The document outlines the essential roles and competencies needed for a product team in a startup, including product manager, engineers, and designers. It emphasizes the importance of building a strong foundation, making informed technology choices, and continuously gathering and responding to user feedback. Best practices for product planning and development processes are also discussed, highlighting the balance between speed, quality, and user needs.

1. Howtoefficiently
buildgreatproducts
inastartup
START Summit
Friday, March 24, 2017
Roger Dudler, Founder & CTO @ Frontify

2. Agenda
Ramp-Up
Plan&Build
Insights
Q&A

3. Ramp-Up
The essential foundation of a product companyThe essential foundation of a product company

4. KeyRolesinaProductTeam
The following roles will be essential in your product team, at some point
you’ll need all of them (multiple times).
Product Manager / VP Product
System Engineer
Back-End Developer
Front-End Developer
UX Designer
Visual Designer
Ramp-Up

5. ProductManager/VPProduct
Decides what is being built and when
Key Skills
Can say No!
Ability to think 3 steps ahead
Needs to know the company & product vision by heart
Strong people management skills
Strong in gathering feedback & requirements
Ramp-Up

6. SystemEngineer
Makes sure your product is always up and scales smoothly.
Key Skills
Strong in system engineering (Linux, etc.)
Knows cloud environments and virtualisation
Knows about databases, storage and performance
Knows about security
Ramp-Up

7. Back-EndEngineer
Builds the logic into your application. Provides the API for your front-end
applications (e.g. Browser UI, App, etc.).
Key Skills
Strong in coding logic
Passion for performance
Knows how to build an application from scratch
Ramp-Up

8. Front-EndEngineer
Builds the front-end experience of your application. In many cases this is
a browser front-end. Could also be an iOS/Android engineer (but e.g. we
don’t have a native app yet).
Key Skills (Web)
Passion for design and user interactions
Outstanding JavaScript skills
HTML/CSS
Ramp-Up

9. ??
Doyouknowthe
differencebetweenaUX
andaVisualDesigner?

10. UXDesigner
Makes sure your product is usable.
Key Skills
Strong in understanding your user’s behaviour
Concept and strategy skills (e.g. Wireframing)
Creativity
Ramp-Up

11. VisualDesigner
Makes sure your product is beautiful.
Key Skills
Strong in creating visual beauty
Experienced in designing for digital
Knows about making all user interactions visually appealing
Creativity
Ramp-Up

12. ??
Whatdoyouthink,how
bigisourproductteam?

13. Front-End Developer
Back-End Developer
Product Manager
UX/Visual Designer
System Engineer
??
5

14. Real-LifeScenario
Ramp-Up
All-in-One
Full-Stack Developer
System Engineer
Visual / UX Designer
Product Manager
Full-Stack Developer
System Engineer
Full-Stack Developer
Visual / UX Designer
Product Manager
Full-Stack Developer
Full-Stack Developer
Focus: Back-End
System Engineer
Full-Stack Developer
Product Manager
Full-Stack Developer
Full-Stack Developer
Focus: Back-End
Full-Stack Developer
Focus: Front-End
Visual / UX Designer
1 2 3 5

15. ??
Whatpercentageofthe
companyshouldbeproduct
team?

16. ??
35% 20%
Initial
Product
Before Product
Market Fit
After Product
Market Fit
50%

17. Ramp-Up
Things that are important when making decisions
Focus on speed and stability (you are building for years, not days)
Make sure there are enough recruiting options
At least one very experienced guy on board for the chosen technology
Let developers play with new technologies
TechnologyStack

18. ??
WhicharetheTop3used
programminglanguages?

19. Well, that’s overall. Looking only at web or mobile
development it would be different.
??
Java,C,C++

20. Ramp-Up
1. Java
2. C
3. C++
4. C#
5. Python
6. VisualBasic
7. PHP
8. JavaScript
9. Delphi/Pascal
10. Swift
11. Perl
12. Ruby
Ranking from TIOBE Index for March 2017
Expensive People, Infrastructure, Many people
Expensive People, Embedded, etc.
Expensive People, Embedded, etc.
Web, Windows
Scripting, Server-Side Processing, Not that many people (CH)
Document Scripting, Legacy
Many People, Mature
Essential for Web / Front-End, Needed for Node
Legacy
Native Apps
Legacy
Modern, Not that much big production systems
ProgrammingLanguages

