It is almost impossible to scale quickly without introducing some incoherence and inefficiency. To understand this, one need only read the history of boom towns, gold-rush towns, and newly thriving ports and cities.
I am also an optimist. But somehow I also tend to have mini-breakdowns, when it seems as if „the parliament“ does not smell the stink of accumulated technical debt, in a hugely successful product line (we just launched an new, very successful product, working bravely around all the good and bad of the exiting product line).
While everyone intellectually understands the need to modernize the existing tech stack, and in fact we are scaling up fast, we are fragmented into different parties.
One group, the managers, make sure to add „headcount“, following KPIs like „by the end of the year 80% of development works on the future!“ Another group, product marketing, does not have the luxury to focus only on the future product line. For them the future is now. My group, the techies, thinks the future is mostly in technology, so we are ramping up infrastructure at an amazing speed, often in dis-connected silos. Without well defined product increments, we can decide on our own how much and where to integrate.
Still, as an optimist, having witnessed similar situations in the past, I know that when the „stink“ will be apparent to everyone, we will pull together.
As you say: it is about awareness and presence. About seeing what the others see. About feeling accountable for the things we can influence and acting on them. Even if the action itself might be heavily criticized by others.
Prevent layered prioritization/allocation approaches, e.g., having priority 1 and 2 projects, an even more important priority with fixed delivery dates, all combined with a detailed allocation of team resources to different kinds of project or non-project work.
I am also an optimist. But somehow I also tend to have mini-breakdowns, when it seems as if „the parliament“ does not smell the stink of accumulated technical debt, in a hugely successful product line (we just launched an new, very successful product, working bravely around all the good and bad of the exiting product line).
While everyone intellectually understands the need to modernize the existing tech stack, and in fact we are scaling up fast, we are fragmented into different parties.
One group, the managers, make sure to add „headcount“, following KPIs like „by the end of the year 80% of development works on the future!“ Another group, product marketing, does not have the luxury to focus only on the future product line. For them the future is now. My group, the techies, thinks the future is mostly in technology, so we are ramping up infrastructure at an amazing speed, often in dis-connected silos. Without well defined product increments, we can decide on our own how much and where to integrate.
Still, as an optimist, having witnessed similar situations in the past, I know that when the „stink“ will be apparent to everyone, we will pull together.
As you say: it is about awareness and presence. About seeing what the others see. About feeling accountable for the things we can influence and acting on them. Even if the action itself might be heavily criticized by others.
Prevent layered prioritization/allocation approaches, e.g., having priority 1 and 2 projects, an even more important priority with fixed delivery dates, all combined with a detailed allocation of team resources to different kinds of project or non-project work.