Building the best tech-team

Management

Management

“ To coordinate the efforts of people to accomplish goals and

objectives using available resources efficiently and

effectively”

Who am I ?

CTO at Redbooth !

Twitter: @masylum

Beware of bullshit

• Learn from others

• Every company is different

• Don’t copy: common sense

What is this talk about ?

• Recruitment

• Optimization

• Growth

• Success

Recruitment

Seduction

• Go meet interesting people

• Interview? Go for a coffee!

• Talk and listen, seduce and be seduced

HireeHirer

Who should I hire ?

Bet on motivated generalists. !

Knowledge is easy and fast to acquire, talent is not.

Who should I hire ?

Invest for the long term: Experience within the company

is the most valuable asset

Optimization

Throughput

Stable system

SystemInput Output

Idle system

SystemInput Output

Saturated system

SystemInput Output

Washing dishes

Saturated Idle

Soaping Rinsing

Synchronicity

Synchronicity

• Inefficient in unstable systems

• Less overhead

• Not flexible

Synchronicity

Soaping Rinsing

Soaping Rinsing

Team A

Team B

Asynchronicity

Asynchronicity

• Less waiting time

• Requires queues

• More overhead

• More flexible

Asynchronicity

SoapingRinsing

Soaping

Team A Team B

QueueQueue

Soaping

Queues

Queues

• Appear in saturated systems

• Measurable

• Ordered

LIFO: Last In First Out

C B A

FIFO: First In First Out

C B A

Prioritization

• Agreed and arbitrary

• Unfair but help focusing

• Add age to the mix to avoid starvation

Multiple Queues

Multiple queues

Alice

Bob

Chris

Multiple queues

1 day

5 days !

12 hours

Alice

Bob

Chris

Single queues

Alice

Bob

Chris

Try to always go for a single queue and

multiple consumers

Optimize!

• Go asynchronous

• Measure your queues

• Identify your bottlenecks

• Allocate people accordingly

Growth

Who should I hire ?

• Avoid Single Point of Failures

• Start getting specialists but not too many

• Cultural fit is important!

When hiring, get your team

involved

Success

Choose two:

Scope Resources

Time

Motivation

• Bad : Carrots and sticks

• Good : Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose

http://bit.ly/1eVm5pI

Motivation

• Encourage Collaboration over Competition

• Set team goals, not individual

• Let the team be the judge

Rules!

No rules

Rules

Rules and Culture • Rules have to be agreed

• Culture is the enforcer: Let the team be the police

• After a mistake, think of a rule that could’ve prevented it

TeamsCoordinatorCoordinatorCoordinator

Vertical collaboration on a given project

Coordinators• They are doers

• They are responsible for the performance of the group

• They are the spokeperson of the team

That’s all folks Thanks