I admire TechStars (wearing my TechStars t-shirt proudly) and have been a reader of Paul Graham’s blog for years. Both programs have created a vibe and atmosphere that churn out great work and provide endless motivation and contributions to their surrounding tech communities.
Reading the latest post from Paul Graham titled “What happens at Y Combinator” highlighted the relationship between schedule and rhythm and the role this plays in projects. Both the Y Combinator and TechStars programs are roughly 3 months long, similar to the quarterly Agile Release schedule that we use. The rigid schedule both programs use inspires and creates massive pressure for teams to work hard and deliver.
Because teams in TechStars and Y Combinator live and breathe their projects they are able to devote almost all of their time to it. The rhythm these programs develop include dinners, hackathons, presenting at local tech meetups and renting out conference spaces to host big demos. While a typical team can’t take things to that level, there are lessons to be learned.
Here’s the schedule I am using for our new project:
Product Summit – beginning of Quarter
A 2-3 day onsite working session full of multiple topics (business and technical) with a tight agenda and after work dinners. The goal of this effort is to have a general gameplan for the upcoming quarter for the whole project, not just development. In a distributed team like ours, it’s a rare chance for the entire team to spend time together.
9 Weeks
Monday
9a – Project Management conference call – a weekly update of anything to do with the project including budgets, contracts, etc
9:30a – Daily Standup
Tuesday
9:30a – Daily Standup
10a – Weekly dev team meeting – a weekly meeting to discuss technical details of upcoming work, review Kanban Board and Release Burndown
Wednesday
9:30a – Daily Standup
Thursday
9:30a – Daily Standup
Noon – Weekly demo to Stakeholders
1p – Weekly call with a Customer
Release retrospective – end of Quarter
A 2 hour retrospective answering questions like “What did we accomplish?”, “What was our Velocity” and “What can we change in the next Release?”
Summary
The rhythm I am trying to build for this project begins with a big kick off because lots of things need to be figured out up front and agreed on, then a strict weekly schedule to pull everyone along when things start to fall off the rails, then a decompression and review to let the dust settle. The schedule I have designed is nowhere near as cool as TechStars or Y Combinator but it’s a step in the right direction (I hope).
Related Articles:
The Rhythms of Life on Feld.com
I love the topic of email and read articles with titles like “staying on top of your inbox”.
Most articles about email focus on processing your inbox and prioritizing which emails to read in what order. Just yesterday Google announced Google Priority Inbox as a way to solve this problem.
Smarter processing of email is not the entire answer to our email woes. We all need to be more responsible with sending email. Please do your part and start today!
Here are some examples of irresponsible email sending behavior:
1. “Thanks”
Most people feel the need to reply with “Thanks”, not as a sincere Thank You for something that was done but as a way to acknowledge that they have received your email.
Solution: don’t reply with “Thanks” ever, especially to email threads with multiple recipients. Try this for a week and it will help, trust me.
2. “Thoughts?”
So often I receive an email saying “Take a look at this company, thoughts?” Even though this is one of my favorite things to do, I dread these emails and they typically end up at the bottom of my inbox. Using “thoughts?” implies some eventual response is needed but has no clear definition around what is needed.
Solution: ask specific questions about the company such as “Could ACME’s product be used to solve XYZ problem we are having?” or use your Project Management systems to have this conversation.
3. Attachments without context
I receive many emails with MS Word or Excel files attached that contain content that should not be locked up in attachments. Examples are meeting notes, agendas and simple spreadsheets. These emails often do not contain any context around the content in the attachments which is annoying in general but also makes finding these emails using search very difficult.
Solution: even if you used MS Word to take notes, spend a few minutes to craft a responsible email that is easy to read or use software like Evernote that lets you take notes and email them as text.
Here are some tips I have gathered that will help you be a responsible email sender:
- Use “FYI” in the subject line – this implies you don’t need a response from the recipients, not even a quick “Thanks for sending this”.
- Use “cc” the way it was intended – if you put a recipient as a “cc” you should not expect a response from that person, you are simply copying them so they can optionally follow the conversation. If you want a response from them or require they follow the conversation then include them in “to”.
