Tag: team

Our new developer started on Monday and holy smokes has the workload increased for both me (UX, requirements) and our CTO. Our new guy is shaping up to be really good and really quick so I’ve been hustling most of the week to keep ahead of him in UI and requirements cards.

CTO has extra workload too thanks to the odd change of API depending on the requirements and he’s the one reviewing the code.

Most of this week has been shaking out the bugs in our work processes and systems. And by that I mean, investing hours into trying to figure out Jira’s crazy ass approach to permissions. In the 30 to 40 hours I’ve worked this week -about 30% of that has been just unscrewing Jira.

For instance, I wanted to setup Jira so that if I created a story card or improvement card then it would automatically create about five subtasks. I figured a little config work now would save me a bunch of time in the future.

That is until it took three hours to update the schemes, workflows and conditions … I still haven’t figure out how to remove the damn branch button from a subtask.

All in all, things feel like we’re getting some momentum. Sure, there’s extra work but that’s the entire point.

We signed an outsourced contractor agreement today to start working with a new developer. We’ve gotten this far a couple times but this time feels more solid.

The developer is certainly of a higher qualify than ones we’ve interviewed before and the fact we have a support system by way of his employer will make things better.

Now, we have a ton of work to do before our kickoff on March 12th.

I’m quickly pulling together mockups, requirements and will handle onboarding the new fella to our systems while our CTO will be preparing the code repository and our dev environments.

We have a good bit of work to do and a short time to pull it all together, but if not now, then when?

We’ve sort of slow-walked this for a while at a more hobby pace versus a business preparing for a release. So, it’s time to bust our butts and get this thing moving.

Damn, I wish we had more money because I’d happily hire both of the people we interviewed earlier this week. But, we really only have enough cash to fund one developer so we’re doing a second round of reviews to see which person is the right fit.

Candidate 1 is a little younger and quieter but he has all of the skills and some degree of experience with those skills.

Candidate 2 seems a little more experienced in business and development, but doesn’t have as much demonstrable skills and experience in the tools we’re using.

Personally, I like Candidate 1 a little more because he’s been there and done that and frankly, he asked our questions without a lot of chatter. The CTO sort of likes the second guy a little better … thus we need some more data.

The plan is to have a decision by Monday or Tuesday so we can let them know and start planning their onboarding.

I’m like a little kid who knows Christmas is coming but not here yet.

Interviews with our two developer candidates are scheduled for next Tuesday. This is a fairly new experience for us and I’m hoping one or both of them are very good.

Adding new people is absolutely essentially, but it will kickoff a new round of activities including preparing the developer environment and ensuring that our requirements / wireframes and cards are ready for them. Our hobby+ approach has meant that things could be pretty loose thanks to it not costing much.

Now, these folks are paid by the hour so we’re going to have everything shipshape before they onboard. I’m an experienced PM and planner/organizer by habit so this isn’t a major deal for me. In fact, I’m excited because it means we can build out our work processes a little more.

I want to start codifying us doing wireframes / high-fidelity mockups first and deciding on the look before then drafting the requirements and breaking these out into story cards / test cases. This doesn’t sound revolutionary but right now things are a lot looser.

The new design should make us faster and put the creativity upfront with tools that are fast, rather than trying to do development to see what it looks like and then have to redo it. Again, this was sort of okay when we weren’t paying by the hour but soon – that’s just really expensive prototyping.

Let’s hope one of these interviewees are good so we can start evolving our work processes and ramping up development.

Oh, happy day.

It appears that we have a few developer candidates that we can afford & and a supporter to help us as get ramp up development.

We don’t have anything confirmed, but our vendor contact (new best friend?) has found a couple frontend developers who he thinks would be a good fit. They’re more junior (thus why we can afford them) but he’s willing to do some code review and a little mentoring to help them get their skills together. From my POV, that’s fine.

I need to connect with my CTO so we can setup some interview times. In some ways, I want to slow walk this process because we need more time to prepare for the new developers.

We have a fairly orderly ship but only because we’ve been working together for years & my partner is a very good developer. Now that we’re bringing in outsiders, we’ll need to get things far more organized.

I’m super ready to do this since the moment after we’re organized and we onboard the new dev we can increase our velocity and start getting this thing ready to launch.

This post comes a few hours after talking with a reference to secure a couple developers on the cheap.

Things I regret in my life in no particular order:

1. focusing on marketing in undergraduate instead of computer sciences / being a developer
2. managing my money poorly so I have absolutely no nestegg to use to fund a startup
3. Leaving a pretty good role in consulting; immediately turning down a better role in consulting to buy a company that went nowhere. In hindsight I really just needed a break rather than to jump into my own thing.
4. Not taking my good friend from San Jose up on the offer to move out there after leaving undergraduate school. Sure, we were marching toward the dot.com bubble but the connections and experience would have been invaluable.
5. Did I mention lamenting the fact I’m technical but not really a developer?

So that means that I’m always the business / PM side rather than being able to do the development … it’s like owning a restaurant but not being able to cook. Or to a certain extent, afford decent ingredients.

No, I’m not missing the obvious – raise some money and then pay people – that’s in flight but it’s hard to not look back occasionally and wonder WTF was I thinking?

Onward and upward though – we had a good meeting and I think it’s a good fit. We have another call with a different referral next week. As a guess, they’ll be cheaper but the quality won’t be as good.

Funny enough, re-reading the post – it seems like I’m down but I’m not. I’m actually excited but frustrated that a few different moves in the past would mean I could fully engage this team and we could be on our way.

Oh well … time to get a little more cheddar and get really going.

The add developer carousel is in full swing again with another post to upwork and a few nibbles. I’d really like to have our developers in WV or nearby so our first notes are going to developers who list WV as home or live near it (one in Pittsburgh).

We have one meeting set for Friday and will probably have a second meeting then as well.  

I’m hopefully one of these developers is a good fit and interested in investing a little time and effort into building something great. If not? We’ll keep searching and planning.

Yesterday morning I woke up with a recently onboarded new developer, a fairly good groomed backlog and plans to see some family and watch football.

We still have a good groomed backlog.

We enjoyed seeing some family.

We no longer have a new developer. And, I’m unsure why, but other than writing a blog post, I can’t be bothered to figure it out.

Here’s what occurred from last Saturday until yesterday evening:

1. Gave Dev a contract that looked almost the same as the one we just finished except this time it had a flat amount of money for a minimum of 100 hours a month of work.
2. He read it and signed it.
3. I cleaned up our backlog, finalized some of the most basic work we have to help Dev to start easy.
4. We had a 1.5 hour walk through of all of the tools and the backlog & this week’s sprint.
5. CTO was at a concert; I’m not a micromanager so other than getting Dev access to the code base (CTO had used personal email instead of our corp one).
6. Long note from new Dev stating that he has concerns about the workload and he doesn’t think this role is for him.

WTF?

He wouldn’t talk with me despite me calling a couple times so after his second note saying he was done. So was I. We pulled his access and my final note included our lawyer so Dev fully understood that the information provided to him was considered trade secrets and that I would spend every fucking penny left to my name tearing him apart if he tried to steal our work.

I’m just stunned, but we’ll recover. I’m not looking forward to the search for a new dev again but, I guess that’s the game.

got ourselves a greaseman … 

I have an offer out to a new developer. We’re offering him dumb hours and about 40% of the monthly pay he should receive. 

Granted, not a great sales pitch.

But, he’ll get to be part of a pretty fucking remarkable product and team.

Fingers crossed that he decides with his heart rather than his head.