Pivotal Screen

A lot of the stress in teams comes from a single question. This can be presented in many ways like:

• When is it going to be ready?
• When are we going to finish?
• How long does it takes?
• Are we in course for meeting the deadline?

A lot has been written about agile estimation and the waterfall model, but using a single tool to do the estimation for you can alleviate much of the stress while keeping your team in sync. This post is not about a specific tool, but rather any tool that estimates when a task is going to get done.

You eliminate the possibility to blame a person for giving you an inaccurate estimation by using a tool. Moreover, you can play with different scenarios and priorities and adjust accordingly.

Working with real data instead of assumptions is even better. Therefore, A tool that takes into account what you have done in the past to estimate how long in going to take to complete a task in the future is what you are looking for.

Personally I don’t want to meet anything call deadline. This is a word that fires up a red flag in our client relationship system. It means that the client or team is not delivering sufficient value in a period of time; Therefore, it is sound to “kill” the project instead of keep spending without receiving any real value. The solution is quite simple, yet hard to achieve.

Producing value every week is the solution for this. You can say that you have a deadline every week, but it is not really the case since nobody dies if the deadline is not meet - no pun intended. It is just a week of work and it is a much smaller lost than killing an entire project.

People are going to end up doing the estimation, but on a much smaller scale - At the story level instead of the project level.  If we use tools to reduce the friction that hard questions present, we can work much more efficiently. At the end, responsibility lies within the team.

Customer Development is to a Business what Test Driven Development is to code.

Let the customer or code do the work and tell you what needs to be done.

Dave McClure at Lean Startup Circle from David Binetti on Vimeo.

The aim for most people building websites or webapps is to create a source of revenue aka to become rich. This is a shallow goal, but definitely the most important in any business. It starts by building a prototype and getting paid for it. Most people seek to monetize their efforts by selling ads, but this is slippery slope because they’ll have to compete double.

Compete double is? the concept of competing in two completely different fields. By selling ads you’ll have to compete against Google, Facebook and many more for the advertisers; moreover, you’ll have to compete against other apps in your space. For example: If I was building an app to handle project collaboration, I’ll have to compete against Basecamp, Activecollab, Zoho and many more. On top of that, I’ll have to compete against many more for the advertisers money.

Be careful becuase monetizing is a slippery slope specially is your model is based on selling ads. It has worked great for Facebook or Google, but it may be a dead sentence for many because they’ll have to compete double and create the infrastructure to sell those ads.

What do I mean by creating the infrastructure to sell ads? It starts by having the proper technology in place to count, rotate and display the ads. There are many open source software that can be use for this purpose, but this is just deviating attention from the core product. People are needed to sell the ads or build that system to support it. It just adds a tremendous burden to the entire organization. Let’s assume the technology stack is already in place to support selling ads. I believe it is equally or more difficult to get somebody to pay for an ad that is to make people pay for your product or the vision of it.

So I have had this thought for quite a while now.

What makes the perfect team? What makes it or breaks it? How does it function?

One cannot make it alone, in fact most biggest entrepreneurs tell you that for a business to be successful needs at least two minds into it. Teams should be small, but there should still be a team to support any project. This could be an active team, or may be a board of advisers, call it however you want to call it, but you need these different angles of seeing things.

So, being the freak I am with good TV shows, I recently watched all 7th season of 24, and really this thought clicked in my mind. You see it with the characters of this show in this season, and what they represent. Any team needs these:

Leadership - somebody to trust

Every team needs a leader. Somebody to offer options, the type of person that can make the most imaginable things happen. The leader is always somebody people look up to, might be because of his/her experience, achievements, or whatever reason. This person is off course Jack Bauer, this guy can come up with the most imaginable and risky moves, and finds a way that everybody ends up following him. The guy is always right.

Experience - somebody who has done it

You always need somebody who has done it before. Who knows how to do things, and knows this because he/she has done it. Again, this person can be in either your team or board of advisers. This character is played by Tony Almeida.

Good Management - somebody to put it all together

You will always need the organized person who can call the shots. The person who keeps the project going by knowing which step is the next one needs to be taken. This is what Bill Buchanan represents.

Technology - off course!

So, off course I can say this is a must, since I am very much into technology. But it is really true. The things you can do with technology, you would not be able to do without. All the information you can reach, people you can follow, etc. it is really invaluable. Off course none of the operations of 24 could have been done without Chloe O’Brian.

Apprentice - the drive to learn

You always need someone who you can pass your wisdom to if not the world would not work the way it does. There is always somebody that has the drive to learn, that is basically a sponge. They usually do not have the experience, but are eager to. This passion of the beginners does not have value. This is off course played by a newbie to this show, Renee Walker.

If you ever wonder what the hell is twitter, Eric Ries (in this video), gives an excellent example of how to use it. He gather knowledge about his customers by starting his presentation and telling everybody the only rule is to tweet with hashtag #leanstartup. This is a great way to start a presentation and I know many of you give presentations quite regularly. After he finishes, he search for the #hashtag and see what people are talking. Ask yourself, what is the #hashtag that represents you? Think about that for a while.

“Sorry ice cream I am dreaming of a different dessert”, and these are the lyrics of the Pinkberry song. What is Pinkberry? To be honest I just found this brand and have fallen in love with the work they have done. It is incredible the detail and fun they have had with their brand. Let’s review it!

Simplicity: Pinkberry brand only sells pinkberry products, they do not even sell water in their store, why? why would you go there to buy a bottle of water? you can buy that anywhere else. In this store they sell swirls and smoothies. The swirls have three flavors, why? Because this is the refreshing palette they believe in. They have their original flavor, green tea, and one seasonal flavor, which now is pomegranade. The smoothies have two flavors, so basically their menu is based on 5 items, not bad uh?

Having fun with swirls: They have a variety of toppings, with which they ‘dress up’ their swirls.

Store: Their store is very well designed, this was done with the product in mind and with the goal of activating the customer senses. They have even taken an extra step and designed their bathroom signs and adapted them to the Pinkberry look and feel, being the woman’s bathroom the actual logo with the leaves as a clip in the hair.

Concept: They work with real yogurt and real ingredients. Their yogurt is certified with the Yogurt Association, which in order to obtain such a certification one has to prove the yogurt has more nutrients than what their standards are, and Pinkberry actually exceeds this requirement. Pinkberry is real fat free yogurt, that is actually good for your health.

The Groupies: Pinberry instead of having a ‘fan club’ they have ‘groupies’ yes! because pinkberry is really considered a rock star. It even has its own song, which you can listen to when you enter their site, and I have to admit it’s quite good, you end up actually singing it.

Love this product, love this branding execution. Love to see strong concepts out there.

I invite everybody to visit one of the Pinkberry stores is they are in your are, and if they don’t you can visit them in www.pinkberry.com