On Blackboxes & Open Garage Doors

Key takeaway

Vic found that it was easier to make engineering decisions (especially around prioritisation) after investing more energy and attention to the product, marketing, & sales side of the business (his co-founder’s duties).

Context

This chat happened over 2 calls, each a month apart. During the first call, the thought exercise posed went something like

Do you find it helpful/useful to be engaged in other areas of the business that are outside of your focus?

Or can you trust that the company will get the best results by sticking to your silo and just focusing on that?

insert founder mode memes💀

Basic Anatomy of a Product Company

  • Engineering
  • Design
  • Product
  • Business function & other important stakeholders.
    • Investors, board members etc

Mode of operation: Blackbox

  • I’m here to fit into my silo.
  • This is suboptimal, in my opinion.

Handoffs are a dangerous part of the process. They open up the opportunity for information to get lost, tasks not be delegated properly, and previous or newly appointed assignees washing their hands of responsibility. It’s crucial to reduce the number of handoffs in the flow and increase their quality as much as possible.

Mode of operation: Open garage door

  • Publicly available work artifacts
  • Service ownership directory
  • Fosters early collaboration. How/Why is this a good thing?:
    • Drawing a model to illustrate how this can impact velocity would be helpful.
    • Queuing theory is a lens that could help with this illustration

Designing your organisation for an open garage door

Random quotes from the chat

I’m not at a point where I have tech stacks that I love or care about. But I do have tech stacks that I hate.

You have to treat your codebase like a product

  • It would be cool to flesh out this thought more