From team building to product building

Brixel HQ
Brixel HQ
Published in
5 min readAug 14, 2017
Presenting first work-week day conclusions to Martin, which was working from Switzerland.

If you read our first blog entry you now know a bit about who we are as individuals and as a team. And you also know that we try to sponsor team building by going on weekly retreats occasionally.
On one of those occasions, which we also use to discuss what should be improved among all team members, something came up which was transversal to all people. It was motivation.

At Wide Ventures we’ve been building Brixel for almost two years now. It’s been a while since this baby was a newborn and it’s normal that motivation goes on cyclically to drop a bit. More than just this, let’s not forget that we are based both in Lisbon and in Zurich, which means we struggle to be one team.

So, motivation and a closer interaction among teams was something that all of us felt the need to improve. By identifying the issues that bothered us, we could present a few suggestions to tackle them as much as possible.
Thus, bringing both sides (development and business) closer together seemed imperative to boost motivation and at the same time promote team spirit and a bigger involvement between development and business.

Brainstorming session during our work week in Arrábida, Portugal.

Concept Versus Concept

A product of our brainstorms was a solution that we have been using for 2 months now and is both a way of keeping the product alive and transversal to all teams, but it also enhances the way we communicate our thoughts and ideas among each other.

We call it Concept Versus Concept and as the name reveals, it puts to confront different approaches to the same identified issue. Usually, what we would do was work on top of business guidelines to achieve a result we were not completely happy with and it lacked critique and momentum that only dialogue and feedback can provide.

1. Team sorting, brainstorming and prototyping

With Concept Versus Concept we now create small teams (from 2 to 3 people) that work for a couple of hours on a given problem — this can be an issue we need to solve on the product or a feature we’ve been wanting to see working.
Teams, which include a rich mix of designers, developers and business people, will brainstorm and discuss their ideas before starting to sketch solutions on paper prototypes (thanks Sneakpeekit for all the handy dotted screens), with overlays made of coloured post its or roughly cut out paper.

Daniel and João, working on their concept, from the Wide Loft in Lisbon.

2. Pitching the solution

The goal is to present the solution (usually in the form of a low-fi prototype on the Marvel app) that the group came up with for no longer than 5 minutes — this is the Pitch. The Pitch is followed by a 5 minutes Q&A where anyone can comment, challenge or question the solution found by this group. After everyone presented their solution, there’s a team discussion where people will talk about their favourite approaches so that we reach a consensus on which solutions could better fit our current needs.

One concept for our Match feature ideation session and Cigarro working on it.

Sometimes it is a merger of all the different prototypes or small ideas that can be adapted from one to another, to reach a better version. Sometimes a team works so nicely on a single prototype that it seems almost ready to implement.
After deciding together on what could work better, its time to set up the final considerations on our shared and editable file on Nuclino for the ideal prototype so that business can draw some conclusions on top, that could be interesting to include.

Fabio and Michael working on their concept, from the Wide Bakery in Zurich.

3. Ideation > Design > Development > Ta-da!

From here, a task based on the concept creation is added to the roadmap on Asana and enters our workflow. It will be designed and tested, following the guidelines discussed and written down on the Nuclino file, after which developers will take over and implement what everybody worked on.
The best part? Everyone knows what is being done and why we’re doing it because they’ve been a part of the discussion and decision making process. How awesome is that?

Design prototype product of the Concept Versus Concept for the Match feature.

Behind the scenes

We usually do this every week. We present the problem on Monday, during our weekly kick off meeting, and organize ourselves to work on the Concept and have everything ready before the beer-meeting on Friday (it has been changed for the middle of the week now), for the presentations.

We keep track of all the prototypes designed during these small sprints, where people can quickly check on other’s ideas and review them and from which the high fidelity prototypes are then designed and tested. It started as a small challenge for the team, with that work week energy boost, and it showed a powerful means of bringing everyone closer to the product.

Participation is not mandatory if people have a busier week, but the more people contribute with ideas, the richer the solutions will be, of course, and everyone has a chance to speak their minds about the feature or issue.

How it has been working out for us

We have been impressed with what can be achieved by this method in such a short period, since every prototype is differently presented, even if the core ideas are almost always there. So far, it has been a very interesting way of getting all on board and still get a fresher insight from a team of developers, designers and business people.
On the other hand, there is still room for improvement, specially on getting everyone to actively critique and provide feedback.

It could probably also be an interesting model for you to implement in order to foster creativity and integration among your teams, and make everyone feel part of the decision making process when it comes to the product they are building, making that baby a bit theirs too.

Maybe on our next getaway we will identify a new issue and have a new great idea to improve our workflow again.
What have you done recently to tackle your company’s most prominent issues and how’s that been working out for you?

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Brixel HQ
Brixel HQ

We are Brixel. Our vision is to create a disruptive process to empower people to trade real estate globally. @Brixel_io is powered by @wide_ventures