May 17, 2015 at 22:15We optimize the work of the development agency
Recently, almost every day there is some new service for organizing teamwork. If you try to study them yourself, then it will probably take years.
Over the past six months, we have been doing our best to optimize all our internal processes and to minimize management costs. It seems to me that we have achieved good enough results in this regard, it's time to talk about this community.
Our team consists of several programmers, designers and only one manager who is responsible for process control.
Most studios are faced with the fact that the work turns into confusion, as soon as the team has to support 3-4 projects at a time. Failure to meet deadlines, failure to fulfill promises and the like. That is why customers are afraid to do any large projects related to IT. What provokes the opinion that it is unrealistic to comply with the deadlines and your obligations in the development.
The organization of production in the studios is a rather big problem that many are trying to solve. For someone it works better, for someone worse.
What is the problem?
The problem is finding the perfect balance between the amount of bureaucracy and control, as well as freedom in the team. On the one hand, we can force all of our employees to write off working hours in some time tracking system, to demand full reporting for every minute a slave. time and get employees who are not focused on results, but on writing off hours.
That is why we initially decided that we would not measure the amount of human work in hours, but would evaluate the result.
How did we try to do this?
At first we tried using Trello, but its capabilities quickly became lacking. Yes, Trello is a convenient and easy-to-understand tool, but as soon as 10 people appear on one project, including both our employees and interested parties from the customer, real chaos begins on the board.
After a long search, we settled on Teamwork. The reasons were the following:
1) We can easily set an end date for any group of tasks, or for the entire project as a whole
2) An employee at any given time knows what he needs to do and for which project
3) The manager sees which tasks are performed in term and which sag
We also really like the ability to store various project documentation in a Teamwork project, as it supports storing document versions, comments, and the like.
Sales are probably the second most important process in the studio, after production.
We use domestic amoCRM, because it is really simple and convenient. Well, as well, because we ourselves had a hand in developing mobile applications for colleagues, so we know how everything works inside.
Any client who comes to us doesn’t matter on which channel: by phone, skype or email, he gets into the CRM system and gets his own profile, where we already do all the work with him. Why is it convenient for everyone? Because we always know what and when we promised to do it, when you need to send an estimate, when the contract, and so on.
User support is a routine process, which at the same time is no less important than those described earlier.
In this regard, everything is simple, we have zendesk, which is tied to our mail, facebook and twitter, as well as to an account in amoCRM.
The ticket goes to support staff who already qualify it, ask leading questions and send it as a task to development.
Many people think that an office is simply necessary for effective work, but in our case, we were able to completely abandon it. This helps us significantly reduce fixed costs, and thanks to an effective and almost fully automated team management system, we do not lose productivity.
Another great advantage of such a distributed system is that any member of our team can say at any time: “Guys, I just wanted to warm my legs something,” take my laptop, pack my things and go to work in Thailand. Employees love freedom, but our customers do not suffer, because we initially built an effective system for both collaborative and remote work.
I would like to say that at the moment, in order to compete in the custom development market, it is necessary to think about optimizing all internal and external processes of the company. The less money we spend on side processes, the more money we can spend on creating cool products, the salary of excellent developers and designers. After all, we provide precisely a highly professional service, because it is the creation of products that is our goal, and not bureaucracy, the costs of processes that are not really needed.
Over the past six months, we have been doing our best to optimize all our internal processes and to minimize management costs. It seems to me that we have achieved good enough results in this regard, it's time to talk about this community.
Our team consists of several programmers, designers and only one manager who is responsible for process control.
Most studios are faced with the fact that the work turns into confusion, as soon as the team has to support 3-4 projects at a time. Failure to meet deadlines, failure to fulfill promises and the like. That is why customers are afraid to do any large projects related to IT. What provokes the opinion that it is unrealistic to comply with the deadlines and your obligations in the development.
Production - minimum bureaucracy, maximum attention
The organization of production in the studios is a rather big problem that many are trying to solve. For someone it works better, for someone worse.
What is the problem?
The problem is finding the perfect balance between the amount of bureaucracy and control, as well as freedom in the team. On the one hand, we can force all of our employees to write off working hours in some time tracking system, to demand full reporting for every minute a slave. time and get employees who are not focused on results, but on writing off hours.
That is why we initially decided that we would not measure the amount of human work in hours, but would evaluate the result.
How did we try to do this?
At first we tried using Trello, but its capabilities quickly became lacking. Yes, Trello is a convenient and easy-to-understand tool, but as soon as 10 people appear on one project, including both our employees and interested parties from the customer, real chaos begins on the board.
After a long search, we settled on Teamwork. The reasons were the following:
1) We can easily set an end date for any group of tasks, or for the entire project as a whole
2) An employee at any given time knows what he needs to do and for which project
3) The manager sees which tasks are performed in term and which sag
We also really like the ability to store various project documentation in a Teamwork project, as it supports storing document versions, comments, and the like.
Sales - we collect all the information
Sales are probably the second most important process in the studio, after production.
We use domestic amoCRM, because it is really simple and convenient. Well, as well, because we ourselves had a hand in developing mobile applications for colleagues, so we know how everything works inside.
Any client who comes to us doesn’t matter on which channel: by phone, skype or email, he gets into the CRM system and gets his own profile, where we already do all the work with him. Why is it convenient for everyone? Because we always know what and when we promised to do it, when you need to send an estimate, when the contract, and so on.
Support
User support is a routine process, which at the same time is no less important than those described earlier.
In this regard, everything is simple, we have zendesk, which is tied to our mail, facebook and twitter, as well as to an account in amoCRM.
The ticket goes to support staff who already qualify it, ask leading questions and send it as a task to development.
A little bit about the office
Many people think that an office is simply necessary for effective work, but in our case, we were able to completely abandon it. This helps us significantly reduce fixed costs, and thanks to an effective and almost fully automated team management system, we do not lose productivity.
Another great advantage of such a distributed system is that any member of our team can say at any time: “Guys, I just wanted to warm my legs something,” take my laptop, pack my things and go to work in Thailand. Employees love freedom, but our customers do not suffer, because we initially built an effective system for both collaborative and remote work.
Summarizing
I would like to say that at the moment, in order to compete in the custom development market, it is necessary to think about optimizing all internal and external processes of the company. The less money we spend on side processes, the more money we can spend on creating cool products, the salary of excellent developers and designers. After all, we provide precisely a highly professional service, because it is the creation of products that is our goal, and not bureaucracy, the costs of processes that are not really needed.