Couples Counseling for
Software Development
Joe Stump, CEO of Sprint.ly

• Early employee at three startups ranging
from bootstrapped to venture funded.
• Angel investor in three startups.
• Advisor to seven venture funded startups.
• Cofounder of three venture funded
startups (SimpleGeo, attachments.me, &
Sprint.ly).

“The best products in
the world start out as
features.”
Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram

Warring Factions

Check Your Ego

EVERYONE IN YOUR
COMPANY IS
CAPABLE OF
HAVING A GREAT
IDEA.

Managers

Quickly
Correctly Cheaply

YOU CAN’T HAVE
YOUR WINE CASK
FULL AND YOUR
WIFE DRUNK.

“Want to increase
innovation? Lower the cost
of failure.”
Joi Ito

ALLOW ENGINEERS
TO INVEST IN
AUTOMATION &
TESTING.

Why?
• Iterating on your product is all about
shortening feedback loops
• Continuous deployment allows you to ship
on code commit
• Automated testing allows for aggressive
refactoring with confidence

Makers

“You should get a CS
degree. It's the only degree
that automatically makes you
an expert on politics,
finance, religion, and
economics.”
@thejayfields

YOU ARE NOT AN
EXPERT IN SALES,
MARKETING, NOR
BUSINESS
DEVELOPMENT.

A Sampling of Non-
Technical Product TODOs
• Financial model creation for
pricing
• Messaging
• Documentation
• Customer development
• Copywriting
• Screencasts & Videos
• Marketing plan for launch • Marketing materials
• Public relations • Capturing requirements
• Support • Business development
• Community development • Funnel analysis
• Sales training • Market research
• Managing beta testers • Blog announcement
• Contract negotiation • Newsletter announcement

SIMPLEGEO’S
PRODUCT LAUNCH
CHECKLIST HAD 41
NON-ENGINEERING
ITEMS ON IT.

YOU ARE NOT A
DESIGNER.
(SERIOUSLY. JUST
LOOK AT THAT SHIT.)

YOU ARE NOT THE
TARGET CUSTOMER. (NO,
REALLY, NOBODY CARES
ABOUT KEYBOARD
SHORTCUTS.)

“Focus on the problem. If
you’re only excited about the
solution, you’ll lose interest
when your solution doesn’t fix
the problem. ”
Adil Wali, CTO of ModCloth

Delivering Product

Implementing vision
takes time
Inception Your brain
Funding v1.0

“If you’re not embarrassed
when you ship your first
version you waited too
long.”
Reid Hoffman, Founder of LinkedIn

Product is Trench Warfare

BE MILITANT IN
YOUR MINIMALLY
VIABLE PRODUCT
(MVP).

Approaching Product
1. Focus on a single use case that addresses
the problem
2. Start with a minimal core set of features
3. Release and listen to your users
4. Question your initial assumptions based on
feedback
5. Rinse and repeat

Iterating on Your
Product
1. Have a great idea
2. Wireframe in Balsamiq (or whatever)
3. Designer creates a static mockup
4. Static mockup is thrown “over the wall” to
engineering to implement

Seriously?

Oh, whoops.
• Turns out static mockups are ... static
• Engineers implement it only to find out the
UX is terrible
• Engineering is unable to implement critical
features

INVOLVE
ENGINEERING IN
THE PRODUCT
DESIGN PROCESS.

Why would I do that?
• Nobody knows your data better than your
engineers
• You likely aren’t an expert at data
algorithms
• They are your company’s best technologists

Iterating the Yardsale
Way™
1. Have a great idea
2. Wireframe in Balsamiq (or whatever)
3. Engage engineering to build a vanilla prototype
(e.g. Default Bootstrap or iOS/Android UI
components)
4. Play, tweak, rinse, repeat
5. Once UX is nailed have a designer polish to
perfection

Promote
Ownership
Yay!

Why is this better?
• Designer’s time is not lost on features that
are not shippable
• Timelines will not be disrupted by
unforeseen technical hurdles
• Avoids pissing off the engineers

Process Interrupts

PRODUCTS ARE
EITHER DATE-
DRIVEN OR
FEATURE-DRIVEN.

Non-Blocking Development
(NBD)
1. No sprints, milestones, or dates are tracked by
engineering
2. Items are scored, velocity is tracked
3. Each developer works on an item to
completion in a feature branch
4. Pull request via GitHub for review
5. Feature deployed immediately upon approval
via continuous deployment

Why is this better?
• Shares reactive qualities of Kanban
• Velocity metrics allow you to do reasonable
capacity planning
• Features ship in real-time as they’re
completed

“You can’t ship process.”
VP of Product, Live Nation Labs

@joestump