Mike Marsiglia and Drew Colthorpwww.atomicobject.com

Nurturing Top-notch Tech Teams

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Our Challenge

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We are poly-skilled, co-located,

teams of makers

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helping companies & entrepreneurs

create multi-platform software products

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that people love to use.

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We love making awesome software,

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and we’re dedicated to our culture,

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so as we grow,

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we want to hold on to the things

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that make us strong

and unique.

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Atomic in 2002 • 7 employees — all developers• Close-knit• Direct access to everyone• Communication is easy

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Atomic GR in 2013

• 43 employees in two offices• Developers, designers, testers,

and more• Communication is a challenge

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How do we teach and integrate new employees?

How do we build bonds?

How do we keep our culture strong?

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Economics of AO

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Economics of AOAnnual class for new employeesThe basics of how our business works:• how we make money• how we spend money• how we stay competitive • other metrics we care about

Taught by President or Vice President

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Economics of AOTopics• Basic financial terms• How to read our profit and loss statement • Our open books management• How to use our company financial model to experiment

with ideas

We’re considering adding other classes:• The Marketing of AO• The Communication of AO

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Information Radiators

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Information RadiatorsWhy?• Economics of AO not visible, not

on peoples’ minds. • Want to encourage continual

awareness• Radiators aren’t “Out of site, out of

mind”• Encourages thinking that’s

consistent with the operation of the company and business model.

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Information RadiatorsTypes• Continuous Integration Monitor• Stoplight• Server Monitor• Central Dashboard

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Central Dashboard

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Central Dashboard

Shows how busy/billable every employe is.• X axis – Average hours/week for current quarter• Y axis – Percentage of time spent on projects

Each person will fall into 1 of 3 quadrants:• Green zone – Working full-time & highly utilized• Yellow zone – Evaluate your non-billable activities;

are you using your time wisely? • Red zone – Not meeting expectations

Utilization

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Central Dashboard

Possible Risks:• Competition to have more hours• Non-billable time isn’t bad – should just be

considered against other possible activities (billable or not)

Utilization

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Central Dashboard

Each employee blogs every 40 days.As your due date approaches, your bar grows shorter.• Yellow means 10 days left.• Red means you’re overdue.

Blog Radiator

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Central Dashboard

Shows how our active projects are testing.

Continuous IntegrationAggregator

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Central Dashboard

Real-time analytics via ChartBeat.Blog & Website Traffic

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Culture Pairs

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Culture PairsWe practice pair programming – what about a culture pair?• Every new employee is assigned a culture pair• Form a relationship• Transmit AO culture• Make it easy to ask questions• Actively seek out opportunities to teach and learn

Mixed results: participation tends to drop off quickly.

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Pair Lunches

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Pair LunchesGoal• Foster personal relationships

Rules• 2 employees have lunch

together• Company pays• Not more than once a month

for each pair• Encouraged to talk about fun

or personal topics

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Pair LunchesGraph shows our pair lunch data for 2012:• 228 pair lunches; that’s 450ish

hours of bonding• Lots of people participated• Lots of random connections• Bold lines show common pairs

(they’re rare, which is good)

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Spin Down

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Spin Down

•Monthly Friday evening party w/bartender & snacks•Chance to bond, share project stories• Invite families, customers, sales opps, potential hires

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Workshop Series

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Workshop SeriesWhy?• We’re becoming a

firm that specializes in product dev.

• We all do design.• Needed a way to

spread design thinking about the company.

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Strategy

Scenarios

Sketching

Planning

Prototypes

IA & IxD Patterns

Markup

CodingHi-fidelity

Design

Designers Developers

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Workshop SeriesInternal, crowd-sourced professional dev. series• 10 Workshops (5 after work with beer & 5 during lunch)• Average attendance: 22 (Min: 18, Max: 30)

Topics included• What is design?• Storytelling• Design thinking• Visualizing ideas• Visualizing data

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Tactic Cost Impact

Economics of AO 2 hours per new employee Business understanding

Information Radiators Design and Development time Personal responsibility

Culture Pair Free Distributed management

Pair Lunches $28 per pair lunch Personal relationships

Spin Down $500 per event Personal relationships

Design Series $19/hr of training Broader design knowledge