What would you teach to a team who knows little about Engineering and what's needed to create a product/service from scratch in Engineering? I was recently hired for an early-stage startup and want to help the founding team see the real scope of what we will be facing.
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Go with fail fast approach. Build a detailed training plan embedded with POCs at each step to get their hands dirty which will help build the confidence
Matt, congratulations. Here's what I would want to share with the founding team: 1) That product development is not linear. A roadmap is a straw man, not a bible. 2) Customer requirements will and should always take priority. Don't get too far ahead of knowing what the customers want. 3) You don't have to do everything in house. Speed is one of the most important factors for success.
It's a tough assignment but can be lots of fun too. Good luck.
We work with startups day in day out. There are the usual suspects, iterate quickly, build MVP etc. The one thing i would teach any team is avoid the deadly "It just needs a" loop. This is that terrible scope creep that comes in where non engineering people get close to launch and keep adding new features in this endless cycle of " we just need this to launch". Of course you need a good product but let the users dictate what they need and what they do not. Otherwise... have fun and enjoy the process!!!
Take the user centric design approach for the application design.
Take the value driven approach to convince the team on functionality
Eventually a agile process of doing things small but constantly deriving value is the best way forward
You know, the biggest risk is making a product that no one actually wants, like most failed products.
A simple way to get the team aware of this is to show them examples of products from startups that seemed promising but didn’t work out. It is a clear lesson : it takes a lot to really succeed.