The 5-Minute Startup CTO #17
Product manager thinking, Estimates, Serverless
Here are your picks for this week:
🥫Product
As a startup CTO, you may be wearing the Product Manager hat, or (preferably) have a dedicated Product Manager in your team.
Either way, should a Product Manager focus more on the day-to-day of working with developers, or the bigger picture? Intercom definitely thinks the latter: great product managers don’t spend time on solutions.
Yet I think this is a matter of scale. While smaller dev teams need to rely on a single person to cover both the big and small picture, bigger teams can afford to have a strategic Product Manager supported by more tactical Product Owners. This is still a great reminder to think bigger, and longer-term.
🔄 Process makes perfect
Long gone are the days of upfront waterfall estimation and costing of large projects. XP and Scrum introduced less prescriptive ways of estimating development tasks, and the #NoEstimates movement went further by recommending, well, not estimating at all.
Gergely Orosz makes a very pragmatic, convincing case that Yes, you should estimate software projects, and it’s difficult not to agree. There is no good basis for an arbitrary deadline. But collaboratively agreed estimates and deadlines, with good communication, can help teams focus and prioritise.
⌨️ If it ain’t code, don’t fix it
The rise and rise of serverless seem to have no end. InfoQ interviewed Gojko Adzic on his book Running Serveless, a good way to start learning more about this whole area.
I hope you enjoyed this. Have a great week!
Fabrice
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Hand-picked by Fabrice, a UK-based consulting CTO. Let me know if you need help with your startup!