Juan Ramirez

OK, I almost convinced you to look at Empowered Teams more closely. You would like to introduce "empowered teams" concept at your team. After all, in "Good to Great" book you have a lot of evidence that is really great idea to help the company be successful and that is enough to give it a try. But... What does it mean for you as individual/employee, right? Are there any examples of exact action points to start? What would be the first step? How this concept is related to self-organized or self-managed teams mentioned by Scrum Guide? And what Servant Leader has to do with it all? Let me address all those questions and concerns. Marty Cagan has been evangelizing about "Empowered Product Teams" for some time now, the concept is known under other names such self-organized teams (full autonomy) or self-managed teams (autonomy limited by some corporate rules) for very, very long time. But instead of focusing on having higher influence on product strategy, let's start with smaller step. As individual/employee, I would recommend to try to focus first on finding a way to bring "empowered teams" concept to your team as a vehicle to build high performing teams and deliver incremental improvements. If you are all-in on the idea: 1. Firstly learn more about Servant Leader model of leadership. Does not matter the formal title, we all can be such unformal leaders. Why it should be your first step? This is a leadership model that has biggest influence on team's engagement and performance. It is foundation that you will build on top. 2. Next, figure out what you can influence on your level to make the product better from your customer's perspective. 3. Share the idea with the team and get buy-in on the concept from stakeholders. DM if you want to discuss this step. 4. Observe small improvements that whole team brings thanks to all the brain power of empowered team. 0.1% gains every day compounds in a long term, so be patient. Disclaimer: focus on changing what you can control. Now, here are few examples from my experience of such journey: 1. You may not have influence over product strategy nor business model. But maybe if you & the team care about app/service performance such responsiveness or downtime, maybe improvements in those areas can decrease churn and improve customer's satisfaction a little bit (= 0,1% gains every day). 2. Share as much business context and data about the product and customers with your team. Remind constantly about success metrics that the whole team should care about. Now wait. 3. Be open and coach the whole team about communicating business value of their idea. Suddenly, team members will come to you with great ideas: - "Hi Jakub, we can implement Continues Deployment to decrease time-to-recover" - "OK, let's do it! Can you write Story with the business value it could bring so we could groom it?" - "Yes!" Result? Our Workflow Success Rate jumped from 80% to 95%

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From: CEO, To: CPTO Subject: Headcount Freeze... Your mind races as you consider how you are going to hit targets. A sense of panic sets in. What about my open VP Engineering (VPE) vacancy? That one can't be frozen. Surely not... You call your CEO. → 𝗖𝗣𝗧𝗢: Hi Charlotte, Just got your message. I intend to progress with the VPE hire as agreed last week. → 𝗖𝗘𝗢: I'm glad you called. I wanted to discuss that role in person. The VPE is included in the freeze. -- 😱 You are speechless You are from a product background A small "t" CPTO You 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 a VPE to help mature engineering and ensure technology is having as much 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁 as possible. You have enough challenges to deal with in product. This was acknowledged and agreed with the board You are not sure how much longer you can cope without a VPE -- → 𝗖𝗘𝗢: Can the Engineering Managers help? → 𝗖𝗣𝗧𝗢: I don't think so. We did not expand this layer as our team grew. We should have but we didn't get budget approval. This has left Engineering Managers with large remits and workloads are becoming unmanageable. Furthermore, Tech Leads are now expected to line manage, many of them doing this for the first time. Engineering Managers are spending the vast majority of time supporting first time managers. They are operational I need strategic. Hence the VPE. → 𝗖𝗘𝗢: Do you have any other suggestions? → 𝗖𝗣𝗧𝗢: I'll have a think and get back to you. -- 🌟 Hi CPtO 👋 I'm Ryan, The Product Minded CTO and I am going to take your pain away. Budgets are tight. I get it. What if I told you that access to 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗻, 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗳𝘂𝗹, 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰 engineering 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 can be achieved for a 𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 of the 𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘁 of your proposed perm VPE? 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 → 𝗖𝗣𝗧𝗢 How does it work? I'll come into your organisation several times a week and lead engineering for you. • I'll seek to understand your business goals and assess current state of engineering • Work with the engineering managers to create an engineering strategy that unlocks your desired outcomes • Train your Tech Leads how to be great people managers and team leaders 𝗜𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗮 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲… → 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 are inspired, aligned and performing to a high standard → 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 right sized enabling you to work effectively at scale → 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 an asset rather than a liability. 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻... • Innovation driving top line growth • Costs actively managed • Risk within appetite. 𝗕𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀 • Flexible (I'll stay as long as you are getting value) • Affordable (No bonus, equity, benefits) • No long term headcount commitment • Outcome focussed • Can start tomorrow! 𝗗𝗠 "𝗛𝗘𝗟𝗣" to continue the conversation

