Lesson #5 — Build IT processes that fit your business
Your newly minted development and change management processes are now in place and sales are growing. However, as you hire new people and begin to integrate them into your company, things don’t always go as planned… Your systems were only built for 5 people and now you have nearly 50!
“Scaling requires the courage to lose the startup mentality, take on procedures you used to mock, and start operating like a company.” — Geoffrey Moore
Your technical (IT) and software operations need to evolve as your team does. You need to create IT and software development processes that change to fit your needs. They need to work seamlessly to keep everyone aligned around a common goal. Otherwise, you might end up doing 10 different things poorly and burning out.
The IT Checklist — What processes should you build?
Settle on your Software Development methodology — There are tons of different methodologies to choose from (Agile, Waterfall, DevOps etc.) — Pick a preferred path from feature request to production release that works for you and explain it to the business. The end goal is to create cadence to your delivery so you’re not constantly hot-fixing the whole time.
Label and Document your Technical Debt — Everyone incurs debt from short-term choices in the long run. You will inevitably cut corners when building your MVP or during your first hyper-growth phase. Document what you did, where you did it and add some clean-up (chore) time to your development methodology (i.e. a few capacity/story points).
TEST, for god’s sake, TEST! If you developed your product at lightning speed, your unit tests probably went out the window a few months before launch. Get on top of them as soon as possible — you need a reliable codebase as you scale.
Put some Documentation in place! Yes, documentation can seem pointless when everything is changing rapidly but it’s crucial in the long run. Document what you have at the time, incrementally improve it and make it someone’s responsibility to update it. There are countless tools out there that can help you (Confluence, Notion etc.) — choose one and get started. Keep it simple, just describe what and how things work.
Assign clear Roles and Responsibilities — As your team expands, you’ll need to define what each person does and does not do. You want to be clear about what each person is responsible for and close any gaps. Once each engineer has a clear focus, you can move at hyper speed without falling over each other.
Schedule regular Business Meetings — As a CTO, you should have regular meetings with the C-suite (CEO, COO etc.) to understand the business objectives and plan your technical roadmap. Software development always takes longer than you think — so, understanding what is coming up will help your team prepare.
The advice above will help you develop a structure that enables a cadence and quality of delivery. This will give you peace of mind that your systems are under control and well documented, making fundraising due diligence and partnership creation a piece of cake (everyone loves a clean data room)!
Recommended Reading: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (Greg McKeown) and Principles (Ray Dalio)
Take me back to the Startup CTO Handbook >
Go to Lesson #6 - Understand your key scaling risks
This guide originally appeared on Medium, you can find the original here.