initiatives, projects and owned services were all part of a company-wide planning system in Notion.

Every element would break down further into milestones and epics, with epics being the central planning element to distribute workload and communicate progress.

Below epics, when it came to organising the work into individual tasks and tickets, we kept the independence of teams.

Every team was free to organise this part of their work in whatever tech stack and with whatever system they preferred.

The leadership only had to ensure that once a week, the central planning elements (Epics) were updated based on the progress they made.

That way, other teams and the central project management had all the information they needed to plan and organise cross-functional projects while the day-to-day execution of these plans remained within each team.

A Notion Setup for Engineering Teams

While every team was free to organise their sphere of work independently, we still wanted to provide them with a best-in-class Notion system as a fallback option.

Teams who wanted to switch to Notion had three advantages over teams using a different tech stack:

• They got an out-of-the-box system specifically designed for engineering teams
• Since they operated “Notion First”, the reporting to the planning level was easier
• They still had full autonomy over their internal organisation and could adapt the system as they saw fit

In order to achieve this, we designed a stand-alone action template around tasks and sprints. Each team had their own database backend that they could modify to fit their workflow, but they were all connected to the central planning system.

That way, each team was free to choose between their existing systems and Notion.

Single Player vs Multi Player Systems

While the system that we developed was unique and tailored to Hetzner Cloud’s specific requirements, the underlying philosophy can easily be adapted by other teams in similar situations.

For Hetzner Cloud, this Notion Consulting project involved more than 10 teams and dozens of employees. But it is just as relevant for a team of 12 people as for a team of 120.

At its core, this approach of separating the planning element from the action element comes down to the Single Player vs. Multi Player System Design.

In a team environment, we need to agree on certain shared principles and ways of working even if they are not the ideal or perfect approach for an individual person. It’s the necessary trade-off that goes along with collaboration.

In these situations, we prioritise the Multi Player Design.

However, not every aspect of work has to be “Multi Player First”. In other areas, optimising for collaboration might be overkill.

The “Task vs. Project” Level is the area where this play out most often.

Your team definitely needs to be aware of the larger projects you work on and potential blockers that could impact their work.

But your day-to-day to-do list probably doesn’t have to be shared with everyone. As long as every individual is sufficiently self-organised, it doesn’t really matter whether they work in Notion, Apple Reminders or with Pen & Paper.

As always, these things are rarely black and white. Instead, it’s helpful to think of Single vs. Multi Player Systems as a scale. Different areas of your company will fall on different positions of the scale – and your systems should account for that.

And here’s where Notion and Notion Consulting comes in. Unlike other tools, Notion allows you to be very specific and conscious when building out your operating system, to make sure you strike the perfect balance.