Getting Things Done at Scale
•
1 like•474 views
1) The document discusses strategies for successfully integrating an acquired startup into a larger parent company. It outlines an initial strategy of pre-negotiating details, determining desired outcomes, and learning the parent company's vocabulary. 2) It recommends over-communicating, identifying champions within the parent company, building reusable components, and raising all boats. 3) It also covers internal tools like IRC bots and GitHub for managing a remote team, and stresses the importance of change from the side and respecting the existing culture of the parent company.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (10)
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (17)
Similar to Getting Things Done at Scale
Similar to Getting Things Done at Scale (20)
More from Amber Case
More from Amber Case (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Getting Things Done at Scale
- 1. caseorganic.com Getting Things Done at Scale Craft Conf '14 Amber Case @caseorganic caseorganic.com
- 4. caseorganic.com Joined Esri Sept 2012
- 5. caseorganic.com Geoloqi: 2 years old 6 employees 10s of customers
- 6. caseorganic.com Esri: 45 years old 3,000 employees 20 buildings Thousands of customers
- 9. caseorganic.com Most Mergers & Acquisitions Fail Why?
- 10. caseorganic.com I asked 50 people (founders, employees, investors) for stories
- 11. caseorganic.com Only 1/50 had a good experience
- 12. caseorganic.com • Crippling management/overhead to get simple things done • Founder flight • Lack of detailed transition plan • Loss of passion for original product • Left of respect and cross- compromise Why acquisitions fail
- 13. caseorganic.com • Culture clash • Jealousy/blocking from parent company employees • Sprinters vs. Marathon runners Why acquisitions fail
- 14. caseorganic.com We determined not to do any of these things
- 15. caseorganic.com 1.5 years later What we got done ! Open Source (hundreds of repos) Developer Site (hundreds of thousands of site visits per month) Geotrigger Service (original product)
- 17. caseorganic.com 1. Pre-negotiate • Don’t leave the details for later and hope they work • Be as detailed as possible and get corporate buyoff. • Don’t be vague! Vagueness breeds confusion and paranoia.
- 18. caseorganic.com • Create and lead the transition plan • Retain passion for original product • Help parent company to sprint • Adopt traits of a marathon runner • Maintain and improve team quality 2. Predetermine Your Desired Outcome
- 19. caseorganic.com • Optimize and consolidate overhead • Prevent founder flight by removing lock-in • Work together to build a better overall culture • Create successful products that support company
- 20. caseorganic.com 3. Learn the Local Language Our Vocabulary • Cloud Storage! • Map Tiles! • Zoom! • Directions! Esri’s Vocabulary • Feature Service! • Basemap! • LOD! • Routing!
- 21. caseorganic.com Our Vocabulary • Code! • IRC! • Github! • Work sessions! • Prototypes! • 2 week dev cycles Esri’s Vocabulary • PowerPoint! • Lync ! • Email! • Meetings! • 50-page specs! • 6 month dev cycles! Communication Tools
- 22. caseorganic.com 4. Over-Communicate Lack of communication with a new or remote team leads to suspicion and insecurity
- 23. caseorganic.com 5. Win friends and influence people ! • Entire team spent 2 weeks on campus planning and socializing • Important to identify yourself and make friends at this stage • As many people should have positive interactions with you at this stage
- 24. caseorganic.com 6. Beta test people •See how long it takes to get a tiny thing done •Fix the process and then launch the real thing •Identify who actually does the work
- 25. caseorganic.com Rule of 5 Work groups should be no larger than 5 when building new systems • Groups of 5 or less can communicate easily and get things done without significant overhead • Sample group: 5 different people
- 26. caseorganic.com Example: ArcGIS for Developers Developer Site never got built because it was always done with 30 people in the room. Once narrowed down to a team of 5 site was built in 3 months. Find the people that actually do something!
- 27. caseorganic.com When the storytelling is told by people, not by traction or real implementation, then whoever tells the best story wins — Blaine Cook 7. Show, don’t tell
- 28. caseorganic.com 8. Develop Trust • Build something people need • Make people’s lives easier, not harder • Making people happy will reduce feelings of resentment and uncertainty
- 30. caseorganic.com 1. Build Lego Blocks Reusable elements that can help everyone at the larger company
- 31. caseorganic.com
- 32. caseorganic.com
- 33. caseorganic.com
- 34. caseorganic.com
- 35. caseorganic.com
- 36. caseorganic.com
- 37. caseorganic.com 2. Find the Competent ‘Jerks’ * Casciaro,Tiziana and Miguel Sousa Lobo. Competent Jerks, Lovable Fools, and the Formation of Social Networks. Harvard Business Review June 2005 Competent Jerk mostly avoided Loveable Fool mildly wanted Competence high low Incompetent Jerk desperately avoided Lovable Star desperately wanted
- 38. caseorganic.com Translate! Competent Jerk mostly avoided Lovable Star desperately wanted Translator * Casciaro,Tiziana and Miguel Sousa Lobo. Competent Jerks, Lovable Fools, and the Formation of Social Networks. Harvard Business Review June 2005
- 40. caseorganic.com “Go where you’re loved.” -@fgarofalo, UX designer at Esri 4. Find your Champions
- 41. caseorganic.com 5. Raise all boats 1. Github 2. Deploy process 3. !done reports 4. Developer Site
- 43. caseorganic.com Internal Tools and Projects! Bots GitHub !done Reports CoffeeScoreboard
- 44. caseorganic.com IRC Bots ZenIRC Bot! Great framework for building bots! github.com/zenirc ! Benefits • Modular – service oriented • Can write in any language and run under the same bot • Uses Redis PubSub to pass message between the different frameworks
- 45. caseorganic.com IRC Bots ZenIRC Bot! Great framework for building bots! github.com/zenirc ! Benefits • Modular – service oriented • Can write in any language and run under the same bot • Uses Redis PubSub to pass message between the different frameworks
- 47. caseorganic.com IRC Commands > !done pushed to production ! > !todo send out notification emails ! > !hero aaronpk for bringing Legos! ! > !share github.com/es-analysis/plato
- 49. caseorganic.com Grow your Family • Hire slowly • Litmus test
- 51. caseorganic.com 1. Change from the side See what works in your team, and apply it across the organization
- 52. caseorganic.com 2. Respect what’s already there Flash?! Coldfusion!?
- 53. caseorganic.com 3. Give the company something it needs first • Trivial for your team but difficult for the parent company • Builds trust that you are on their side and have the parent company’s interests in mind
- 54. caseorganic.com 4. Small Revolutions are Best Make the smallest thing and it can turn into the largest thing
- 55. caseorganic.com 5. Distribute the Stress •Don’t think you need to do the entire thing ! •Distribute the stress: •Handed a team of 30? •Match with a team of 5!
- 56. caseorganic.com 6. Don’t Overdo It! 20% rule If you can make 20% change per year you’ve done a lot
- 57. caseorganic.com Thank you! caseorganic.com Craft Conf '14 Amber Case caseorganic.com @caseorganic