Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Managing the Flat, Blank Parts

Remember the pieces of vinyl that separated the tracks on an album? They would look like circular borders that gave a pause to the music. They were the easy places to drop the needle before the song you wanted to hear. A startup software company has those flat blank parts too.

There are a few reasons that I can think of that result in a “breath” in development. Hiring, financing, code freeze, perf testing, or any of the many other causes can all result in a flat blank part for the team. It is important to manage these so that you maintain your momentum.

No matter how well you manage to process, or how big your team is (if you’re lucky), there are always items marked as “deferred”, and these are not necessarily just bugs.
commenting code
  • post mortems
  • reviewing the backlog
  • process improvement
  • updating estimates
  • functionality research
  • usability reviews
  • producing white papers
We can go on and on here.

A startup cannot afford to misuse their pauses.

They are there, and when you see one coming get ready to make the best use of it. Your team will come out of it stronger then ever and with the feeling of increased stability.

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