Visibility and promotion of your team inside Company

1. Visibility and promotion of your team inside Company How to sell results of your team?

2. Table of content • Experience and applicability • Goals of promotion • News = blogs + subscriptions • Presentations • Project management • Questionnaire • Inside team • Tricks • New projects • Cautions • Ideas for improvements Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

3. Experience and Applicability Most effective - for teams which develop core competence products. Experience: product company with own products, internal users, team – core competence, 1000 employees. Cust BB BB Cust User Sales User PdM PdM End users PjM PjM Team Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

4. Goals of Promotions • More choices of projects • Do more important projects, not first ones • Easy to solve your and your team’s issues • Benefit for overall company • Build your career  Symptoms of needs: • Filling that projects are not actual • Not all projects are used in end user products • Responses from customers with long delay Customer need: Developer can: Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

5. News - foundation News = Blog + Notifications Blog – easy to look through the team life Notifications – don’t forget about the team Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

6. News - audience Team Managers Developers Users/Customers Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

7. News - support • Something new? Publish – share knowledge with others. • Habit: if you want to send mail, think about publishing (publish and refer) • If you refer to news, propose to subscribe (one click!) • Start: after several publications ask target audience to subscribe. • Once a year or half a year – ask to subscribe again whom you consider your target audience. • Ask your potential target audience to subscribe based on position (Who is Who services). • First post – Purpose of the subscription/blog. • After half a year you will have a lot info in blog Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

8. News for users/clients/customers • Publish or not publish? – not publish • Checklist: new feature, status (release, prototype, beta,…), picture (input/output), products or customers use/will use, human readable small description of feature purpose, which problem of customer it solves, how to try, reference to project documents, ask about suggestions and feedbacks. • Don’t drill into details • Write as for children – keep it simple, but with love  Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

9. News for developers • Changes in interfaces • Small new features especially if it is internal product. • New cool tools, libraries which could be useful for other teams as well. • Solved technical issues and tricky approaches Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

10. News for managers • New people, positions. • Team extensions, • Numbers available (e.g. KPI values) Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

11. News for team • Collect long term changes, conventions, agreements • Other teams have similar issues – suggestion to subscribe in case of interest • Subscribe your team mates (obligatory) and immediate managers. Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

12. Presentations • Source of Info: from News for customers • Same presentations for different audience – groups of similar people – it is easy to start discussion. • Encourage discussions, don’t stop, just listen and ask. • If you answer questions – ask a question  • Publish presentation files, impression of audience in the news. • You discover weaknesses in your projects during preparation. Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

13. Project management and promotion • Keep your information available • High level long term planning • Prioritized and available short term planning • Additional benefit: your team concentrates on most important things • Several customers can decide what is more important • Report to your immediate boss(es) weekly or biweekly using simple language (past/future/red). Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

14. High level planning • Plan 1 year ahead. • Target audience: managers and customers. This is really important here. • You should teach how to interpret your planning (better then absence of plans at all) • Update: 1 per month Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

15. Questionnaire • Questionnaire helps to understand directions which are important for the company • Columns: Question, Current status (5 – good, 0 – bad), Important for you (5 – important, 0 –not important), Comment. • “If you have no ideas how to fill specific fields please skip it or ask me about details.” • “Please forward this e-mail to persons who might be interested” • Publish overall results on manager news. • Answer personally for comments. People - alive  Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

16. Inside team • Easy to work with result oriented team • Explain to team importance of feature for customers • Delegate if somebody interested, but describe first. • Difficult when people do not want to change. • Team become automous – able to find project. • Team may not understand what you are doing – developers like projects, not a users  Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

17. Tricks • Invite people to make presentation for your team, especially users. • Mail signature: Left: Sergiy Tkachuk, TL, blah-blah-blahRight: Picture and “What to know about team? Subscribe - link”. • Visit other presentation. • Have things in order to provide links in any moment and to give to others ability to look through your site. • Ask about potential ideas – potential users should not afraid to look stupid with crude ideas. • Improve your understand how company works and remove intermediate chunks in communication. Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

18. New projects • Ask users – propose to bosses • WTF from users • Kitchen • Ask bosses about some freedom to use time for new projects – it was not issue in my situation • Promotion should result in good personal or team network, people are open, people know who you are, people propose projects for you. Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

19. Cautions • Nobody can do this for you • This requires time at the beginning, but it worth to do! • You immediate bosses can miss your company wide activity :) • Be ready to prioritize your tasks – you may receive a lot-lot requests. • Extend your team. • Promotion effect becomes visible after 0.5 – 1 year • Promotion itself is not a result. • It might become obvious for you that coding from your side is inefficient time spending. • You will do “correct” things slower than “incorrect” thing  Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

20. Ideas for improvements • Wiki (searchable storage of information) • Forum • Immediate communication with users, sales, customers • Keep track that results of your team are used by end users • Monthly meetings with TLs of related teams/departments • Statistics – how many people read news, see plans… Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

21. Final notes • Be alive • Be open • Your audience - real people • Make experiments • Better to be happythan serious  Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com

22. Thank you! Will be glad to answer your questions! Sergiy Tkachuk serg.tk{at}gmail.com http://sergtk.com