3min chapter

Level-up Engineering cover image

Leadership Stories from Slack by Michael Lopp

Level-up Engineering

CHAPTER

Is There a Process to Developing a Product?

Would you implement some process because you know that there will be issues? Or i wait for yo to arise? Ah, it's a really, really good question. Every group of people sort of works in different waysad like, let's simplify it even further, every group of people is different. This ten war people building ac versus ten other people building exactly the same product,. are going to build a differnt product. And they'regoing to end up with adifferent set of rules when they're done. So if i was plopped into that ten person thing and i knew exactly who the people were, i would still sit back and look around.

00:00
Speaker 1
So now that you have done it a few times, if you were
Speaker 2
go to another company, developing a product and being on the verge of becoming the next slack, would you implement some process because you know that there will be issues? Or i wait for yo to arise?
Speaker 1
Ah, it's a really, really good question. Unfortunately, it's an isdependce question, because what i have learned is that every group of people sort of works in different waysad like, let's simplify it even further, every group of people is different. This ten war people building ac versus ten other people building exactly the same product, are going to build a differnt product. They're going to do it in a different way. And they'regoing to end up with adifferent set of rules when they're done. Facts, right? Total facts. So if i was plopped into that ten person thing and i knew exactly who the people were, i would still sit back and i could, like i sized them up, i'd still sit back and see, look around and try to figure out, ika cool, what versions of the problems as these ten have, and work there. There's probably a couple of things, though, just to contradict myself a little bit, that i would probably like to ride out of the red at the gate. For example, a career path. I would actually take a very early swag and saying, hey, by the way, we're going to have three types of engineers, a, b and c. And these are the rough attribute that i'm looking for. I've spent so much time at a thousand person corpet company whe we haven't done that, and we've had this sort of retrofit sort of growth, an objective growth criteria to a thousand folks, and that's a nightmare. So there's things like that that i would i wouldn't try to boil the ocean, but i would probably land a couple of artifacts and say, sm thinking about career growth. Or here's the product process, or here's sort of a a rough framework of how we make decisions here. And again, super simple, like simpler than you'd think was necessary. But i'd be like, cool. So who owns product? All right? Product manageres you, or does other companies? Whe i'd say, it's a triad its product, its design and its engineering. And if they're they can't decide, the ceo is a typewraker. I'm making these up literally right now. But those sorts of things i'd probably scribe after i'd snif around a little bit and said, like, there, they're stuck on this, or there, they're moving slow on that. And also preventative maintenance, things like the career path being done early. I bet they would giggle at me, ten engineers, if i came in and said, i'm the ne vevf engineering, and here's your career pot they'd be like, what? Like, we don't even have a company yet. Like, i be like, ike, it's cool. I'm just going to put it up on the wicky and, you know, but like, in a year, theye'll, they'll going to come back. Sa hay, ready to get sne level? Mike, cool. You're this, and here's your roll, how are you doing os this? And they're like, oll my god. This has already been here. We ought to have it. We have a plan.

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