Syncronicity
When it’s just 2 or maybe 3 of you working together on something, day in, day out, it’s easy to be on the same page, have a shared vision and make sure that things are moving. There’s transparency because there is no other option. Double the company from 3 to 6 people, put the team in 2 different places (SF and Austin) and you have to be ‘crisper’ about how you manage what everyone’s doing and plan to talk more then you would normally talk about something.
This past week we put in place what I would call ‘SCRUM-Lite’ or SCRUM– There are a couple of fundamental changes that we’ve implemented such as a daily update meeting (10 min.), a weekly product planning meeting (1-2hrs.) and a bi-weekly all day, all hands product strategy meeting. Additionally we’ve moved to weekly product releases. The goal is to push out new features week to week as well as decide what we’re doing next on a more ‘runtime’ basis so we can course correct as we get more and more feedback from users.
So far it’s working well, few kinks here and there, people are getting used to using the Trac ticket system and supporting it with the wiki when needed. It’s not a ton of structure but it seems to be just enough to keep the wheels moving and more importantly keep the team motivated and put some more momentum behind the product.
