Communication in growing start-ups Bernd Gruber, Founder indoo.rs

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 one Communication 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 other anymore. 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 responisibilities And they knew what to do. NO micro management

Then we 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 communication We didn‘t talk about why we are doing what We didn‘t introduce responsibilities Basically - we didn‘t structure the company

Digression - synchrony VS asynchrony communication „Hey, I just sent you an , can we talk about it.“ „It is very rude not to answer my s.“ 30 min after sending the „Hey I need this in 14 days but I will tell you now all details.“ on the phone Need it nowNeed it later Disrupt someone's workflow Let someone finish his tasks BlockingNot blocking Skype/Jabber/IM/Phone

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 organizingMicro management Laissez-faireTaylorism

Thinking back Those were the good times Everything 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 standup Via Jabber/Skype/ /Person – what they want Jira, Trello, Confluence, Textfiles – as they like

Team-Team communication Only via team leaders Enables focus of other team member. Does not interrupt them

Team-’CXO’ communication Weekly status meetings Control targets, set new targets Talk 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 and responsible 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!

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 24 indoo.rs