Post on 15-Jan-2015
description
Couples Counseling for Software Development
Joe Stump, CEO of Sprint.ly
• Early employee at three startups ranging from bootstrapped to venture funded.
• Angel investor in three startups.
• Advisor to seven venture funded startups.
• Cofounder of three venture funded startups (SimpleGeo, attachments.me, & Sprint.ly).
“The best products in the world start out as
features.”Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram
Warring Factions
Check Your Ego
EVERYONE IN YOUR COMPANY IS CAPABLE OF
HAVING A GREAT IDEA.
Managers
Quickly
Correctly Cheaply
YOU CAN’T HAVE YOUR WINE CASK FULL AND YOUR
WIFE DRUNK.
“Want to increase innovation? Lower the cost
of failure.”Joi Ito
ALLOW ENGINEERS TO INVEST IN
AUTOMATION & TESTING.
Why?
• Iterating on your product is all about shortening feedback loops
• Continuous deployment allows you to ship on code commit
• Automated testing allows for aggressive refactoring with confidence
Makers
“You should get a CS degree. It's the only degree
that automatically makes you an expert on politics, finance, religion, and
economics.”@thejayfields
YOU ARE NOT AN EXPERT IN SALES, MARKETING, NOR
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT.
A Sampling of Non-Technical Product TODOs• Financial model creation for
pricing
• Customer development
• Copywriting
• Marketing plan for launch
• Public relations
• Support
• Community development
• Sales training
• Managing beta testers
• Contract negotiation
• Messaging
• Documentation
• Screencasts & Videos
• Marketing materials
• Capturing requirements
• Business development
• Funnel analysis
• Market research
• Blog announcement
• Newsletter announcement
SIMPLEGEO’S PRODUCT LAUNCH CHECKLIST HAD 41 NON-ENGINEERING
ITEMS ON IT.
YOU ARE NOT A DESIGNER.
(SERIOUSLY. JUST LOOK AT THAT SHIT.)
YOU ARE NOT THE TARGET CUSTOMER. (NO, REALLY, NOBODY CARES
ABOUT KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS.)
“Focus on the problem. If you’re only excited about the solution, you’ll lose interest
when your solution doesn’t fix the problem. ”Adil Wali, CTO of ModCloth
Delivering Product
Implementing vision takes time
Inception Your brain
Funding v1.0
“If you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too
long.”Reid Hoffman, Founder of LinkedIn
Product is Trench Warfare
BE MILITANT IN YOUR MINIMALLY VIABLE PRODUCT
(MVP).
Approaching Product1. Focus on a single use case that addresses
the problem
2. Start with a minimal core set of features
3. Release and listen to your users
4. Question your initial assumptions based on feedback
5. Rinse and repeat
Iterating on Your Product
1. Have a great idea
2. Wireframe in Balsamiq (or whatever)
3. Designer creates a static mockup
4. Static mockup is thrown “over the wall” to engineering to implement
Seriously?
Oh, whoops.
• Turns out static mockups are ... static
• Engineers implement it only to find out the UX is terrible
• Engineering is unable to implement critical features
INVOLVE ENGINEERING IN THE PRODUCT
DESIGN PROCESS.
Why would I do that?
• Nobody knows your data better than your engineers
• You likely aren’t an expert at data algorithms
• They are your company’s best technologists
Iterating the YardsaleWay™
1. Have a great idea
2. Wireframe in Balsamiq (or whatever)
3. Engage engineering to build a vanilla prototype (e.g. Default Bootstrap or iOS/Android UI components)
4. Play, tweak, rinse, repeat
5. Once UX is nailed have a designer polish to perfection
Promote Ownership
Yay!
Why is this better?
• Designer’s time is not lost on features that are not shippable
• Timelines will not be disrupted by unforeseen technical hurdles
• Avoids pissing off the engineers
Process Interrupts
PRODUCTS ARE EITHER DATE-
DRIVEN OR FEATURE-DRIVEN.
Non-Blocking Development (NBD)
1. No sprints, milestones, or dates are tracked by engineering
2. Items are scored, velocity is tracked
3. Each developer works on an item to completion in a feature branch
4. Pull request via GitHub for review
5. Feature deployed immediately upon approval via continuous deployment
Why is this better?
• Shares reactive qualities of Kanban
• Velocity metrics allow you to do reasonable capacity planning
• Features ship in real-time as they’re completed
“You can’t ship process.”VP of Product, Live Nation Labs
@joestump