While the change was challenging, having engineers in charge of product visioning ultimately led to better products being designed. That’s why this way of doing things has influenced the way countless startups founded by former SpaceX engineers have structured their engineering departments – including ours.

Are there challenges with setting up software development this way? Sometimes. Does every software engineer want to be in charge of product visioning? Probably not. It’s important for product visioning to be in the hands of engineers – and changes in the industry and software development tools themselves are compelling engineers to up level their skills in ways that lead to better products, and, in my mind, a better career.

From Ticket Taker to Extreme Ownership

Here at Sift, we don’t have product managers so the types of software engineers that we hope to attract are people who want to have total ownership over how our software is designed and what features go into it. SpaceX has an extreme ownership culture where people are given more responsibility and expected to grow into that role instead of being given a little box to work in. When you put people in boxes, you don’t allow them to realize their full potential. I think that’s why SpaceX has accomplished some pretty amazing things. In our effort to create similarly amazing technology, we are trying to also instill a culture of extreme ownership. How do we do this?

A lot of engineers are motivated by wanting to solve their customer’s problems – the question is how much do they feel that through the abstraction of a requirements document versus actually watching their customer use the software? We believe it is the latter, which is why we have our engineers work directly with customers as much as possible. 

This way of working is actually responsible for the original DNA of our product. When we started Sift, our small team sublet space from a company in our network who we knew could benefit from the product we were trying to develop. They shared their data and we set out to develop software that we knew could help them and countless other startups struggling with developing cutting edge hardware in a growing sea of data. We spent three months in their space, iterating our product. We brought the two engineering teams together to show them their data in our tool and had them use their existing solution and the one we were developing side-by-side. At the end of that period we had developed a product they were willing to pay for and one that is now helping a number of other startups solve similar problems.

While we don’t set up shop in our customers offices, we do get our engineers directly involved in new customer onboarding sessions – meeting face-to-face to see how customers work in their existing tool and watch them work in ours. This helps to make sure that our solution is set up in a way that is going to benefit them the most – and informs important product development decisions for the next iterations of our product. Engineers spend a lot of time in the tools they are developing so it’s not always easy for them to identify things that are missing in the product or areas where the product is clunkier than they should be – spending a day or two with a new or existing customer actually watching them use it is the perfect cure for that. This direct line of communication between our customers and our engineers continues long after the initial onboarding session through direct Slack channels that we set up and quarterly meetings with members from our engineering team. 

Engineering in a Post Chat GPT World

While this all sounds like a ‘nice to have’, I believe in a world where increasingly software is going to be written by low code applications and AI copilots, engineers need to level up. AI is going to take over more software development and it’s going to go after the simple things first. Engineers can do one of two things: focus on work that is deeply technical or develop a really deep understanding of how the tool is used, the industry it’s being developed for, and the problem it is trying to solve. 

We want our engineers to be part of the future, not stuck in an endless loop of ticket taking. Despite what the old tropes about engineers say, we are finding legions of engineers excited to welcome a new way of doing things – and that’s going to benefit customers and the engineering profession at the same time.

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The post The secret to better products? Let engineers drive vision appeared first on SD Times.

“Product management was probably one of the only places left within business functions that didn’t have its own system and it was a very strange situation,” Simon said. “Product managers had basically nothing. They used to be stuck with Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoints, and Word documents… so that was kind of the basic need that we are trying to solve.” According to Simon, Craft.io was created in order to provide product management teams with an all-inclusive platform to help them manage their processes in order to output the best possible products to customers. 

Simon went on to explain that the Craft.io platform spans through the entirety of the product development life cycle, offering tools to assist product managers from the inception of a product up until the finalization and distribution of that product. Simon explained, “We take care of the entire product life cycle… starting with stuff like story mapping or an ideation board that we have as a part of the platform.” Simon explained that these early stages in the process are the aspects of the Craft.io platform that function as a jumping-off point for product management teams and leads them to the next step in the process. “After that, we have feedback collection from customers where they basically bring in ideas, thoughts, or requests and from that point you would start doing product definition or basically just defining the building blocks of what is actually being produced,” Simon said.

For defining the product and beginning the build, the platform brings product management teams the Spec Editor. According to Simon, this tool works as an instruction manual for developers to ensure that the specifications of what is being built is correct. Continuing through the process, the next step would be the Prioritization Engine which, according to Simon,  functions to help product managers not only do prioritization, but also apply best practices from the market. With this, users gain access to Guru, a layer that Craft.io adds across the entirety of a project in order to provide built-in templates, views, and processes to strategize, prioritize, plan, and gather feedback more effectively. 

Following the Prioritization engine, the user would then move to Capacity Planning. “This is a unique module,” Simon said. “Capacity Planning is basically the wish list versus reality.” According to Simon, capacity planning helps product managers measure their expectations and priorities against their ability to actually achieve these goals. From there the user moves into Roadmapping which, according to Simon, is the most exciting part of the product management process. “This is where you actually communicate to all of your stakeholders, be it the senior management, the CIO, the business partners, or the engineers, what it is you are planning to build and when,” Simon said. 

