Strengthening the Chain
It is no secret that product development teams face numerous challenges while trying to create business and user value. As companies embark on so-called “Digital Transformations” we have observed two key trends. The first is some teams are bottlenecked by a lack of executive buy-in and are only able to make very small tweaks over an extended amount of time. This lack of ability to parallelize the learning curve either disheartens teams or loses additional buy-in from stakeholders that are waiting for progress. The second trend we see is when teams have more executive support and disciplines are advancing their skills but are doing so in a siloed way. This leads to segregated teams running on a foundation of modern practices and techniques but with a lot of friction and waste at the boundaries.
At Crafted we focus on solving these two problems. Our Balanced Team approach allows us to focus on many links in the chain at the same time and ensures that the boundaries don’t exist between teams delivering products. We believe that cross-functional teams are born and built as such and not simply plucked from various parts of the org chart for a specific project.
In this post, we’ll continually add tips and tricks for how your team can iteratively strengthen each link in the chain and also how the practices interact to ensure collaboration and progress. Specifically, we’ll cover areas across Product Design, Product Management, Engineering, DevOps, and how they come together.
Tip #1 — Team Ratios:
Start thinking six to twelve months ahead of your hiring needs and reset the ratios you think you need. This will be the first collaboration across the boundaries of the disciplines and will occur at a Director, VP, or even C-level.
Far too often do we hear that a company knows they need 30+ engineers but only has two PMs (they often don’t have a clear definition of what the “P” means), zero designers, and maybe one or two DevOps people. If this is accurate to your current situation then you are already behind. Start these conversations now.
We feel that better ratios that you should start to plan for are:
1 Designer, 1 Product Manager, 1 DevOps Engineer, and 6–10 Software Engineers
The variance in software engineers is based on the technicality of the product. Getting the CTO to move headcount from engineers only to a more Balanced Team ratio will not only increase output it will also increase the value of that output. Guaranteed! :)
Tip #2 — All Change is Iterative:
Digital Transformation is a long and arduous process. As the title of this article implies there are many links that need to be created or strengthened before you have the entire chain. As you identify the missing links in the chain or the links that need improvement, keep in mind that they will strengthen iteratively and over a long period of time.
Whether you are in Product, Design, Engineering, or DevOps you’ll have a laundry list of things to do and processes to implement. Trying to eat the entire elephant in one sitting will lead to stress, frustration, and likely failure. Decompose the holistic vision and the visions of each discipline. Then prioritize and act on what is achievable in each week, month, and quarter. Then you will look back over those time horizons and realize that you did make an impact!
Remember things like becoming User-Centered, implementing CI/CD, mastering an efficient Design System, and focusing on outcomes over features don’t happen overnight. Win the small battles, and lose some, then the war will be yours for the taking.
