Professionalising and scaling tech teams in early stage businesses
The Situation
This story applies to three organisations, all relatively early stage tech businesses (revenues up to about £3-£4m). In both cases the CEO had determined that in order to scale the businesses they need to professionalise and scale their tech teams. In general morale was relatively low, projects were not being delivered, priorities were not fully aligned with the business and the software was poorly understood except by a small number of named individuals.
The Task
My role was to define and deliver a plan to transition the tech team to one better able to deliver on business priorities.
The Action / Approach
In one case I transitioned from one outsourced provider to a different outsourced provider. I later added a second provider in order to have flexibility between providers.
In the other two cases I restructured the in-house team which involved removing some staff and hiring new staff more geared to the growth phase of the business.
In all cases I also tailored appropriate agile approaches to fit business needs including product prioritisation, elements of Scrum/Kanban as needed.
The Result
In all cases the stalling projects were completed successfully and on an ongoing basis the teams were better able to deliver against business priorities.
