Keeping Momentum and Fun in Feature Building at Soon

Hey Team,

This month, I want to dive into a topic that often gets lost in the daily grind: building features with enthusiasm and maintaining momentum. It's easy to get bogged down with deadlines and technical challenges, but it's crucial to keep the spark alive. Let's explore how we can draw inspiration from some of the brightest minds and most successful companies to keep our momentum and excitement high.

?? Some serious name-dropping dead ahead ??

Building Features People Need

Every product starts with a need, a problem waiting to be solved. But what happens when the basic needs are met? The challenge then becomes choosing the next most impactful feature to build. At Soon, our process is a delicate balance of strategic planning and adaptive flexibility, always aiming to keep our users at the center.

The Backlog as a Netflix Queue

Imagine you're browsing through Netflix. The sheer volume of choices can be overwhelming, often leading to more time spent deciding than watching. Reed Hastings , the visionary behind Netflix , tackled this by fostering a culture of "Freedom and Responsibility." At Netflix, teams are empowered to make decisions independently while being held accountable for their outcomes. This autonomy fuels innovation. At Soon, we can adopt a similar approach. By giving our teams the freedom to choose features they're passionate about, we ensure a sense of ownership and commitment to success.

Switching Things Up

After a marathon project, the last thing anyone wants is to dive into another colossal task. Tony Hsieh, the late CEO of Zappos Family of Companies , understood the importance of variety and joy in the workplace. Zappos thrived on a culture where employees could express their individuality and creativity. By alternating between large projects and smaller, quicker tasks, we keep the development process dynamic and our users engaged. Celebrating small wins boosts morale and keeps the energy levels high.

Innovating Beyond User Requests

Henry Ford once said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said 'faster horses'." This quote underscores the importance of anticipating user needs before they even realize them. Jeff Lawson of Twilio champions the concept of building impactful, user-centric products by deeply understanding user pain points. At Soon, this philosophy guides us.

Take our upcoming feature "Notes" (name subject to change). While users haven't explicitly asked for it, our conversations revealed planners juggling separate sheets and physical notes. By integrating this functionality, we're solving an unspoken need, pushing the boundaries of what our application can do.

Maintaining Balance and Engagement

Sheryl Sandberg , a beacon of leadership at Facebook and advocate for workplace equality, emphasizes work-life balance and engagement. At Facebook, initiatives like "Hackamonth" allow employees to work on different projects, fostering new perspectives and skills.

While we don't like hackathons or that kind of stuff at Soon -- for some historic reasons, but that's a story for another day ?? -- we do like to keep our development process fresh and avoid burnout. After intense, multifaceted projects, a shift to less complex, standalone features can rejuvenate the team.

Continuous Learning and Improvement

Our recent focus has been on expanding Soon’s distribution and sales, involving collaborations with giants like 微软 . While essential for growth, these tasks can be tedious, filled with compliance hurdles. Eric Ries , author of "The Lean Startup," promotes a continuous improvement cycle through the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop. By rapidly releasing features, gathering user feedback, and iterating, we stay agile and responsive. Applying this methodology to our sales efforts ensures we adapt quickly to market needs and maintain our competitive edge.

Drawing inspiration from Reed Hastings' autonomy-driven innovation, Tony Hsieh's culture of joy, Jeff Lawson's user-centric approach, Sheryl Sandberg's balanced engagement, and Eric Ries' iterative learning, we can keep our momentum strong and make the process of building features enjoyable. At Soon, we strive to balance large, impactful projects with smaller, satisfying ones, maintaining both user interest and team morale.

Let's continue to push boundaries, innovate, and create amazing things together!

Cheers,

Olaf & Team Soon