My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.
-Mark Twain
I have heard a lot of great ideas, and seen a lot of interesting organizational structures but, in my experience, it is the simplest ideas that win out and work the best. I am going to try to provide you with some practical methods for ensuring your startup, company, etc, survives and scales.
Please note, these tools should work regardless of what you are building whether it be software, hardware or a hybrid product. I have worked with a wide range of startups and while each one is unique they are still traditional businesses at their core and a lot of the same principles apply.
What we’re focused on in this document is building the core of the business, the engine that drives it, and how to optimize and tune that engines so that your business can outperform all others.
The Three P’s
I advise my clients that when properly implementing a new system they should always consider the three P’s: Platform, Process and People. I’ll break down for you what those are and how the percentages I mentioned above apply.
Platform (20%)
The platforms you choose to use are where you will realize about 20% efficiency gain. Don’t mess around – setup a Linear or JIRA/Confluence cloud instance and Slack. Whether you use GitHub or Lab is up to you – both integrate with JIRA. The time you spend deliberating about which platform to use is money and time lost. Linear and JIRA work for almost all shops, hardware or software, and can be tailored to meet your needs. I’ve implemented it for numerous shops of all shapes and sizes and odds are it will work for yours. Go ahead and put the tools in place and move on. I’ll discuss more in a subsequent post how to do so as there are a lot of nuances.
Please remember that the platform is there to do one thing – provide a framework, a safe environment, in which the team can work without worrying about folks asking them what they are working on, why they are working on it and when is it going to be ready. It should give them confidence they need to stop thinking about higher level planning questions and just focus on doing the best work they can. A stressed team member is an inefficient and unproductive resource. Get it all down on the board and leave them to do what they know how to do best.
Process (30%)
This is where you will realize about 30% efficiency gain. I typically implement a standard Agile/scrum model and I am not going to go into the rabbit hole of Agile orthodoxy. Get it set up, get it running and start implementing the standard ceremonies, artifacts, etc. Don’t skimp – make sure your Backlog Groom is as long as it needs to be as well as all the other meetings. It is typically the least enjoyable meeting but also the most important. Again, there are a lot of nuances which need to be discussed but those are best saved for another article.
One of the key reasons to implement a robust process is to further remove questions and doubt. Again, a stressed and distracted team member is an inefficient team member. Put a meeting framework in place so they know there is a time and place when and where all their questions will be answered. Provide them a cadence so they can get into a rhythm and relax into their role. Make sure they know where all the documentation resides so they don’t waste time hunting for information. Provide them a product roadmap so they can see the big picture. I am big fan of rolling the blueprints out on the hood of truck and having everyone take a look. Try to take all the guesswork out of being part of your team. Once they have internalized the process it will seem effortless and they hopefully won’t even notice it.
(Intermission)
By now, and sometimes after the Platform phase, some fires have been extinguished or are burning themselves out, the stakeholders have a pretty good sense of whether or not they are going to hit their technical and business goals, the demeanor of the team is upbeat and things are starting to right themselves. This is when folks feel it is ok to downshift a bit and back off fixing things and just kind of let it ride. This is a mistake. You may be tired and in need of a rest but the conditioning you have started with your team is now starting to take hold and you will lose momentum if you don’t maintain some sort of forward motion. Sure, you can go back and restart but it will require that much more effort to get the ball rolling. Keep at it. At least nominally but don’t start to undo all the work you’ve just done.
People (50%)
This is where half of your efficiency gain is found – in the people. Their relationships, their disposition, their lives are all critical to your success. The humanistic aspect of your company is the most important as that will determine your success. This is also the most challenging part and many shops, often due to lack of experience, fail to see the significance and stop short at implementing platforms and a process.
What do I mean by People? After all the tools are in place, and the processes setup, what is the disposition of your team? Are they happy? Is the quietest voice being heard? Is someone directing them and telling them what to do or are they allowed to take ownership? Are they working their hearts out yet their paychecks are not arriving on time? Are they being permitted to truly succeed or fail?
I absolutely love this part of the process of building robust companies because it is where you start pulling in ship dates, meeting your milestones, making the investors happy, and ultimately signing new clients. Focus on the team and your product will be a success. Ignore your team and your runway will soon grow very short and you’ll be scrambling to make it all work.
What can you do to ensure your team is strong and healthy? First, are you guiding them or have you handed the reins to someone else such as the loudest voice in the room? Often times this occurs when the leadership has too much else going on or does not have the confidence that they can lead. You are the leader by default and that is how people are going to look at you. Easier to fill that role than try to regain it later. Take back the reins and make sure the team knows the buck stops with you.
Second, are you hearing everyone? When you sit in the meeting is someone driving the discussion and everyone else is waiting to be told what to do because time is short and you just need to get things done? If this is the case, you already have an imbalance and you are in trouble. This is true whether you are a seed funded startup with five people or a fifty person shop with a couple series under your belt. The team will decide if the product succeeds or fails, not any one individual.
Third, are you building a resilient company? Have you implemented a basic organizational structure so that team members know who they report to? Do they know who to turn to when they have non-technical questions and need general support? If your CTO left at lunch and won the lottery could your company keep running? If the answer to this is ‘no’ then you have some work to do.
These are just some of the questions that we should ask ourselves when building teams. Start with answering and addressing these questions and I’ll start to break down the details in subsequent posts. If you start to address some of these issues, you will set the cornerstone for a robust and scalable organization. Focus on your people, invest in the humanistic aspects of team building and your business will flourish. With a well respected team that feels like it has skin in the game, anything is possible even if that team is under-resourced, facing looming deadlines and financial uncertainty. Tip the balance in your favor and give ownership to the team and then allow them to facilitate the process.
Conclusion
I laid out what lies at the core of an organization, i.e. the methods that drive the engineering processes, delivery and product management. There are many more questions to be asked about how resourcing, clients, vendors, and fin/acc impact the above process but those are also best saved for another post. Focus on the three P’s to start and you will have begun to build the engine that is going to carry you across the finish line or at least to the next major funding milestone.
Please feel free to reach out if you have questions.