How to Launch 55 Products in 579 Days
A learnception from a Betawork’s Brown Bag with the product design team of the Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
What are learnceptions? I’m glad you asked. Ever since Christopher Nolan came up with the concept of Inception, I have been obsessed with finding things within other things. Recently, I have been obsessed with learning from other people’s learning — or in other words, learnception.
Who Was Present
Osi Imeokparia (Chief Product Officer), Ahna Rao (UX Researcher), Alessandra Mosenifar (Product Designer), and Deepa Subramaniam (Director of Product).
What Was Presented
To begin, Osi started with a quote:
She paraphrased and asked “If a political campaign hires the best tech talent available, and the candidate still loses, was the tech or the team really any good?” Osi thinks so, and here’s why:
The Numbers
Through organizing — both physical and digital — the campaign was successful in calling 66 million individuals to go out and take action. That was 3 million more people than her opponent.
Over the course of 18 months, through traditional and digital fundraising. Over 3 million individuals parted with their money to fund this campaign.
The money was used to hire 4,600 talents, 700–800 of whom were headquartered in Brooklyn. And to educate people about the issue that actually matter, prompting the 3M people to donate to the campaign, and the 66M people to get out and vote.
577 Days
They built a total of 55 separate apps within 579 days. That’s an app every 10.5 days for 19 months.
To manage the creation and implementation of all of these apps, they used a system called RASCI. It is a system that tells you who is responsible for carrying out the entrusted task, who is accountable for what has been done, who provides support during the implementation, who can provide a valuable consultation on the task, and who should be informed about the progress and the decisions of the task.
Yes, it is as complicated as it sounds.
But it actually uncomplicated a lot of the processes and projects — given that there were a billion things happening all at the same time.
How did they do this?
How were they able to be productive, while also having fun, maintaining a healthy culture and continuing to collaborate well despite the increased physical and emotional stress.
Hire Intentionally
It takes a village to run a political campaign. Not just one person, or a couple. It takes a village.
This was their hiring method reversed engineered:
- In order to succeed, you must prioritize one thing, above everything else.
- To be able to prioritize, you must trust in other people.
- To trust people, you need to hire people that you can trust early.
The team ended up hiring 90 people, ended up with a team of 80.
The Future is Diverse
It’s very simple, diversity leads to better ideas and better execution.
Get Creative to Find Part-Time Help
How do you build a team before you actually find your team?
You should, ask anyway. You might assume that people are busy, that people are not interested, that people are inherently not altruistic and would not do things just for the sake of helping.
But you should ask anyway.
You might be surprised that people will make time, that people are actually interested, and that people do genuinely want to help. On the off chance that they don’t, you might also proven yourself to be right.
Involve other people.
Think outside the box to bootstrap your team, not trying is not an option.
Find Things to Celebrate!
In Google, there is a culture of peer-to-peer bonuses. Basically, allowing peers to give each other bonuses for things that would have gone unnoticed by the managers. It’s a way to award extraordinary behavior who went above and beyond.
In Clinton’s campaign, there were no funds for that.
So instead, they had pear-to-pear bonuses. Basically, allowing peers to give each other… pears. Although it has no monetary value, it most definitely did
They also had a Wall of Slay. A wall dedicated to commemorate people who slayed and delivered for the team.
Get Out to the Field, Meet Your Customers
You can build things. You can build a lot of things. But it might not be the right things, if you don’t know who your customers are.
One of the anecdote mentioned is that before anything else, Osi and her partner canvassed Iowa to met the caucus, to understand who is it exactly that they are building their products for.
On that note…
Pick an Audience (If You Can)
With the creation of social media platforms like Facebook, messaging applications like WeChat, and e-commerce like Amazon— there is this overpowering desire to build a product for everyone.
The thing is, picking an audience is actually a luxury. Focusing on a target audience is the dream. To know who you’re building your product for, and understanding how and why are they using your product, is priceless.
Cross-functional, problem-focused teams are more successful
The team used to have dedicated teams, a team for designers, a team for full-stack developers, a team of data analyst, and another one for engineers.
Although this sounded like the most logical way to approach team building, it turns out that it is not the most efficient.
As the problems stacked on, they build feature-teams instead.
A dedicated teams that are build for the sole purpose of solving that particular problem. In which, each teams have their own dedicated designer, a full-stack developer, a data analyst, and an engineer.
Change Your Process When You Need To
Remember that processes are created to help, not to stifle. Often times people adapted their problems, so that it can fit to their process.
This is something that you should never, ever do.
Instead, tailor the process to the problems that they are actually solving, that works for the team that they have.
The mantra: Critique, Feedback, Brainstorm, Repeat.
Don’t ever feel like you are stuck in a process, when you start out make sure to build an environment in which people are comfortable enough to speak up.
Collaboration by Forced Osmosis & Proximity
The team found that chaos — if contained well — is actually an amazing way to collaborate.
Things like layout and structure (hello again, seating charts) might seem mundane, but it is really important to increase communication between cross-functional teams. Simple, but powerful osmosis include things like intermingling and overhearing conversations from other teams!
Even so, people adapt fairly quickly to their surroundings.
Thus, the only real constant here is change —change it, change it, change it — and that is why being flexible is really important.
Be Willing to Let Go
You might build a lot of things. Some of it are probably really, really amazing. But when you are building things, it’s not just about you.
It’s also about other people.
Scratch that, it’s mainly for other people, and if the time is not right, you have to be willing to let go and always have the head and the heart to support each other. Look out for the good of the campaign, not for the glory of self.
Fuck it, Ship It.
Despite your OCD tendencies, some things just won’t be perfect — especially because sometimes you were put in a situation where you have to churn out an app every 10.5 days for 19 months.
I honestly don’t know how they did it, but I am glad that they did. Now, at the very least, I know that I can write once every week, pick up a new book every two — and maybe pick up a couple of new habits along the way!
