Company consistency vs individual efficiency for company processes [Weekly Thoughts #3] — 3 min
Find the introduction to this series
Originally written: Jul 17, 2020
Editing: For clarity (and making the title more relevant). Thanks to Sean for help here. Changed name to employee ABC.
Lucas’ Updated Notes: This is a problem that seems to only increase as we grow. I mention multiple project management tools and systems that are no longer used at ProteinQure. These include ClickUp, Monday.com, and agile.
As of Q1 2022, we tried to center all teams (Tech, ML, Comp Bio, Wetlab, and Business Operations) on Gitlab for project management. For example, there is a BusOps GitLab board for issue tracking which is integrated with slack. I now believe this could easily work for Org’s up to 40 people at least. The hardest part is getting non-software hires acclimated to the toolset.
Individual efficiency could possibly be better understood as individual productivity/quality.
Company consistency vs individual efficiency for company processes
This week’s project management meetings highlighted a common conflict (or tension) that any company has to resolve over and over again. And we should avoid the mistaken assumption that it will EVER be solved. I don’t have any personal solutions or great insights at the moment, it's just something on my mind these days.
The tension is over whether you can build systems that are appropriate across individuals, projects, and teams simultaneously.
Making an individual (or small team) maximally productive requires adjusting their particular working styles and preferences. But making a company maximally productive means ensuring people are aligned to the goals and consistent across areas. So you sacrifice some amount of individual level productivity for reducing the overhead at a company level.
And those choices change for the differing levels of company stage and maturity. So in a fast-growing company, you have to keep adjusting.
The business operations team is probably a good example of this microcosm:
Jan 2018 — March 2019: I was the only member of the team (with support from our part-time accountant). Any company-wide systems that I participated in (Sprints, ClickUp, Monday.com, etc.) didn’t help me do my job. But it was also relatively costless for me to participate. Poor documentation on my part (for example tracking partnerships) didn’t matter either as long as it didn’t hurt performance, because no one else actually depended on the info.
March — Jul 2019: When we raised the seed round, it was clear the concept of sprint tasks and the monday.com + agile system wasn’t great for the act of raising a round. Using those tools would just incur overhead. And at the time felt really costly for me (I worked every day except 2 out of a period of 8 weeks straight). There are also negative costs for trying to update everyone all the time on fundraising (it creates distractions).
Jul 2019 — Dec 2019: EMPLOYEE ABC joins and the company grows from 6 to 11 people. ABC and my tasks are often overlapping so we need to document and co-ordinate more. Sprint tasks are not great for us (because we often work on very many small tasks and alignment via meetings). But we can put our most important things into Monday.com and it is easy for people to get some insight into what we are working on. We chose to participate in the company systems, despite not being valuable for our team specifically.
Jan 2020 — Jul 2020: ProteinQure is about 14 people for most of this period. The operations team is the same size and is using a private board on Monday.com (as well as notion) to help coordinate tasks on a more granular level (e.g. Pay X invoice, add Y person to insurance). Many of our tasks are internal meetings (and meetings more generally). It is hard to think of those tasks (and the same is true of helping with project management) as individual-specific tickets that can be tracked. It's also becoming less useful for everyone across the company to hear the nitty-gritty of what we work on (SRED credits, COVID Grants etc..).
August 2020 +: We are using Gitlab along with the rest of the team (we’ve gotten rid of Monday.com). Though for example, the “Assignment” rules don’t necessarily work for us. We tend to assign all tasks between us and then constantly change what we prioritize. Documentation is kept mostly on Notion, but we don’t tend to need context on each other's work (just clear distinctions on who is handling what). I would think this is likely to make sense until we have the next round of financing (and a significantly larger business ops organization). We are leaning into consistency with the rest of the company, the biggest benefit of which is not the operations team consistency, but the fact that all technical teams are also bought in.
