The Development Process and the Startup

Blog Post #2 - The Startup and Development Process
As a company grows from 10 people to 50 and then to 200, processes have to adapt and complexity grows. The reality is that product managers can get sucked into the whirlwind of trying and figuring out the best development process. Should you be agile? What about this form of agile or that form of agile, sprint lengths, etc. It's very easy to get sucked into this whirlwind of decision making at the expense of other duties.

The Problem
As a company grows rapidly, job responsibilities start to shift to newly hired specialists. Where once you were a project manager, developer, QA tester....you are now in your natural state as the roles get filled in with other "experts". The challenge comes from the fact that expectations and responsibility change at different paces, thus resulting in the need for process to overcome confusion. As a product manager who sits in the middle of many processes and departments (marketing, finance, sales, technology, etc.) you often have to fill in the gaps cause by the separation.

Tips

• Tied at the Hip - First you must realize that as a product manager you are tied at the hip with the technology teams. Their success is your success and vice versa. Don't say "It doesn't matter what process they use as long as it gets done". Partner with technology teams try and understand their motivations and needs. Make sure that you are clear what the needs of the product management team and that those are communicated.
• Mind the pendulum - Technology can have a tendency to dominate the development process discussion and thus creating a lot of burden on other teams. Sometimes those other teams won't be able to handle the weight of this new process and thus they become a constant bottleneck and have frustrated employees. Agile processes have altered a typical product manager's job quite a bit and so be aware of the impacts to roles/responsibilities. Just be aware that the pendulum of burden is equally shared so that there every group is stretching a little bit in order to fill in the gaps (hiring and change do not happen at the same rate). Otherwise, one group becomes a bottleneck and the target of blame...
• Embrace change - Change is constant in startups and small companies. As a product manager, you have to embrace that change. Change is difficult for everyone. That disconnect between expectations and a changing reality combined with individual insecurities can result in a lot anxieties. Change has to become part of your job. Much like a great product manager has to embrace saying "No" to stakeholders, a great product manager must embrace change. 
• Have a checkpoint - It is often the tendency to think one and done and once the process is set it will work for a while. That is never the case. Create a checkpoint meeting after 2 sprints (for example) to let folks know that we will not get it right and we should discuss. It also sends a signal to the team that they should be aware of pain points and jot them down so that they can bring it up at the checkpoint. It gives them an avenue for feedback and frustration rather than unhealthily venting to folks.

Just some initial thoughts on the subject...more to come in the blog post series...

Stepping out of your comfort zone

I recently attended a user conference and hear Peter Shankman encourage the audience to step out of their comfort zone in order to grow. Peter's advice and encouragement really struck a chord with me and made me think of very few times that I have done something new in my career. Something that I  initially had some hesitation or concern, but then I just made a decision to do it. Here are a couple of examples and then a couple of thoughts:

• Moderating a Panel - I had never moderated a panel at a conference before and when it was suggested that I do that. I quickly said yes (there is a reason for saying yes quickly...read more about that in the thought section). Afterwards, I had some other things come up and I did want to back out a little bit. But my manager suggested that it would be a good experience for me and I decided to give it a shot. I did some research on moderating best practices. Took some notes about the speakers and questions to start the panel off. 
• Speaking at a conference - I was offered the opportunity to speak at the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) on behalf of my employer on Email Marketing. I had never done that before so I wanted a day or so to think about it. I thought about all the extra work on top of the extra work I was already doing. My mind was racing about all the ways I could get out of it. But then I thought about the Oliver Wendell Holmes quotation "Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions." I decided to give it a shot.

Thoughts

• Prepare, prepare, prepare! - Whenever you do something new, preparation is always the key to success (even more so when you are doing something new). I would research online, take notes, memorize, and I would start my preparations early. For my talk at OMS, I took the slides and took notes on each one. I added additional information that was not presented on the slide (stories, other stats, etc.). Afterwards, I prepared by giving the presentation (I did it several times) to note the duration and got myself fairly comfortable with it. The practice also helped me come up with new ideas to make the presentation even better. When I gave the presentation, I was vey relaxed. I was walking around (not standing behind the podium) and I was interacting with the audience. It was actually a lot of fun. Being prepared is the key difference between mediocrity and excellence. 
• Opportunity knocks - As I have progressed in my career, I've done a lot of reading in an attempt to learn. Most of what I read are business related magazines. I came to the realization that career growth happens for two reasons. First, its all about you and your decisions and your decision to take assignments and projects that force you out of your comfort zone. Say yes when asked. But here's the other part. In order to have the opportunity to say yes, you have to be given the opportunity by someone. Someone has to believe enough in you to give that assignment. It takes two to create a market :)

I hope you find this helpful and I wanted to thank Peter Shankman for serving as the catalyst for this blog post. You can learn more about him here: http://shankman.com/