Categories
decisions engineering principles leadership strategy team

Engineering Principles 2020

I believe that what we do matters, what your team does matter and what your business does matter. Below is a helpful list of ‘engineering’ principles to focus on creating an environment where we can do our best work and use our time to matter.

1 – Work on yourself, your relationships and your team

Learn every day. Listen every day and try to think every day. Have a plan to learn React Native, finish masters, start a PhD, write a blog. Life is not static and time is limited. Is there a better way to use it than to improve yourself and your relationships?

2 – Hire good people who like to make things

Look for track record of thoughtfulness, consideration, kindness and consciousness. Also, look for builders and makers. Those are the people you can rely on and enjoy building businesses with. So your interviews need to be behaviour-based – assess whether someone has opinions and isn’t afraid to argue around a whiteboard. Avoid extravert biases. In tech, especially avoid male-centric interviewing. The world is huge. Do you want your AI to be programmed by only people like you? I wouldn’t.

3 – Code always wins

Talk is cheap. Building is hard. Always favour building, releasing and learning. Adopt continuous release management and stick with it. Release small and frequently. If you can do this, you are doing better than 90% of other businesses out there. Make the release process… a process without ExCo sign offs, special tests, service shutdowns. Anything that is not automated will cause a problem. Why? Because people don’t like responsibility for something they don’t fully understand. So, avoid it. Automate it instead.

Realise that things fail all the time. That’s okay. We know that failures are inevitable. Instead of ruminating over them, aim to reduce the time lag in detecting the failure and passing bugs to the engineering team. Learn from the failure and move on.

Finally, decoupled your releases. It is much easier to control complexity if you incrementally change. So avoid big releases as they mostly fail as the tech in 2019 is too complex to be managed by control. Always rely on the tracking and monitoring data as it will help you once the logic has dried up.

4 – Every team is a startup with a common vision

Common vision is important across the business. But you also need flexibility and autonomy to move fast. Combining team autonomy with a shared vision will make your business more robust. Paradoxically you want to rely on all of your team but at the same time, you must ensure that the business can continue with people being 3 weeks on holiday without access to the internet. So what do you do? Build team autonomy. Operate in cross-functional, autonomous Agile squads. Always document well. Documenting (user sorties, test, tech strategy, plans, roadmaps) is the most efficient way to communicate accurately and succinctly. Remember team roadmaps are driven by company goals. All of these goals, as well as individual objectives and key results (OKRs), need to be visible to all.

Your user data is your gold mine. Every team needs to live security by design. Security is not only owned by the Cheif Security Officer or CTO. Security is also owned by every product manager, designer, engineer, tester. Everyone who worked on a feature is responsible for the security of user data. Get familiar with the OWASP best practices, and strive to have automated security scanning with every deployment.

5 – Continuously remove your own legacy

Be critical of yourself. Reflect on past decisions. Learn from them to try and make better decisions next time. This is not to say not to make decisions. Make them all the time but be aware of decisions which are hard to correct (any hiring decision, picking a back-office platform) against decisions which are easily fixable later (landing pages design, AdWords campaign). Every decision you make creates some legacy. Carve out 2 weeks every quarter to spend on your legacy decisions to stay on top of it in terms of cost implications and to ensure future fitness for purpose. Your business has evolved and what worked during the first 6 months might not work now.

Categories
cloud hacks payments security startup strategy support tools

Tech Stack for Payments

Your business is growing and you are considering expanding your offering to new verticals. The next phase, if you haven’t done it already, is to add payments and ‘quilty-of-life’ tools to help your teams. A good start tech stack for a business which is growing and adding new products is in the diagram. This is the time to also rigorously review your whole tech stack and start taking things out. Carve out 2 weeks every quarter to spend on the tech stack to stay on top of it in terms of cost, usefulness and to ensure you are using tools fit for purpose. Your business has evolved and what worked during the first 6 months might not work now.

Categories
cloud decisions design hacks leadership program security startup strategy team tools

Tech Stack for Growth

So you have launched. You figured out how to make money and you are ready to grow. A good tech stack for growth businesses is depicted in the diagram. Gowing the business usually requires more people. So your tech stack will need to expand to include user management tools. My guidance here is to make sure you figured out what’s available from Gsuite or Office 365 before adding new complexity. By the way, you should only use either Gsuite or Office 365. Never both. Remember to always avoid complexity. If you like us and many other businesses, you will have Macs and Windows. You should also understand Gsuite or Office 365 offering for user kit management before adding new tools. As a growing business, you will consider adding new customer channels. We added fairly quickly telephony and webchat and also integrations to other (non-core) services. You don’t want to build any of this unless it’s your USP which is very unlikely. Finally, remember to constantly review your technology stack to continuously remove legacy.

Categories
cloud design hacks innovation startup strategy system tools

Tech Stack for Launch

So you are ready to launch an MVP or ‘open-to-all’ service? Scary, right? Preparing for launch it’s never easy. Bear in mind that no one has many users to start. However, if you have keen investors or an active board, the pressure is on. A good start tech stack is depicted in the diagram. The big difference is analytics and tools the business needs to make a success out of the launch. So a lot of new tools are added to facilitate timely and accurate product usage tracking. Finally, marketing and support tools will make or break the business so overinvest in figuring what works for you. Challenge arguments based on people’s previous experiences. (We used MailChimp at X). Also, remember to constantly review your technology stack to continuously remove legacy.

