As a startup grows to meet the demands of its business, the tasks of managing design and development teams becomes increasingly difficult. In this talk, Larry Gordon will show you a few concepts that can make the transition easier.

1. Building Teams at Scale
MaGIC Academy Symposium 2017
Larry Gordon
Principle Software Engineer @ Westfield Retail Solutions SF

2. DON’T
BE AFRAID

3. DON’T
BE AFRAID
▸ to be wrong
▸ to be challenged
▸ to identify bottlenecks
▸ person, place, or process
▸ let go or move out of the way
▸ delegate

4. SET
CLEAR GOALS

5. SET
CLEAR GOALS
▸ Define your product roadmap
▸ Define your minimum viable product (MVP)
▸ Prioritize features for future sprints
▸ Individual contributors (ICs)
▸ Create tasks for Feature work
▸ Level of effort should be defined by the team
▸ Groom your backlog

6. SETTING CLEAR GOALS FOR YOUR PRODUCT
WILL HELP DICTATE
THE MAKEUP OF YOUR TEAMS

7. KEEP
TEAMS SMALL

8. KEEP
TEAMS SMALL
▸ More people more problems
▸ 5-8 people

9. OPTIMIZING RATIOS
AMONG DISCIPLINES

10. PODS
Product Management
POD
UX / UI QA
Team Lead
Frontend Engineering
Backend Engineering

11. PODS
POD POD POD POD POD POD
THIS WON’T WORK
Product Management
UX / UI QA
Team Lead
Frontend Engineering
Backend Engineering

12. PODS - BUILDING HIERARCHY
Product Management
UX / UI QA
Team Lead
Frontend Engineering
Backend Engineering
POD POD POD POD POD POD
SHARED SHARED SHARED
PROJECT / SCRUM PROJECT / SCRUM
EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT

13. KEYS TO DEVELOPING
PRODUCTIVE PODS

14. KEYS TO DEVELOPING
PRODUCTIVE PODS
▸ Staffing
▸ Product Managers
▸ UX / UI designers

15. KEYS TO DEVELOPING
PRODUCTIVE PODS
▸ Keep a healthy backlog
▸ Implement user testing early on
▸ Incorporate product feedback
▸ Do retrospectives every sprint

16. A PODS BEST FRIEND:
RETROSPECTIVES

17. A PODS BEST FRIEND:
RETROSPECTIVES
▸ Identify issues
▸ Rank issues by importance & pick a few
▸ Brainstorm on potential solutions
▸ Implement them during the next sprint
▸ Rinse and repeat

18. CREATE SHARED
TIME RHYTHMS

19. ▸ Keep things in sync & develop a cadence
▸ Daily standup meetings
▸ Shared deadlines
▸ All teams share same sprint numbers / cycles
▸ All teams share same effort pointing scales
CREATE SHARED
TIME RHYTHMS

20. OPTIMIZE
YOUR TIME WISELY

21. ▸ How much ceremony do you really need?
▸ Sprint kickoff, backlog grooming, sprint
pre-planning, retrospectives, sprint kickoff,
engineering meetings, discipline meetings
(design, frontend, backend), design to
engineering handoffs, all-hands, standup
OPTIMIZE
YOUR TIME WISELY

22. ▸ Shorter sprints are not always better
▸ Too much ceremony and not enough time
to GTD
▸ Not enough time for work & QA per sprint
▸ Try 3 - 4 week sprints
OPTIMIZE
YOUR TIME WISELY

23. IN THE BEGINNING,
IT’S GOING TO BE
ROUGH!

24. DON’T BE AFRAID
TO MIX THINGS UP

25. ▸ Move resources between pods
▸ Find the right mix for efficient pods
DON’T BE AFRAID
TO MIX THINGS UP

26. THANK YOU!

27. Building Teams at Scale
Q & A
Larry Gordon
twitter: @psyrendust
slides: http://bit.ly/larry-magic2017-slides
Westfield Retail Solutions SF
url: http://www.westfieldretailsolutions.com
jobs: http://bit.ly/wrs-jobs
MaGIC Academy Symposium 2017