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Your circus, your monkeys: making good decisions The 2 principles for making good decisions in a group are: - Avoid compromises - Align autonomy and responsibility "If you are a leader at any startup, and you think you are able to make good decisions without your team or your department's input, you either 1) haven't been in business long enough, or 2) you're failing and think it's "their fault." – but it's your fault." #leadership https://lnkd.in/esGRct6A

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“We have to edit our film before we make it” Even though I’m promoting concepts such as Extreme Programming, agile (notice the small “a”), TDD and others, there’s always this voice inside my head that keeps asking: “Are you sure this is the right way?” This happens regularly. Sometimes it’s cool, because it forces me to leave my intellectual bubble and change perspective. Sometimes it’s not, because it grinds my confidence down. And then I saw a reel with Steve Jobs where he’s talking about Walt Disney (not Apple! ha). What he said, was the people at Pixar figured out they had to **create the material (the movie) before publishing it**. He goes on to describe the process where they hand draw everything, they storyboard the whole thing, and they basically sketch everything out and present it to an audience. They get feedback on it, they reiterate, they get more feedback, they reiterate and so on and so forth until they get to the final product. That’s the point when they actually create the final product (the movie) and put it out there for everyone to enjoy. That sounds incredibly similar to the software philosophy I mentioned above. This is very powerful because we know what Pixar stands for – quality results, not just popularity. Link to the reel in the comments. 

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We all want to get out of the feature factory but have you thought about how? Wouldn’t it be so much easier if everyone would just read the book and do the model? Not everyone understands product and they may be relying on you to show them but you have to do it in a way that bridges from where you (and they) are to where you want to go. This is a great post from Ed Biden showing a methodical way to bring stakeholders along for the journey. Does this give you ideas for how it might work in your existing org? What additional challenges do you you have?

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Our users say we have the best ux/ui in the market This is how many product managers, ux/ui designers and QA testers we have in our team right now: ZERO -- BACKGROUND: We built Activepieces as an open-source no-code automation tool by a team of software engineers, and still operated without dedicated product people. We grew it to over 43,000 users so far who love the product experience. -- You have two ways to build your company in the early stages, and I tried both: 1️⃣ Build structured processes for everything, from ideation to implementation and shipping to production, every step will be represented as a process and will be assigned an owner OR 2️⃣ Hire quality individuals and invest in their skills to be able to ship complete products We chose the second direction at Activepieces. We only hire product engineers who can build products end to end, no product managers, no ux/ui, no QA, but all these skills need to exist and/or develop within the team members This made us unbelievably fast, we built a very rich community edition and many many enterprise features in under 18 months, we call this approach "no-process by default" Before you make your next process, ask yourself how it'd look like if you empower and invest in your team instead #product #founders #ycombinator #opensource