Categories
cloud code decisions design system

Tech Stack for Early Startup

When you start to build your business it’s often hard to work out what you need in the first 3-6months. A good start is depicted in the diagram. I think in terms of what makes teams productive so Tech Stack is divided between Ops, Product & tech and Sales & Marketing. If you operate in a highly regulated market you could have for example regulatory reporting in the compliance vertical. I constantly aim to review our technology stack to continuously remove legacy.

Categories
behaviour startup

Stay on the bus

The title comes from one of the TED talks about a photographer changing his style as a response to feedback over and over, and never accomplishing much.  The talk’s theory is called the Helsinki bus stop theory as it was told in the context of going back and picking up another bus from the (Helsinki) bus stop and not reaching the destination.

Often investors prefer startups to change “buses” fast so the testable surface area of ideas increases. But as in the TED talk enduring the feedback and building on could be the best way.

 

Categories
behaviour book climate

Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy

This scientific paper is super depressing as it outlines arguments which sum up to the fact that we are facing inevitable collapse, probable catastrophe and possible extinction due to global warming. I think there is no point getting depressed but we need to acknowledge the facts of global warming and start addressing the inevitable adaptations our society will have to go through. No point discussing any more. We need to start acting now. 

 

Categories
behaviour patterns people team work

Location, location, location of the Engineering team

Where’s the team? Is it in house? Why is it remote? People are interested. They have a right to know. However, I am always interested to find out what’s behind the question.

My data sample is small and built from my experience as CTO and working on consulting projects. So I am biased. Nevertheless, I think once you find more about the person asking the question you can correlate their view fairly accurately to the perceived right answer.

If the person is a recruiter or a talent manager, commonly the view is that in house creates better team dynamics and creates more hiring work which people with local hiring experience are more comfortable with.

If the person is from a finance department, the outcome is diagonally different. The cost, time to market and scale play a big part as to what good looks like.

Is the person is a CEO or an investor, there is no given right answer usually as there is awareness that not one answer fits all situations. And usually the strategic decision about the team make up is taken considering many variables but primarily where can I hire the best people to grow my business fast.

Finally, if the person is an engineer, she or he won’t care. Why? Because engineers want to work with the best engineers, making location irrelevant.

Having managed teams of 2 people to 60+, I think what’s important is how one is organised, what processes are followed and how well work is documented and tracked.

Usually default opinion backing the in house teams option is hidden behind poor communication, undeveloped technology strategy, immature operating model and incomplete documentation (stories, roadmap, tests). Lack of any of above is not a good enough reason to pick any option. Don’t miss on top talent for being lazy.

Categories
behaviour future leadership strategy

Beginning of year 2019 post

The holiday period is always a good time to reflect on the year gone by, and to turn our minds to the future.
 
2018

We started in March 2018 with an idea that we had for a while: making debtor experience best it can be while making the collections process as efficient as it can be. 

I won’t dwell too much on 2018, but what another fantastic year for our business! We developed the product and accompanying service and started executing go-to-market, hired the the team and secured a business incubator backing.

We also learnt a lot on the way. However the key lesson for us would be that hyperrealism is a friend.

  • Assuming the product will resonate with the market (if untested) will most likely be proven wrong. On reflection this is obvious.
  • Product-market fit takes time. Assume you are wrong, so test. Don’t pitch to customers. Proof is to have a meaningful commitment: signed order, intro to a decision maker.
  • Message-market fit will come from talking to customers.
  • Deep analytical understanding is only possible with sufficient data being available.
  • Create your data by talking to customers, partners and competitors. Don’t pitch, think of uncomfortable question to ask, listen to answers and try to disprove your own world view.
  • Once you stop hearing new info you probably know enough to develop testable product hypothesis.
  • Product team needs to lave products (not just in your own domain). Actually better to have broader product experience than domain experience.
  • New product requires new thinking applied to proven product design. No need to invent unessential elements of your product. Use best practice for sign up, activation, integrations, security.

2019

Taking leanings from 2018, we are looking at 2019 with clear focus on go-to-market, building a strong team and serving our customers.  

Categories
chatbots conversational UX / AI

Chatbots for Debt Collection

There is a growing expectation that chatbots can be used for debt collection. The obvious low hanging fruit is for a chatbot to:

  • Answer questions about the debt
  • Qualify a customer through a set of gated interviews:
    • General questions
    • KYC
    • Debt specific questions
    • Specialist questions eg payment plans
    • Process payments (link to Apple or Google Pay on mobile)
    • Organise phone call
    • Gather feedback
  • Provide the qualified information to the customer
  • Provide a status of outstanding balance
  • Confirm next steps

The benefits are:

  • Better governance and compliance
  • More comprehensive audit trail
  • Increase objectivity and consistency
  • Ensure strong equality
  • Reduce cost
  • Scalable parallel interviews
  • Offer 24/7 service when it suits the customer
  • Retain knowledge, especially for specialist subjects
  • Better customer experience
  • Reduce complaints and litigation

Interestingly, the knowledge assets produced for the ecosystem of chatbots involved could become a game changer in the in the debt collection industry, and for Call Centre Operations teams internal fulfilment processes.

The conversational UX could be extended to include advice for customers such as how to manage a budget, find work…