Visibility and promotion of your team inside Company How to sell results of your team?

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 2 Table of content Experience and applicability Goals of promotion News = blogs + subscriptions Presentations Project management Questionnaire Inside team Tricks New projects Cautions Ideas for improvements

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 3 Experience and Applicability Most effective - for teams which develop core competence products. Experience: product company with own products, internal users, team – core competence, 1000 employees. End users Team PdM BB User PjM Cust Sales

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 4 More choices of projects Do more important projects, not first ones Easy to solve your and your team’s issues Benefit for overall company Build your career Symptoms of needs: Filling that projects are not actual Not all projects are used in end user products Responses from customers with long delay Goals of Promotions Customer need: Developer can:

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 5 News - foundation News = Blog + Notifications Blog – easy to look through the team life Notifications – don’t forget about the team

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 6 News - audience ManagersDevelopers Team Users/Customers

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 7 Something new? Publish – share knowledge with others. Habit: if you want to send mail, think about publishing (publish and refer) If you refer to news, propose to subscribe (one click!) Start: after several publications ask target audience to subscribe. Once a year or half a year – ask to subscribe again whom you consider your target audience. Ask your potential target audience to subscribe based on position (Who is Who services). First post – Purpose of the subscription/blog. After half a year you will have a lot info in blog News - support

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 8 Publish or not publish? – not publish Checklist: new feature, status (release, prototype, beta,…), picture (input/output), products or customers use/will use, human readable small description of feature purpose, which problem of customer it solves, how to try, reference to project documents, ask about suggestions and feedbacks. Don’t drill into details Write as for children – keep it simple, but with love News for users/clients/customers

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 9 Changes in interfaces Small new features especially if it is internal product. New cool tools, libraries which could be useful for other teams as well. Solved technical issues and tricky approaches News for developers

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 10 New people, positions. Team extensions, Numbers available (e.g. KPI values) News for managers

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 11 Collect long term changes, conventions, agreements Other teams have similar issues – suggestion to subscribe in case of interest Subscribe your team mates (obligatory) and immediate managers. News for team

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 12 Presentations Source of Info: from News for customers Same presentations for different audience – groups of similar people – it is easy to start discussion. Encourage discussions, don’t stop, just listen and ask. If you answer questions – ask a question Publish presentation files, impression of audience in the news. You discover weaknesses in your projects during preparation.

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 13 Project management and promotion Keep your information available High level long term planning Prioritized and available short term planning Additional benefit: your team concentrates on most important things Several customers can decide what is more important Report to your immediate boss(es) weekly or biweekly using simple language (past/future/red).

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 14 High level planning Plan 1 year ahead. Target audience: managers and customers. This is really important here. You should teach how to interpret your planning (better then absence of plans at all) Update: 1 per month

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 15 Questionnaire Questionnaire helps to understand directions which are important for the company Columns: Question, Current status (5 – good, 0 – bad), Important for you (5 – important, 0 –not important), Comment. “If you have no ideas how to fill specific fields please skip it or ask me about details.” “Please forward this to persons who might be interested” Publish overall results on manager news. Answer personally for comments. People - alive

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 16 Inside team Easy to work with result oriented team Explain to team importance of feature for customers Delegate if somebody interested, but describe first. Difficult when people do not want to change. Team become automous – able to find project. Team may not understand what you are doing – developers like projects, not a users

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 17 Tricks Invite people to make presentation for your team, especially users. Mail signature: Left: Sergiy Tkachuk, TL, blah-blah-blah Right: Picture and “What to know about team? Subscribe - link”. Visit other presentation. Have things in order to provide links in any moment and to give to others ability to look through your site. Ask about potential ideas – potential users should not afraid to look stupid with crude ideas. Improve your understand how company works and remove intermediate chunks in communication.

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 18 New projects Ask users – propose to bosses WTF from users Kitchen Ask bosses about some freedom to use time for new projects – it was not issue in my situation Promotion should result in good personal or team network, people are open, people know who you are, people propose projects for you.

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 19 Cautions Nobody can do this for you This requires time at the beginning, but it worth to do! You immediate bosses can miss your company wide activity :) Be ready to prioritize your tasks – you may receive a lot-lot requests. Extend your team. Promotion effect becomes visible after 0.5 – 1 year Promotion itself is not a result. It might become obvious for you that coding from your side is inefficient time spending. You will do “correct” things slower than “incorrect” thing

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 20 Ideas for improvements Wiki (searchable storage of information) Forum Immediate communication with users, sales, customers Keep track that results of your team are used by end users Monthly meetings with TLs of related teams/departments Statistics – how many people read news, see plans…

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 21 Be alive Be open Your audience - real people Make experiments Better to be happy than serious Final notes

Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com 22 Will be glad to answer your questions! Thank you!