- Use your Wiki, Intranet or whatever your company uses to discuss company wide ideas – when a discussion deserves thought and will last over several weeks. This will help preserve the shelf life of the discussion and the contents won’t get buried in your email trash.
- Use your project management systems for all project data – everything related to a project or client should be in a system like Basecamp or Rally. Granted, these systems communicate using email, however by posting data to those systems you ensure it is in the appropriate place and recipients of emails from those systems can use filters within their email client to sort and organize their email more efficiently.
- Use IM and the Watercooler to get quick questions answered – if someone is on IM or is getting a cup of coffee they are saying “it’s OK to interrupt me”. Use that as an opportunity to ask a quick question instead of sending an email that may not get answered until the next day.
Like many tools in the business world, email can be used for both good and evil. Don’t be that guy that sends “Thanks for sending this” to 10 people on an email thread, be the responsible guy that lives in a world of Inbox Zero and helps others get there as well instead of adding to their never ending pile of email.
Related Articles:
How does Fred Wilson, VC Blogger, deal with email?
Empty your Inbox everyday, use Keyboard Shortcuts and other great tips from Michael Hyatt
Email Sucks. 5 Time Saving Tips (Kevin Rose)
Extreme Makeover: The Email Inbox Edition (Gina Trapani)
Why Email May Be Draining Your Company’s Productivity by Mark Suster
Related Posts from ktinboulder’s blog:
Understanding NoSQL for Product Owners
If the product you manage requires content aggregation you may have heard your dev team say “we need to go with a NoSQL storage solution”. Below is a summery of key points about NoSQL I found through some basic research.
How does NoSQL differ from SQL?
“Not only SQL”
NoSQL is a database movement which promotes non-relational data stores that do not need a fixed schema.
There are several primary storage techniques or “implementations” used by the NoSQL approach:
- Document store – MongoDB, CouchDB
- Eventually‐consistent key‐value store (“ColumnFamily”) – Cassandra
- Graph – Neo4j
- Key/value store on disk – Amazon’s SimpleDB
- Key/value cache in RAM – Redis, memcached
Taken from this Wikipedia article on NoSQL databases
An introduction to NoSQL on Hacker News
A 10 minute talk from Brian Aker bashing NoSQL
What is MapReduce?
MapReduce is a framework for processing huge datasets on certain kinds of distributable problems using a large number of computers (nodes), collectively referred to as a cluster.
“Map” step: The master node takes the input, chops it up into smaller sub-problems, and distributes those to worker nodes. A worker node may do this again in turn, leading to a multi-level tree structure. The worker node processes that smaller problem, and passes the answer back to its master node.
“Reduce” step: The master node then takes the answers to all the sub-problems and combines them in a way to get the output – the answer to the problem it was originally trying to solve.
“GROUP BY” in SQL is very similar to “Map Reduce” in NoSQL.
Taken from this Wikipedia article on MapReduce
What is a Graph db?
A graph database is a database that uses graph structures with nodes, edges and properties to represent and store information.
Example:
Node firstNode = graphDb.createNode();
Node secondNode = graphDb.createNode();
Relationship relationship = firstNode.createRelationshipTo( secondNode, MyRelationshipTypes.KNOWS );
firstNode.setProperty( “message”, “Hello, ” );
secondNode.setProperty( “message”, “world!” );
relationship.setProperty( “message”, “brave Neo4j ” );
We now have a graph that looks like this:
(firstNode )—KNOWS—>(secondNode)
A popular vendor is Neo4j
Taken from this Wikipedia article on Graph Databases
What is a Document db?
As opposed to relational databases, document-based databases do not store data in tables with uniform sized fields for each record. Instead, each record is stored as a document that has certain characteristics. There is no real hierarchy of data; just a collection of documents which may contain virtually any kind of data. The documents may not necessarily be the same length, as some documents may contain details of fields that other documents do not need to store. In other words, you are not constrained by a database schema.
Example:
FirstName=”Bob”, Address=”5 Oak St.”, Hobby=”sailing”.
Another document could be:
FirstName=”Jonathan”, Address=”15 Wanamassa Point Road”, Children=(“Michael,10″, “Jennifer,8″, “Samantha,5″, “Elena,2″).
