PART I - Scaling up

In the dynamic landscape of the tech industry, organisations undergo cycles of investment, optimisation, and cost-cutting, responding to market conditions and business performance.?

As a tech leader, readiness to navigate through all three phases is paramount. Different strategies are imperative depending on the developmental stage your company is in.

This article marks Part I of a three-article series covering Scaling Up, Optimisation, and Scaling Down.

PART I - Scaling Up

Experiencing hyper growth is exhilarating! You may feel like the sky's the limit, eager to dive headfirst into the journey.?

However, it's crucial not to overlook the necessity of building the right vessel to navigate this growth trajectory. Amidst the excitement and urgency within the company, thoughtful deliberation and strategic planning are essential.?

Having experienced it first hand, here are my top key aspects to consider when scaling up:

1. Properly identify your needs
2. Talent hiring
3. Think long term
4. Evolve your governance
5. Adapt your Architecture and Infrastructure
6. Onboarding
7. Organisational Shape
8. Build Partnerships

Properly identify your needs

Understanding where to direct your focus and developing a strategic approach are fundamental for success in your scaling efforts. For instance, if your goal is to evolve your services into a SaaS platform, prioritising investment in backend engineers may be paramount. Want to scale your tech teams exponentially? Ensure to bolster governance, process teams, and leadership to support the expansion effectively. If enhancing customer experience is the priority, don't overlook the importance of conversion rate analysts, product teams, and designers.?

Identifying your focal points and needs enables you to effectively design the future, while being able to communicate your requirements to your talent acquisition team. Here's a suggested approach:

• Establish a 3-year plan: Envision where you aim to see your tech stack and product in the next three years. Given the rapid pace of the industry, focusing beyond this timeframe might be unrealistic.
• Align with company strategy: Ensure your plan aligns seamlessly with your company's overarching strategic direction.
• Identify tech challenges: Anticipate and understand the technical hurdles you're likely to encounter along the way.
• Recognise organisational challenges: Be aware of the organisational obstacles that may arise during the scaling process.
• Develop yearly milestones: Outline a high-level plan detailing the key achievements you aim to accomplish each year.
• Define roles and responsibilities: Clearly delineate the roles and responsibilities of team members and determine the necessary headcount.
• Build a compelling case: Construct a persuasive argument outlining the rationale behind your plan and its potential benefits.
• Secure budget approval: Obtain the necessary budgetary approvals to support the execution of your plan.
• Present to talent acquisition: Communicate your requirements to the talent acquisition team, emphasising priorities and essential needs.
• Roll out the plan: Once approved and properly communicated, set the wheels in motion and begin executing your strategy.

Talent hiring

Often, there's immense pressure to scale rapidly, leading to a frenzied rush in the hiring process. However, it's crucial to remember that this isn't a free pass for anyone. Quality matters. You're seeking the right talent — individuals who not only fit your culture but also bring diversity, skills, and intelligence to the table. Avoid settling for just any pair of hands; instead, establish a robust hiring framework to ensure you attract the best candidates. Emphasise to your team the importance of prioritising quality over expediency and the significance of attitude in addition to skills. Remember, sometimes 'good enough' truly is sufficient, as the perfect candidate is a rare find. Here's a suggested approach:

• Develop a hiring process: Collaborate with your talent team to construct a comprehensive hiring process encompassing timelines, profiles, headcount requirements, phasing, steps, and approval procedures.
• Define leadership roles: Clearly outline your direct leadership positions, and if necessary, recruit top-tier individuals. Strive to combat biases and prioritize class A talent.
• Empower direct leaders: Allow your direct leaders to recruit their teams within the established guidelines. Trust in the process and instill in them a sense of ownership and responsibility for their teams.
• Monitor progress: Regularly assess the hiring phase and evaluate its alignment with your plan. Be prepared to adapt and make necessary adjustments, as change is constant.

Think Long Term

Where is your product headed? Have you anticipated the potential roadblocks on the horizon? It's imperative to contemplate the challenges that lie ahead, thinking beyond immediate needs and adopting a long-term perspective. Avoid building teams that may face constraints in the future due to unforeseen scalability issues. Here are some suggestions to consider:

• Identify dependencies between teams to ensure seamless collaboration and efficiency.
• Develop a strategic approach to product roadmaps.
• Establish clear prioritisation criteria for initiatives, focusing on those that drive maximum value and align with company goals.
• Anticipate and plan for large cross-initiatives involving multiple tech teams and other departments, fostering coordination and synergy.
• Assess your current software architecture and identify potential bottlenecks that may impede scalability.
• Invest in the right infrastructure to support your product or services, considering scalability, reliability, and performance requirements.
• Implement robust tracking mechanisms to monitor and evaluate the results of product development efforts, enabling informed decision-making and continuous improvement.

