Slow Agile — Part Two: the Psychology of Numbers
In a previous article, I elaborated on a hybrid system to sustain motivation in collaborative side projects. I am just about to release the first product within this paradoxal ‘Slogile’ System. Here’s the pre-release story.
The ‘Slogile’ System
Lightspeed Turtle, the name of the collective, has a clear and motivating mission that dictates what we do and how we do it.
Side projects with low to no pressure, no risk, no money investment, very low scopes & low to no maintenance // Each participating collaborator must work under 8 hours for each MVP*
Another part of the ‘Slogile’ System philosophy is to take all the time needed to come up with an MVP concept, whether it is in a week or a year. After committing to work on the MVP, the team members start to count the number of working hours in order to release the first viable version of the product, whether it is in a week or a year.
That is the system we applied on the first Lightspeed Turtle side project.
One month later and after about a total of 28 hours of work, two collaborators, Travis and I, are about to launch a product.
28h divided by 2 equals 14h, which is more than 8h per collaborator. Cheater!!
Somehow, you are totally right. But let me explain how we work.
The ‘Four Collaborators’’ Team Model
Each side project MVP needs eight hours worth of work from four different experts to be able to release it. You can call that a sprint, but the hours are spent whenever possible.
“Full stack” senior Designer (8h)
Full stack senior lead Dev (8h)
Business development / Marketing guy (8h)
Intermediate full stack Dev (8h)
OK. So, 8h times 4 equals 32h.
Correct!
Lightspeed Turtle aims to have a larger pool of experts. But in the mean time, the collective is two guys: Travis and me. The lack of resource always forces a startup to adapt, pushing the founders to have more than one role: management, marketing, communication, business development, etc. So Travis and I had to put in more hours in order to make the product.
Getting Sh*t Done
Travis’ role
Travis mostly did the implementation. Based on Lightspeed Turtle’s team model, it allows him eight hours of work. Of course he busted his time, but Travis rather has 16 hours allowed since he is the only full stack developer on the side project. There is two developers spots. Well he spent 14 hours.
My role
On my side, I thought about the functionality, created the visuals, managed & planned the project and did some business development & marketing. I can say I had more than one role as well: design and business development & marketing. So it allows me 16 hours. Well I spent 14 hours.
So OK, let me calculate this. 14h plus 14h equals 28h. You total 32h minus 28h equals 4h. There is 4h left.
That’s it! We were able to create a fully functional and releasable product within 28 hours of work. There is even four hours left. But it was not easy.
The Waiting Threat
The content challenge
We had 32 hours in front of us. Plenty of time to make it happen, but one aspect could have totally killed the project: content generation. Our main concern was about providing strong images, which would have been a hell to do on our own. We were thinking about Unsplash.com at first, but we considered it ‘not enough’. We had to come up with a fresh idea.
That’s the kind of challenge that makes you feel alive: creative stimulation.
We found another way to generate content: we searched and found collaborators to help us out. All we had to think about was a way to convince people by offering them a strong reason to join up. Our offer was to give them direct referral in exchange of just one hour of effort using their existent content. We contacted ten persons and convinced two of them (two are waiting for the product to get released before deciding to join up or not). Not bad right?
Then all Travis and I had to do was to use contentful.com to offer them a simple and quick way to add content. Within two hours, the collaborators were able to create 40 blocks of content (photos, blog link, logo image and basic informations) pointing to their blog. That was enough content for a release.
Last miles of the MVP
So we have four hours left in the pool based on the team model. It is enough for the remaining step: make the product known. We will spend the remaining time to create a list of contacts (blogs, vlogs, medias, linkedin, etc.) and create a buzz around the product. Of course it might take a bit more time than four hours, but again, the structure stimulates creativity in order to put our efforts at the right place in the most efficient way rather than just a useless timesheet.
The Psychology of Numbers
The 8 hours mindset
Eight is the magic number that triggers commitment and motivation. Eight hours puts enough pressure on someone to make him think extremely efficiently without demotivating him. What matters is that a team does not exceed 32 hours of work, whether there is two or four collaborators, whether it is in a week or a year.
To know more about my successful hybrid side project system, read my previous article.
*MVP: Minimum Viable Product