Notice that both documents have some similar information and some different – but unlike a relational database where each record would have the same set of fields and unused fields might be kept empty, there are no empty ‘fields’ in either document (record) in this case. This system allows information to be added any time without using storage space for “empty fields” as in relational databases.
A popular vendor is MongoDB.
MongoDB manages collections of JSON-like documents. This allows many applications to model data in a more natural way, as data can be nested in complex hierarchies and still be query-able and indexable.
{
“username” : “bob”,
“address” : {
“street” : “123 Main Street”,
“city” : “Springfield”,
“state” : “NY”
}
}
Another popular vendor is CouchDB (Apache) as it works well with Rails.
Taken from this Wikipedia article on Document-Oriented Databases
What the dude at Salvagetti bike shop asked me that most Agile Product Owners don’t ask Customers
A few days ago I took a stroll down Platte Street in Denver and stopped into Salvagetti Bike Shop. The conversation went like this:
Shop guy: “Hey man, what brings you in today?”
Me: “Beautiful day, out for a walk and felt like spending a few minutes surrounded by bikes”
Shop guy: “Cool. If you have any questions about what you see, don’t see something you were hoping to see, or have suggestions to help us make our shop better please let me know”
I was strolling away from him the same way I do every time I’m in a retail store and don’t really feeling like dealing with anyone. When he asked me my opinion I immediately turned around and began talking to him.
“You guys should rent high end road and mountain bikes, I would spend a few hundred dollars a summer with you. Do you have baby bike strollers? I just broke my helmet and need a new one, any recommendations?”
Bike shops are everywhere in Denver. Heck, within a mile of our office there are about 5 places I could spend $$$ on bikes and accessories. I am now going to spend my money at Salvagetti because I love their attitude towards me, the Customer.
After my trip to Salvagetti I began thinking about the Agile gospel I read over and over about soliciting input from your Customers, Stakeholders, etc. It’s true, getting ideas from Customers is super important in the world of software and services today. Along with Customers giving you great ideas for products and features, they are also feeling good because their opinion is being heard, the same way I felt after leaving Salvagetti.
A few of my Startup Ideas
I love my job but am always dreaming up new ideas. I talk about these ideas with friends who usually have great suggestions. I keep a diary of these ideas but that doesn’t seem like a good way to keep the ideas flowing.
Keeping these ideas private adds no value, so here’s the list:
Commute store
As eco themes, transportation, bikes, buses and trains command more attention and revenue from state and local governments more people are thinking about how they commute. I envision a retail store where people could shop for products they use in their daily commute. The store would need a learning component to it showcases new ideas in commuting and have relationships with other local stores to sell products such as bikes.
Gear Layaway
I love sites like Mint.com and SmartyPig.com that promote new ways to manage your money and save. Consumers get into credit card debt by purchasing big ticket items then paying a high interest rate. Retails Shops often feel “it’s the Consumers responsibility to manage their money”. It’s time everyone comes together to create a better option.
Comment on the conversation here:
and on the Startup Weekend website.
Relationship timeline
My wife and I talk alot about dates of meaningful moments in our past. Although I remember what we did, I can never remember the actual dates. Providing a way for couples to enter key dates, upload photos and share these dates on Facebook would be a cool web app. A nice timeline view and a public presence of this application would be key.
Nanny log
A relatively new idea I’ve been thinking about. We have a 14 mo old daughter and a great Nanny. She logs her miles and expenses, needs to post her vacation time and around tax time, needs us to provide her with a W2 showing her weekly paychecks and other payments (overtime, etc). When our daughter was a baby, our Nanny would also log daily activities and feeding schedules. Today, we use a binder and Basecamp to communicate with eachother, seems like their could be a web app to handle this better.
One Level of Knowledge
Around the water cooler I am talking about sports, pop culture and other topics relevant to our company. I would love to subscribe to a daily email about these topics. Did the Rockies just trade their star player? Did the Broncos decide on a new QB for the upcoming season. I love being armed with one level of knowledge to participate in these 2 minute water cooler conversations.
If you like any of these ideas I’d love to hear your thoughts.