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24 months of #remotework =$4,800 in corp. savings, 693 commuting hours saved and a CO2 reduction equal to 11.5 domestic flights between Edinburgh and London. But this post is about something else. ⤵️ After two years of contributions to Noventiq's growth from a distance, I have a bittersweet announcement: I've decided to step into a new journey. But before turning the page, let's take a moment to reflect on the time here, the incredible people I've worked with, and the shared journey. For the first time in my career I had the privilege to serve as Business Development Manager working with brilliant teams across 60 countries 🌍. Before that I was working with just 12. The days were spent thinking intensively about strategy, planning, influencing and driving large groups on a constant mission of providing our customers with an excellent buying journey. 👨‍🎓 Together, we practiced with new industry solutions, and we learned how to present them in days. We had the privilege to be the first to try with a live audience process to save precious work-hours and cut marketing costs with AI. 🤖 We went “from what is chatgpt” to ideating full AI-Driven Campaigns in different regions with Copilot for Microsoft 365 taking into consideration buyer personas requirements and how to improve communication with customers. 📉 We pioneered #socialselling strategies that reduced lead generation costs by -80%, adding more deals in pipeline, while finding companies who were paying way too high cloud infrastructure bills so we could help them to achieve cost efficiency, innovation and growth. 🏆 Noventiq won the prestigious Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards in seven countries this year. Each award was a reflection of dedication and innovation of these amazing teams. Here's what I've learned and what I hope my colleagues will carry forward: 🎤 Clear communication and fostering mutual respect within a team boosts positive attitude and creative problem-solving outcomes. Microsoft Copilot really helped to write content that is clear to understand across geographies. Leveraging AI is a slow start but drives growth and satisfaction in local markets. 🫶 Build for decades, not just the next quarter. Strengthening relationships with partners like Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program and Amazon Web Services (AWS) opened doors to endless possibilities. As I transition into new opportunities where I can apply my experiences in AI, digital transformation, and customer excellence, I look back full of gratitude for the lessons learned. 🌅 In the meantime, join 1200 folks who are discovering the next wave of AI innovation with me by subscribing to "Executive AI Essentials" newsletter ( link in comments) 📰 What was the most transformative lesson you experienced in your career? Let's keep this conversation going! 💬 #AI #Innovation #Leadership #Transformation #Microsoft #Copilot #Growth #Strategy #Partnership

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This is 100% aligned with how I see AI making the most impact business operations. Revenue/profit per employee increases. Costs decrease. Business models will be transformed by those first to market/embrace the wave of AI agents & automation.

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𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗙𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 – 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗧𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗛𝗲𝗹𝗽𝘀 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗱𝗲! Recently, I came across an interesting tool 👉 https://dont.build/ – a simple, opinionated system to help you decide whether a software feature is really worth building. Technical decisions are rarely about being "right" – they are more about being less wrong. With every feature, multiple factors come into play: business environment, costs, team capacity, user behavior, and future scalability. Often, these decisions are subjective bets rather than clear scientific conclusions. This tool, built by Kailash Nadh, CTO of Zerodha, brings some much-needed objectivity into this process. It serves as a sanity check to help evaluate features thoughtfully before jumping in. If you’ve ever felt unsure about whether to build a feature or not, dont.build offers a refreshing and structured approach to make things clearer. Big thanks to Kailash Nadh for creating such a cool and helpful tool! 🛠️👏 Give it a try and let me know what you think! Should we have more tools like this to aid in technical decision-making? #ProductDevelopment #FeatureManagement #TechDecisions #SoftwareEngineering #ProductManagement #Zerodha 

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Mauricio Jorajuría, one of our Senior Software Engineers, shared an anecdote that really resonated with me: "A professor once told me, if you don't know how to design something, start with the idea of someone you admire and who is recognized." I would choose Dieter Rams and highly recommend his book: "Ten Principles for Good Design." When it comes to mobile 📲 , simplicity is key. Over 50% of global internet traffic comes from mobile devices (Statista). Aim for a clean, uncluttered interface that allows users to accomplish their goals with minimal taps or swipes. Remember, 85% of adults think that a company's mobile website should be as good or better than its desktop website (Think with Google). Building a community around your product can greatly enhance the user experience. Create forums or social media groups where users can share tips, feedback, and success stories. This not only provides valuable insights for continuous improvement but also encourages user engagement through creative collaboration. Ensure the community is moderated to maintain a positive and constructive environment. Why put so much effort into the UX/UI of a digital solution? Engaged customers can generate 23% 📈 more revenue than average (Harvard Business Review). https://rb.gy/rd47l1 - https://rb.gy/05wqmy - https://rb.gy/8s2pdg #UXDesign #UIDesign #MobileDesign #CommunityBuilding #ProductDevelopment #DieterRams