21. YourChoice
Ramp-Up
Choose between
Stable
Mature
New
Modern
More experienced developers,
but less attractive and
“old-schooly”
low risk
Less experienced developers,
but more attractive and
feature-rich
mid to high risk

22. OurChoice
Ramp-Up
PHP
JavaScript
MySQL
nginx
because it just works

23. CloudHosting
Ramp-Up
Choose between
Amazon
WebServices
Own
Infrastructure
Grows with you, bound to the
provided features, not so powerful
performance, Low maintenance efforts
Bare metal, high performance,
Expensive, High
maintenance efforts

24. OurChoice
Ramp-Up
Amazon
WebServices
because it’s awesome (efficient and cheap)

25. ??
Didyouknowthatyou’remost
probablygonnapay60%too
muchforyourAWSstuff?

26. You are normally setting up On-Demand Instances which
are not meant to be used 100%. Which normally is the
case for you. Use reserved instances wherever you can, for
your EC2 instances, DB instances, etc. It cuts cost about
60%.
??
ReservedInstances!

27. Plan&Build
Ship awesome products

28. Feedback
provide easy ways of giving feedback (no hurdles)
carefully decide, what is important and what isn’t
when launching something, monitor behaviour (e.g. Hotjar, etc.)
When you feel the speed/pace of devs lowers down, hire support
Categorise incoming feedback (e.g. Help & Support, Bugs, Pricing &
Billing, Enterprise, Feature Requests)
Plan&Build

29. FeedbackTool
Plan&Build
working with it since the beginning, one of our
most important tools

30. Track&Measure
know how people are using your product
when you release something, track how people are using it
Plan&Build

31. ProductPlanning
Find a balance between the different demand groups
- Wanted by team (because people believe in the impact)
- Wanted by strategy (because it’s part of your master plan)
- Wanted by users (because people requested it)
- Wanted by market (because the trend or market demands it)
Find a balance between investments in
- Wow
- Usability
- Revenue $
Link feedbacks to features, bugs, etc. to quantify the demand
Plan&Build

32. ??
DoesFrontifyworkwithScrum?

33. We’re not really following the scrum methodology closely,
but use parts of it. We’re planning in weekly sprints and use
points to quantify efforts, but don’t do standup, nor do we
use comprehensive user stories. We focus on very close
collaboration, also we’re still all next to each other
(currently).
??
Kinda’

34. ProductPlanningTool
Plan&Build
interesting especially for lean startups who are
gathering feedback, having drivers, using initiatives

35. Shipping
Try to release as fast as possible, but always with quality in mind
Continuously release small chunks, not huge packages
Ideally, release every day (make sure the process is super-fast)
Try to not think in v1, v2, v3, v2017 or similar
Plan&Build

36. ??
Wouldyoueither
launchat100%or87%?

37. Just make sure your team is aligned to the goal. If you strive
for 100%, think about doubling your team or double your
time to market, also add QA engineers early.
??
Whoknows

38. Insights
Selected advice

39. BuildahealthyProductTeam
Make sure your team know the company goals
Be empathic, developers need care and sometimes need to be handled
completely different, from person to person
Know strengths and weaknesses, find the perfect combo
Try to understand what people build and stay on top of the game
Plan and build in very small (trackable) chunks (<1d)
Insights

40. ??
Wouldyoueitherbuild
forSMB,Enterpriseor
both?

41. It’s a tough decision, we’re always re-validating. As long as
it doesn’t slow down your product development and
doesn’t impact the whole company (e.g. marketing) too
much, you can try both.
??
Wedoboth.

42. SMBvs.EnterpriseCustomers
Focus on one is easier in terms of marketing, features, etc.
If you manage to do both, it’s great.
Keep it one software, no individual versions
Be restrictive with feature requests (they need to match your plan)
Insights

43. ??
Wouldyoueitherpay$200/mofor
asubscriptionmanagement
systemorbuilditbyyourown?

44. And it’s still worth it and less expensive than building and
maintaining something by ourselves.
??
Weactuallypay$1k/m

45. Self-Madevs.Third-PartyServices
You have to decide, whether you want to build something essential by
yourself into your own software or just use a service to reach your goal.
Keep in mind that self-made normally seems less expensive, but on the
long run it’s nearly always more expensive (and also not as good) as
external services.
They might become expensive at some point, but then you’ll have the
money and resources to build something by yourself.
Insights

46. ?Let’sdivedeeper.
Whatdoyouwanttoknow?
?

47. ThankYou!
Visit us on www.frontify.com
Questions?
roger@frontify.com