Finally, product managers using Craft.io also have access to a feedback loop and then the process restarts in a cyclical manner. “Product development is an ongoing, never-ending process,” he explained. “For example, we’re now using Microsoft Teams, but it’s not like they’ve ended the development of Teams, they’re continuously releasing new features and then getting feedback and updating the platform.”

Providing product managers with a unified space to work independent of different aspects of the organization is another reason why Craft.io was developed. Simon believes that having a separate platform specific to product managers and their teams will allow for them to build a more well-rounded product before the developers gain access to it. This serves to allow product managers the opportunity to think, prioritize, and play around with the idea before anybody else can voice their opinions on the product. Giving product managers a quiet place to round out their ideas will end up saving an organization time in the long run and make for a better final product. Craft.io addresses this problem of needing an isolated environment to work while also offering easy collaboration when the user is ready for it.

According to Simon, there are a few aspects of Craft.io that make it stand out among its competition. One of these is its aforementioned Guru layer. Simon believes what makes the Guru layer special is that “It is embedded throughout the product and allows users to apply and leverage product management best practices in a single click.” He went on to explain the process of using Guru to get the best results. “If a product manager wants to use a specific prioritization method, she can go to Guru Views, select her desired method, and the system will build a dedicated board for that method.”

In addition to this, Simon believes that Craft.io’s user experience also makes the platform stand out among the rest. He said, “One of the topics dearest to our heart is making sure our product balances complexity with ease-of-use. We are an all-in-one system and as such have many tools to help product teams during their various stages of work.” Simon explained that all-in-one tools can oftentimes feel overwhelming and complicated for users and Craft.io feels that that does not have to be the case. “We invest a lot in making sure almost every action is available from any view, that the set up stage of views is as simple as it can possibly be, and that actions by users take as few clicks as possible,” He said. 

According to Simon, Craft.io has become even more essential throughout the shift to remote work that we are currently seeing. “We’ve seen a lot of growth with the remote movement because a lot of what product managers used to do in most organizations was based on ‘water cooler conversations’ and this is why the need for a collaborative environment is probably now stronger than ever,” Simon said. Craft.io offers product management teams the ability to have this kind of collaboration again. 

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According to the company, the VSM Portfolio Insights Dashboard rolls up metrics and analytics generated at the individual product value stream level to the executive plane. It then displays metrics such as the progress of the shift from project to product-based IT, the ability to respond rapidly to the market, the business processes capable of acceleration and more. 

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“The new portfolio-level VSM insights highlight what’s working and what still needs improvement, so leaders can drill down to the product level as needed and work with their direct reports on progressing toward business goals and continuous improvement,” explained Nicole Bryan, CPO at Tasktop. “The emphasis on business impact and long-term value also shifts perceptions from IT being seen as a cost center to what it actually is — a profit center.”

The Shift to Product Insights within the new portfolio enable CIOs and IT leaders to measure the shift from project to product-based IT. 

Secondly, Agile Improvement insights identify where high workloads are straining resource capacity and diminishing the return from transformation efforts.

Lastly, Product Management Improvement insights help business leaders shift the focus from short-term gains to long-term value by cultivating new product management skills within existing staff members. 

Tasktop said it plans to accelerate growth and expand market leadership with the $100 million in new funding. 

“As VSM continues to become the foundation for digital transformation at scale, I am thrilled that we now have a world-class partner to help us deliver even more innovation and value to our customers,” said Mik Kersten, Tasktop founder and CEO. 

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Developers need to be continuously learning and improving. This is where certificate programs and extended learning opportunities come into play, according to Andrew Hoover, senior director of program strategy at Continuum College.

Hoover thinks that anyone who wants to further their skills should look into the different options out there. In much the same way as people think about their lives in terms of the things they would want to have or complete by their 70th birthday, Hoover wants developers to do the same, but push it up to their 45th birthday and think of what they want from their career by that point.

Getting a new degree may not a feasible option when you’re 35, unhappy in your career and already have children to support, Hoover said. But, there are many ways to supplement your knowledge and developers can take the path that makes the most sense for them, he said.

Many of the major software companies offer their own certificates for their own products. For example, Microsoft, Amazon (for AWS), Oracle, and Red Hat all offer certificate programs. These certificates may be a good option for someone not looking to invest the time and money into a college-like program, but still wanting something they can list on their resume.

In addition to the many certifications and continuing education programs, there are also hands-on ways that developers can refine their skills, even if it does not result in a certificate, such as by attending a code camp or participating in hackathons.

According to tech bootcamp review site, switchup.org, coding camps are “immersive training programs that help students from all backgrounds transition into a tech career.”

Hackathons are events where coders will work, often in groups, to solve a problem or build an application. Even if participants do not walk away learning a new technical skill, it may offer soft skills, such as working as part of a team to complete a task. According to the Evans Data Developer Marketing 2018 survey, 70 percent of developers had gone to at least one hackathon in 2017.