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Churn Metrics you need to know as a founder or product manager ☹️📉 Churn is a complex phenomenon and there are several ways to describe it. There are also different types of churn to track. I’ll do my best to explain them in this post: Monthly Unit Churn: The % of customers lost from previous month’s total customers. This measured number is often also assumed to be the constant rate at which customers churn monthly, but that is a very broad simplification. Monthly retention: Instead of measuring how many leave in a month, you can measure how many stay after a month. Sometimes this is more convenient. For example: a 5% churn is the same as a 95% retention. Retention by cohort: Churn rate rarely stays the same when monitoring a group of users or customers over an extended period. Often, a large proportion drops out early on, followed by a gradual decrease in departures over time. Therefore, it is often helpful to track, in a table or graph, how many customers who joined in a specific month remain after each subsequent month. This technique is often referred to as cohort analysis. Resurrection-rate: Relative to previous month’s total customers, how many old churned customers were you able to win back. I like to define it this way (like a growth rate) so that you can multiply it together with churn to get the effective churn. Effective churn-rate In case you experience resurrection (and do not count resurrected customers as new customers), it makes sense to calculate one number to understand the impact of customers lost and old lost customers resurrected. This is sometimes called “Net Churn” and it should not include new users acquired. In general, churn is a complex process, which cannot be depicted completely with just one number. Although for simplicity in our forecasts, it is often convenient to work with just a rate (and maybe factor in an initial drop right after signup). I'll share another post later with more info about this topic and how I like to model churn. -- Follow me for more content like this and let me know if you need any help with your product analytics!

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French 🇫🇷 people are culturally wired to be great product managers. Why is that? Because French people say No 👎. Often. (Did I hear "too much"?) Jokes aside, defining #priorities is defining what you should be doing, but more than anything, what you should NOT be doing. For 1 Yes, there should be 10 No. And it's hard. I'm guilty myself of not saying "No" enough. I want to be nice to my customers, the sales team, the support team. I want to act as a team player, and it's so much easier to say Yes! So how do you rephrase your No to make it better accepted? - Highlight the Focus 🎯: Explain what you will be focusing on instead, and how that will move the needle. This help shift the conversation to what’s being gained rather than what’s being declined. - Empathize and Offer Alternatives 🫴: Acknowledge the problem or request and explore alternative solutions within the limits of your product—or even outside of it. This shows you’re still committed to solving the issue, even if not in the originally proposed way. What strategies do you use to say No effectively without burning bridges? #productmanagement #prioritization #productdevelopment #leadership #PMtips #Frenchpeoplerock

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THIS RIGHT HERE IS A MUST WATCH FOR PMs with success in view

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Really curious to see where this goes 🍿 My personal view is that #AI is not a “trend” and cannot be avoided. Companies and professionals should harnessed it and leverage it. It will (is it already? That’s another post…😬) enhance human productivity BY FAR MORE than any other tech disruptions of the last 40 years: more than the PC, more than the internet, more than mobile phones. We are in front of a piece of technology that can give #people the #FREEDOM of focusing on the most important thing™️ taking away the chores from the table. #embracechange https://lnkd.in/edQjvMmQ (Original interview on the NYtimes here behind a paywall https://lnkd.in/e3P6wFZF )

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This! Users won’t want to use chat interfaces for everything. I do believe the future interface paradigms will tend to be *collaborative* in nature though. The ability to at any time say “hey, finish this up for me” or “hey here’s the skeleton, flesh it out” or hey tweak this for me” - we’re already seeing that the best way to use the LLMs for productivity is as a collaborator. UX will need to evolve to facilitate this.

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Interesting to see NTQR in action. #AI #Python #NTQR

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"I'm pitching myself to move from Senior Engineer to CTO. Do you any tips to prepare my mindset?" - A few Software Engineers asked me recently These were my tips: For context, the most common case is for experienced Software Engineers to be offered the opportunity to join as CTO at very early stage startups. This is my own track to the role, and these were the learnings I shared: 1. Understand what's in scope for the Startup CTO role Usually it spreads into 3 different directions: - Technology - People - Processes But the weight of each of those directions massively changes depending on the stage, team and type of company it is. At such an early stage, there isn't much to manage in terms of people or processes. So, the core function of the CTO is building technology. Which isn't much different from a Software Engineering role, at core. The transition should be smooth in regards to that core function. 2. Where's the feature spec?? Yes, at such an early stage, there's no well defined product specification. In fact, the startup is pre-product-market-fit, which means you're still finding the ideal product proposition that will land sales, and you're iterating fast towards it. At such early stage startup, you don't have a feature spec to implement. In fact, as the CTO, you'll be expected to: - Create the MVP spec (along with Founders and early team), - Build the tech to fulfil that MVP spec - All while you validate the proposition with clients. As Engineers we over-scope by default. We love to build that extra feature. Or implement that background worker properly. All of that adds another day and another week here and there. While it's very common, it's often a cause of frustration and ultimately failure. 3. Optimising for short term vs long term This is the biggest mindset shift from Software Engineer to Startup CTO. At most tech companies, especially the most sophisticated ones. Technology development follows a set of processes that optimise for the long term. Such long term focused processes measure things like: - Absence of bugs -> This means thorough testing - Robustness -> This means redundancy to avoid downtimes - Scalability -> This means service oriented architectures that allow heavier loads These things are mostly irrelevant for an early stage startup. As such, you need to strip off this "quality-first" mindset that you had as a Software Engineer. On the contrary, in a startup you need to adopt a "speed-first" mindset. This means optimising for the lowest possible time to market. A few things you need to be comfortable doing are: - Build features using off-the-shelf tools - Do close to zero tests - Have no dev or staging environments If you struggle with de-scoping ruthlessly in the early days, please read some reference materials on the topic, and seek mentorship from more experienced CTOs who've gone through it.

