Chimp is an online fundraising platform that allows individuals and charities to raise money. It uses a feature lifecycle process that includes problem solving through customer interviews and data analysis, designing solutions, and development. Developers are involved throughout the process to help specify problems, design solutions, and implement features. The goal is for developers to understand the problems being solved so they can make better decisions with less documentation.

1. feature life cycle
Chimp’s
Why enlightened development
teams build great products

2. Clayton Correia
Hey there, my name is..
@claytoncorreia @WeAreChimp
Product Manager, chimp.net

3. What I’m going to talk about
Quick intro to Chimp
Feature Life Cycle
Problems / Solutions
Design
Development
1
2
What is Chimp?
Our Team

4. WHAT THE HECK IS
THIS MONKEY WEBSITE?

5. Chimp is an
online tool that
empowers people
to give to and
fundraise for any
Canadian charity.

6. Chimp solves problems for…
Individuals
Charities
Companies
Ballers (High net worth donors)

7. Online, social bank
for charitable giving.
You can think of chimp as an…

8. Donor Account

9. John Bromley
FOUNDED BY
Forty-ish
CURRENT EMPLOYEES
Late 2013
OUT OF BETA
Lots of fun
WE HAVE IT

10. To date, Chimp has raised over $29 million.
Over 3,400 Canadian charities have benefited.

11. Chimp Tech Team
Rails Developers x4
UI Developer x1 UX Designer x1
Visual Designer x1
Product Managers x2
Robot x1
Development Product
Growth Hacker x1

12. 4 fun facts about Chimp Tech.

13. 1) Everyone Codes

14. 2) We have a Robot

15. 3) Bacon is one of our ‘Cultural Values’

16. 4) We have an ‘on brand’ beer fridge

17. Alright.
Enough about Chimp.

18. Enlightened
Development
Teams

19. Enlightened
Development
Teams
Developers who
are awesome

20. Chimp’s Feature Lifecycle

21. Chimp’s Feature Lifecycle

22. !
Speccing
(Problem Solving)

23. We build software to solve problems
Customer Interviews
Win/Loss
Feedback
Data Analysis
Experiments

25. Don’t build anything without
knowing what success looks like.
5% more sign ups
10% more users are retained
500 more people will share to
Twitter/Facebook per day
Customer Support will get 20 less
emails per week

26. Problem Statements
Persona:
Charity Staff Fundraiser
!
Problem:
How can I retain long term donors when I run a fundraising
campaign?
!
Context:
Every time I run a fundraising campaign I want to retain long
term donors not just one time donors.
!
What does success look like if the problem is solved?
5% of donors to Fundraising Campaigns are retained as
recurring donors

27. “if you can’t explain it simply, you
don’t understand it well enough”
Look into our data for insights
Competitors or similar examples
Existing industry research
Consult domain experts

28. Never solve problems in a vacuum
Rapidly develop as many
solutions as possible
Sketches, brainstorms,
mindmaps, interpretive dance
Wireframe out a basic solution
Developer is always present

30. Developer Review
Walk ‘Lead Developer’ through
the solution
Estimate implementation time
Decide to carry on or go back
to the drawing board

31. !
Design.

32. Detailed Wireframing
Convert sketches from
Group Speccing into high
fidelity wireframes
Mock up interactions
Balsamiq, Draw.io, OmniGraffle
Present to CEO/CTO

33. Prototyping & Usability Testing
Clickable wireframes or html
‘Show & hide’ tests
Formal usability testing

34. Visual Design
Convert Wireframes to Mock Ups
Design icons, graphic, layout
Photoshop, Illustrator

35. HTML/CSS
We build HTML directly into
the app
Designs Views
Modify App views in a
different branch

37. !
Development.
!

38. Why is this section so short?

39. Product Managers can’t tell
you how to write code.
!
It’s your craft, you own it.
!
Development teams have
their own processes and
methodologies for getting
work done.

40. Define what ‘done’ means.
Understand the problem
being solved
Test coverage
Mobile support
API

41. Write Test Cases
Makes it easier/faster to test
Reduces bugs that go live
Makes Product managers happy

43. Translation
Chimp is localized in English
and French
We have a translation branch
Devs merge their feature into
translation and then alerts
translator to get their french on

44. Chimp’s Feature Lifecycle

45. Enlightened
Development
Teams
Developers who
are awesome

46. Chimp’s Feature Lifecycle

47. Developers
Context
(Market Problems & Solutions)
Awesome Developers
+
=

48. Awesome Developers…
Understand market problems
Are part of creating the solutions
Need less requirements, less documentation
Make smarter decisions with less back
and forth
Have context from different experiences

49. Old Requirements New Requirements

50. How to be an Awesome Developer
Understand market problems
Why build it
Don’t just live in the dev column
Help create the solution
Who is it for

51. @claytoncorreia
@WeAreChimp
Clayton Correia
clayton@chimp.net
chimp.net/jobs
We’re always looking for rad folks: