I’ve been working with a tech startup called Dotmesh to embed a hypothesis-led approach to finding product-market fit.
During this phase the key emphasis is learning and that requires the agility for the team members (9 in total) to “swarm” onto key areas of work at any given time. In addition, there is an understandable resistance to what’s seen as a heavyweight, inflexible, power-imbalanced traditional hierarchy.
So far, the team members have been doing a great job of keeping up with each others’ work by coordinating via daily standups and ad hoc conversations. However, as the team size has grown, the number of interpersonal connections has gone up quadratically. It’s putting a strain on people, making it harder to organise without spending ever-larger amounts of time in meetings.
Normally, a managerial hierarchy would be the go-to solution, but for Dotmesh it is unappealing – these people joined a startup to be part of the future, not the past.
I researched a number of methods that would provide organisation support without imposing the traditional hierarchy. From this I developed a lightweight approach called Banners that instead emphasises voluntary collaboration, swarming on key areas of work and visibility of responsibilities and output. I also took a key principle from Scrum, to regularly review and iterate on the method itself.
I’ve written a blog post on Dotmesh’s blog to explain the approach – I hope you find it interesting!
READ THE FULL ARTICLE –> Banners: Supporting self-managing teams