The 5-Minute Startup CTO #32

Meaningful KPIs, Feature-less roadmaps, React Native

Here are your picks for this week:

🔄 Process makes perfect

KPIs are a core aspect of taking a data-driven approach to management. But how do you ensure that your KPIs are well-structured and focused on what matters?

Graham Kenny has a simple suggestion: start by understanding who your stakeholders are (employees, board members, end users, partners, ...) then ensure you have KPIs for each of these categories. A good way indeed to give more meaning to data.

🥫All roads lead to the Product

The art of product roadmapping has really moved on in the last few years. Long gone are the list of features with arbitrary deadlines, and in are the “feature-less roadmaps” and their focus on strategic thinking.

ProductPlan recently released a good e-book (email required) covering this topic in some depth and listing 5 different types of feature-less roadmaps. Well worth a read, and these 5 types of roadmaps as far from exclusive. The general idea seems to be:

• Identify your key objective(s) (be that a North Star, a set of OKRs or a list of Jobs-to-be-done)

• Use each objective as a theme with project milestone (new features, improvements, re-work)

• Lay it all out with a vague or no timeline (“now, next, later” or “this Q, next Q, next 6m”)

⌨️ If it ain’t code, don’t fix it

A well-written case-study from Shopify on why and how they adopted React Native for (most of) their mobile apps. Nice to read about the thinking which went into that decision, and how this is not, as always, a one-size-fit-all solution.

I hope you enjoyed this

Fabrice

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Hand-picked by Fabrice, a UK-based consulting CTO. Let me know if you need help with your startup!