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We all know Dart's potential. It's fast. It's powerful. It's versatile. Not being able to fully exploit it for the backend is painful. For a large company that generates continuous cash flow, which has many teams composed of heterogeneous talent, it is not a big deal to quickly develop an application with two, three or four different languages. A couple of developers who know how to write in X take care of the front-end. The three developers who know how to write in Y will write the back-end. But this is not the case for solodevelopers or the many pre-seed, seed and early stage startups around the world using Flutter and Dart. Building such a team is not sustainable. You have to be fast to avoid running out of funds. You have to be fast in iteration. Here, this is the truth. There is neither the time nor the money to stretch development time too far and build a team like the one described above. That is why it is so important that Dart's backend ecosystem grows day by day. #flutter #dart #dartbackend #fluttercommunity #flutterdev

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Stuck in a feature factory? 4x thoughts for better work + less frustration 𝟭. 𝗨𝗡𝗗𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗬𝗢𝗨𝗥 𝗠𝗔𝗡𝗗𝗔𝗧𝗘 • Speak with the CEO / your boss / stakeholders • What do they actually want you to do? • Do they want you to be a Marty Cagan style PM? • Or do they just want you to ship stuff? This is important because: • You need to build credibility by doing the job expected of you before you can do anything else. • Complaining that they "don't understand product" will only lead to frustration all round. • Your job isn't really your title. Your job is solving problems for your boss. Let's assume they basically want you to ship stuff. How do you add more value and mature the culture? Read on ... 𝟮. 𝗗𝗜𝗚 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗫𝗧 You've just been told to build something. What next? • You need to know you're talking about the same thing • You need to build personal conviction to build it well • Don't just take a 1 sentence request and start building • Insist on a kick off, and mine them for context first    Questions to ask: • Why do they want to build this? • What do they expect to happen when it ships? • What references are they thinking of? • How much time do they want to invest in this? • Is this a test to learn, or a scalable solution? • What made them think this is a good idea? • Which risks do they want you to handle, if any? (value, feasibility, usability) Write this all down in a PRD / 1 pager You should all have a MUCH better idea of what you're building now. You should be able to evangelise this to engineers. This will lead to better outcomes all round. 𝟯. 𝗠𝗔𝗞𝗘 𝗜𝗧 𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗠𝗘𝗥𝗖𝗜𝗔𝗟 • PMs help stakeholders make smart investments in technology • Do this by converting feature requests into investment language • Express time to build as a $ cost • Convert expected outcomes into $ impact (where possible) • Calculate expected and actual ROI on the build (where possible) • If you can't calculate ROI, what would someone need to believe for this to be ROI positive? Is it believable? This will: • Make you seem very commercial (always a good thing) • Expose features where the ROI doesn't stack up • Expose big financial risks that could be mitigated with discovery 𝟰. 𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗖𝗢𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗬 𝗔𝗦 𝗔 𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗩𝗜𝗖𝗘 By this point, you should be able to offer "discovery as a service" • Have mistakes been made in the past? • Have you exposed big risks in the feature request? • Suggest ways to reduce risk with some lean discovery • Don't be partisan. Let the stakeholder decide whether they want this. • Discovery is a tool to solve a problem • The problem it solves is excess risk • Highlight the problem (risk) and stakeholders will want the solution (discovery) Hustle Badger is the best place to accelerate your product career with a wiki, courses and community.

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