Evolve your Governance

As tech teams expand, it's inevitable that processes will need adjustment to accommodate the increasing complexity and challenges of the business environment. This includes responding to more intricate and demanding initiatives. It's crucial to be prepared to address various aspects of project management, service management, release management, compliance, and other product management and development processes. Rather than implementing sudden and sweeping changes, it's essential to have a plan in place for systematically introducing small incremental improvements to your governance and processes over time. The aim is to sustain team growth without negatively disrupting expected outcomes. Here are some suggestions on what to tackle:

• Project Management: Develop strategies for managing complex initiatives effectively, ensuring clear goals, timelines, and resource allocation.
• Service Management: Establish protocols to support your products or services, ensuring smooth operation and customer satisfaction.
• Release Management: Continuously enhance your pipelines and pathways to production to facilitate seamless and efficient releases.
• Change Management: Implement processes to handle complex dependencies and roll-outs, minimizing disruption and ensuring smooth transitions.
• Compliance & Security: Stay abreast of regulatory norms, laws, and legal audits (e.g., GDPR, SOX), ensuring adherence to standards and mitigating risks.
• Product Development Processes: Implement robust processes such as portfolio management, KPI tracking, stakeholder management, prioritisation, and planning to drive successful product development and delivery.

Adapt your Architecture and Infrastructure?

In addition to governance, talent, and processes, it's essential to consider how your product's architecture evolves, how it's supported, and how it operates to facilitate the continuous growth of your teams. Here are some suggestions to focus on:

• Document Architecture and Infrastructure: Ensure you have comprehensive high-level documentation outlining your product's architecture and infrastructure, facilitating better understanding and collaboration among teams.
• Identify Bottlenecks: Identify areas of strain and bottleneck within your architecture and infrastructure. Understand the primary complaints and challenges faced by your teams.
• Implement Best Practices: Develop a plan to evolve and enhance your architecture based on industry best practices. Continuously strive to optimize and improve your infrastructure to better support your growing teams. Think Scalability, Reliability, Maintainability, Extensibility,? Reusability, Usability, Security, Portability, etc.

Onboarding

Great, you have hired 10 times fold of your current team size! Congrats! How will you onboard everyone? Ensuring they swiftly become productive is crucial.?

Here are some suggestions to prepare beforehand:

• Build an Onboarding process: Segment it into three key elements - business overview and mission, tech generic policies and ways of working, and team specifics.
• Business Overview: Provide a comprehensive understanding of the company's goals, challenges, and priorities.
• Tech Generic Policies and Ways of Working: Educate new hires on the organisation's technical standards, protocols, and preferred methodologies, ensuring uniformity and efficiency across teams.
• Team Specifics: Facilitate integration into specific teams by encouraging hands-on experience, such as pair programming and task assignments from the backlog. Practical engagement accelerates learning and fosters team cohesion.
• Continuous Monitoring: Regularly assess the onboarding progress with team leaders, soliciting feedback and making necessary adjustments to optimize the process.

Organisational Shape

Adapting your organisational structure is indeed a subjective process, heavily influenced by company culture. However, when increasing your tech team size X fold, organisational adjustments are inevitable. Whether you opt for teams, tribes, squads, clusters, or any other structure, the key is to shape it in a way that accommodates growth and fosters effective leadership.

Here are some considerations:

• Leadership Distribution: Determine the appropriate ratio of leaders to team members based on your organisational size and culture. Smaller organisations may have fewer leaders, while larger ones require more extensive leadership structures.
• Team Composition: Decide whether to form cross-functional teams or dedicate teams to specific areas based on your organisational goals and priorities.
• Collaboration Strategy: Envision how collaboration will occur among teams and establish communication channels and processes to facilitate it effectively.
• Future Challenges: Anticipate potential issues that may arise as your organisation grows and reshape your structure accordingly to mitigate these challenges proactively.
• Talent Availability: Assess whether you have the necessary talent to support your envisioned organizational structure and plan for talent acquisition and development accordingly.
• Talent Development: Ensure that your organizational structure allows for opportunities for talent development and growth, promoting a culture of continuous learning and advancement.
• Stakeholder Understanding: Communicate your organizational structure clearly to stakeholders to ensure alignment and understanding across the organisation.
• Team Input: Solicit feedback from teams to understand their needs and concerns, and incorporate their input into the organisational design process.

By carefully considering these factors and tailoring your organisational structure to fit your company's unique needs and culture. The wrong shape can lead to frustration, friction, siloing and ultimately issues on talent retention.

Build Partnerships

When seeking partners to aid in your growth, whether in talent or technology, careful consideration is paramount. Partnerships can significantly impact your scalability, both during expansion and contraction phases.?

Here are some key factors to evaluate when selecting a partner:

• Assess Size and Reputation: Do they have experience working with companies of similar scale, and have you received positive feedback about their services?
• Evaluate Talent Pool and Skills: Do they possess the expertise and range of skills required for the technologies and projects you're pursuing?
• Ways of Working: Compatibility in methodologies, communication styles, and project management practices is essential for a successful partnership.
• Determine Flexibility and Scalability: How quickly can they onboard or off-board talent to accommodate fluctuations in demand?
• Cost: Assess whether the partnership fits within your budget constraints.

By thoroughly evaluating these factors, you can identify partners who not only support your current growth objectives but also offer flexibility and reliability to adapt to future needs, ensuring a successful and sustainable partnership.

In conclusion

Scaling up is a multifaceted endeavour. It's not a task for a lone individual. Utilize your leadership team as a sounding board, fostering an environment where ideas can be freely exchanged and plans iterated upon. Through this collective effort, you can refine and develop a clear strategy for moving forward effectively, while mitigating potential risks.

Stay tuned for Part II - Optimisation.

Take care,

Helder