Describing Red Squirrel
The Red Squirrel team recently competed for a long-term partnership with an existing client of ours. Part of that process provided me with an opportunity to put some concepts into writing that had previously only existed implicitly in our work and culture. I’m taking the opportunity to share publicly what I wrote down.
Introduction
Red Squirrel Technologies, LLC was founded in 2015 by Dave Hoover, a Chicago-based software engineer, author, investor, entrepreneur, and consultant. In many ways, Red Squirrel is a reboot of Obtiva, a respected software consultancy that Dave helped grow between 2006–2011 until it was acquired by Groupon. Since 2015, Red Squirrel has grown from Dave’s solo consulting practice to a team of 11 technologists, bolstered by Dave’s worldwide personal network of thoughtful software practitioners. Red Squirrel’s current team is located in Illinois, Ohio, Texas, Italy, Colombia, and Nigeria. We are inspired by human potential, and bring that inspiration to everything we do.
Culture
Our culture is heavily influenced by the original culture of Dev Bootcamp, the world’s first coding bootcamp, which Dave co-founded in 2012. Most of our team was either a director, teacher, or student at Dev Bootcamp or similar program. Red Squirrel’s core cultural components are:
- Lifelong Learning
- Whole Self
- Transparency
- Embracing Feedback
How We Work
When we are doing our best work, we are facilitating growth in our teammates and ourselves. This typically means we are thoughtfully approaching unfamiliar technical territory and sharing our hard-won software delivery expertise.
When we are doing good work, we are:
- Gaining a deep understanding of our client’s needs without being paralyzed by a less-than-perfect understanding.
- Rapidly delivering incremental, well-tested software components to production in order to solicit feedback from our clients and their users.
- Proactively clarifying delivery expectations with our teammates throughout the project.
Our Clients
Red Squirrel clients are typically highly collaborative and open to our influence. We work with companies who expect us to fully engage in the process of how the software is developed rather than simply following orders about what software should be developed. Our ideal client integrates us into their business context and teams, whether that’s by using us as their sole means of software development, or by welcoming us into their existing software development lifecycle.
We have found that when a team is developing new technology, it is impossible to fully specify what they are going to develop. There will invariably be in-project discoveries and out-of-project dependencies that affect the project timeline. We avoid “fixed-scope”, “fixed-time” scenarios, because for any new system with any degree of novelty, “fixed-scope” is an illusion. Denying this truth results in the rapid degradation of a software system’s maintainability.
Communicating Successfully
In all of our communications with our clients we prioritize addressing what we don’t yet understand. If we aren’t familiar with some vocabulary, lingo, or even a specific technology, we ask direct questions to accelerate our ramp-up time. We have learned that trust can create incredible efficiencies for everyone involved in team environments and that clear communication is the foundation of trusting relationships.
Deliberate and frequent communication is vital at Red Squirrel, where we collaborate within a highly distributed team. With people spread across North and South America, Europe and Africa, we expertly rely on video conferencing, Slack, and GitHub to stay in sync with each other and with client teams.
Successful Engagements
We want our clients to involuntarily exclaim “Wow!” at least once during the engagement, and ideally on a regular basis. We also want the teams to finish the engagement with a sense of pride in their work. Ultimately, we want to conclude our engagement in a such a way that the combined client / Red Squirrel team is excited to work together again in the future.
We are able to deliver “Wow!” and finish with a sense of pride by setting expectations appropriately with clients and consultants alike. As the engagement proceeds, regular feedback between Red Squirrel management and Red Squirrel consultants and client principals ensures that any issues that arise are addressed before they become problems. But success isn’t just about preventing problems. A successful engagement for us and our clients comes from Red Squirrel consultants bringing their whole selves to their work, willing to embrace what they don’t yet understand, and confidently pursuing the knowledge necessary to deliver results.
Growing Our People
Red Squirrel as a business is dedicated to remaining small enough that Dave can personally recruit, vet, hire, and manage every full-time consultant. This management entails weekly 1:1 meetings, which ensure that:
- The consultant’s career objectives are being addressed.
- Dave can address any client or co-worker feedback with the consultant.
- Dave can solicit feedback, questions, or concerns from the consultant and address them promptly.
Red Squirrel also does quarterly performance reviews with each consultant. Dave works with each consultant to set and track personal and professional goals that facilitate all parties progressing toward their full potential.
