Communication in growing start-ups

Bernd Gruber, Founder indoo.rs

2010 2 people started in garage

Everything was easy.Communication was easy.

First employee

Doubled the tech team.But not double the workload – 1 had to manage the other oneCommunication was still easy

No it was not easy.Communication problems led to dissatisfaction.We agreed on that it is better if we don‘t work with each otheranymore.

First employee

Back to core team

Work was great. Progress.After 3 month of working 14/7 we needed someone

2 more developers

But they had their responisibilitiesAnd they knew what to do. NO micro management

Then we growed

And growed

And growed

We introduced Agile development.We introduced daily standups.Everything was fine.

No it was not.People didn‘t know their responsibilities.People over-discussed and over-engineered stuff.

Basically – they had no clue why they are doing what they are doing and how they should do it

And this was our fault.

We didn‘t introduce ways of communicationWe didn‘t talk about why we are doing whatWe didn‘t introduce responsibilities

Basically - we didn‘t structure the company

Digression - synchrony VS asynchrony communication

„Hey, I just sent you an email, can we talk about it.“„It is very rude not to answer my emails.“

30 min after sending the email

„Hey I need this in 14 days but I will tell you now all details.“on the phone

Need it now Need it later

Disrupt someone's workflow

Let someone finish his tasks

Blocking Not blocking

Skype/Jabber/IM/Phone Email

Responsible member VS ‚worker‘

„I know it doesn‘t work. But it not in my duty“

„No I am not going to do this because we don‘t need it now“. - Mobile developer to CTO (guy is now our head of mobile)

„Aha. So this feature has to work like this? “ – after working 2 month on it.

Does things that make sense

Works because someone told him so

Self organizing Micro management

Laissez-faire Taylorism

Thinking back

Those were the good timesEverything worked fine. Everyone knew what to do and why.Small teams are the best!

We setup small team within our team.We named team leaders.And we stepped back.

Team Leaders structure and lead the team.

Trust these teams.How they are organized team-internally it their thing.

Founders work part in teams part on CXO stuff.

These small teams work within each other.They know what to do and why.

And suddenly we also found ourselves having more time.

Team internal communication

Daily standupVia Jabber/Skype/Email/Person – what they wantJira, Trello, Confluence, Textfiles – as they like

Team-Team communication

Only via team leadersEnables focus of other team member. Does not interrupt them

Team-’CXO’ communication

Weekly status meetingsControl targets, set new targetsTalk about good things, bad things and learnings

Setup meetings in advance. NO adhoc meetings.

Meeting schedules are sent out in advance.If there is no agenda, there is no meeting.

The one who setup the meeting is the meeting leader andresponsible for leading the meeting and the further TODOs

Meetings

„I find myself more organizing than coding. And I like it“ – now Teamleader

„Now I understand what you do".

„I like working here because I can define how I do things and I know why“.

Nice things

But this process never stops. It‘s hard work and it‘s the „Managers“ responsibility to ensure good communication!

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indoo.rs enables indoor Localization and Navigation on mobile devices

• Strong team of developers creating, innovating and supporting the indoor positioning and navigation

• Offer services for developers, app agencies and system integrators to offer indoor location based services

• We like what we do

indoo.rs