Hoover explained that the most important thing is for developers to first take the step of figuring out what they want to do. “What that step will look like can depend a lot on an individual’s preferences and so on,” said Hoover.

He encourages people in this position to do some research, whether it be online, through a career coach, or actually reaching out to a university or program and asking questions.

“Take the time if you are in that place as a developer and feeling like you need a change, to invest in yourself and invest that time first of all and then you can decide if it’s worth investing the money and time into a certificate,” said Hoover.

For example, Continuum College offers students the opportunity to create a portfolio of the work they do throughout the program to show to employers, Hoover said. Rather than taking a test and receiving a certificate, they can have something concrete to show their skills to employers.

“So passing tests is very important, especially for jobs where there’s very clear requirements that you’re going to be spending a lot of time on a particular task that can be tested,” Hoover said. “But for a lot of this kind of stuff, the tasks are not as well-defined and there’s a lot of ambiguity of how you apply certain knowledge and it requires more of a reservoir, more of a body of knowledge, not something you can learn in a single course.”

He explained that the programs at Continuum College are not as applied as the tests you might find in normal certificate programs, but also not as theoretical as a college course. It’s the middle ground between the two areas.

According to Hoover, the three most in-demand types of certifications employers are looking for today are project management, data, and full-stack web development.

Project management is important even if you’re not looking to become a project manager, he explained. Project management skills can be applied to developers who are trying to do things such as talking to users and gathering requirements, staying on track with goals, and triaging problems along the way. Developers who learn project management skills will be able to work better on a team, which is important because typically people in more technical roles work independently in a lot of cases, Hoover said.

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This model is not new, but many companies are just now beginning the process of becoming service providers, according to a survey from Accenture. This report found that 68 percent of organizations wouldn’t be prepared to deliver their core processes-as-a-service until 2020, which ultimately means companies are just now entering the early phases of planning for XaaS.

Companies are also beginning to look into adopting XaaS models because the market is demanding it, said Patric Palm, CEO and co-founder of Hansoft and Favro. According to Palm, the market is demanding it because customers want to pay for what they use and they want to have customer value immediately. By definition, the XaaS model gives the customer that value, he said.

In order to be successful when adopting XaaS, companies need to be adaptable and agile, said Palm. This goes for all parts of the organization, down to the developers and the up to the business leaders. This is where Palm sees companies making mistakes. Enterprises need to not only change their business model to become flexible and agile, but they also need to continue to develop a product or service so that in each release, it’s delivering something valuable to the customer.

Another mistake he highlights is when companies move to an XaaS model and change to a subscription plan for their customers, marketing continues to drive monolithic campaigns. “They are paying for the service continuously so you need to build a relationship,” said Palm. “Product management might be more agile, but marketing is staying in their old tracks.” Palm said there is a difference between simply releasing a product and having a campaign, as compared to having continuous and ongoing relationships with the community.

Another challenge is sometimes, “management doesn’t get it,” said Palm.

“It’s common for big companies to not get it, they make long-term plans, they don’t think about consequences for the whole business,” said Palm. Essentially, it’s not the executives that need to become agile, it’s the whole business.

The three repeating challenges Chris Shinkle, director of innovation at SEP, has noticed stem from culture, design and development and operations. He said that a lot of companies think that XaaS is going to magically change everything, but they fail to realize they need to change the way they think and approach this model.

The companies that want to truly take advantage of XaaS models and its benefit need to change their mindsets, and this includes developers and even management, who need to change the way they think about budgeting and scheduling work. All of this impacts how teams go about developing products and shipping software, he said.

In some large companies, Shinkle notices that all their teams, their customer support, and their marketing teams are all disconnected from the rest of the business. For Software-as-a-Service products, for instance, these teams need to be much more integrated and overlap. When moving to an XaaS, taking care of the customers and providing a great experience is most important, said Shinkle.

“In a traditional model, where I might be selling large applications [and] spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on software, that’s very much different from a service model, which is more subscription based,” said Shinkle. “If I’m not delivering great service, they’re going to leave.”

Additionally, customer support plays a huge role in both sales and XaaS models. If there isn’t a great customer support system in place, and the company is not helping customers use the product and realize the value they are going to get through the product, then they aren’t going to renew their subscription when it comes time to sign up, said Shinkle.

“Culturally, you need to think about how that organization operates and [working] closer together is key,” said Shinkle. “Organizations think SaaS is just a technology change and it’s just software moving from a hard drive to the web or cloud, and they don’t think about managing projects, and what sort of metrics or KPIs are important.”

This is really where companies fall short and struggle, said Shinkle. Often times, the technical challenges of XaaS are not the most difficult parts to solve; it’s the people working to sell products to consumers that is a challenge. He recommends companies think about these cultural changes internally and recognize that if they get closer to their customers, they can learn from them and better provide a service or product.

“If [this] is overlooked, you are setting yourself up for failure,” said Shinkle.

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