I’m thrilled to announce that we’ve locked in some really great sponsors especially considering that this is our first year in Austin! I’ve also confirmed additional facilitators for our post session and lunch networking spots. You are in for a treat! They are all total pros.

We have also announced the official schedule. I’ve included it below, along with all our sponsors.

Now that we have met our sponsorship goals, we are able to offer even more scholarships for under-represented attendees. If you are part of an under- represented group please or are just having trouble affording the ticket price, please reach out! Email me at douglas@voltagecontrol.co

If you haven’t gotten your tickets, it isn’t too late, Register Today!

+ Speakers

Bryon Jacob, Co-Founder & CTO, data.world
Cherise Esparza-Gutierrez, Co-Founder & CTO, SecurityGate
Cynthia Maxwell, Director of Engineering, Slack
Eddy Reyes, Cofounder & CTO, Mindsight Co.
Heather Rivers, CTO, Mode Analytics
Jack Humphrey, VP of Engineering, Indeed
Jim Colson, CTO E-commerce, Digital Marketing & Supply Chain, IBM
Lynn Pausic, Principal, Expero
Marcus Blankenship, Leadership Coach Adaptive Leadership Group
Marcus Carey, Founder & CEO, Threatcare
Meetesh Karia, CTO, The Zebra
Qingqing Ouyang, SVP Engineering, Main Street Hub
Vikas Parikh, Sr Manager, Transaction Advisory services, Ernst & Young (EY)
Vivek Sagi, CTO, Business Procurement Solutions, Amazon
Will Ballard, CTO, GLG

+ Schedule

8:00 AM Registration/Breakfast
8:50 AM Kickoff by Host
9:00 AM Jim Colson — Designing, Engineering, and Delivering Products for a Full Lifecycle of Engagement
9:20 AM Lynn Pausic — Vital Role of Humans in Machine Learning
9:40 AM Cynthia Maxwell — Keeping Your Team in the Flow
10:00 AM Voltage Control — Facilitated Networking
10:20 AM Break (30 mins)
10:50 AM Bryon Jacob — Seeds of Scale — Lessons For Startups Learned Through Growth
11:10 AM Vikas Parikh — M&A and Technology
11:30 AM Will Ballard — Scaling Self-Directed Development
11:50 AM Voltage Control — Facilitated Networking
12:10 PM Lean Coffee & Lunch (80 mins)
1:30 PM Heather Rivers — Lessons from the Black Box
1:50 PM Vivek Sagi — How to Dive Deep & Mechanisms to Help you Scale your Tech Org
2:10 PM Marcus Carey — If I Only Had A CEO
2:30 PM Voltage Control — Facilitated Networking
2:50 PM Break (30 mins)
3:20 PM Cherise Esparza-Gutierrez — Toughest Words a CTO Says : Hold on the Code
3:40 PM Meetesh Karia — Diversity in Team and Thought At The Zebra
4:00 PM Marcus Blankenship — Why Your Programmer Just Wants To Code
4:20 PM Voltage Control — Facilitated Networking
4:40 PM Break (30 mins)
5:10 PM Eddy Reyes —Lessons From A Failed Startup: A Cynefin Retrospective
5:30 PM Qingqing Ouyang — Unknown to Know: Building a Recognized Tech Brand for Recruiting
5:50 PM Jack Humphrey — Improving the Development Process with Metrics-Driven Insights
6:10 PM Voltage Control — Facilitated Networking
6:30 PM Closing
6:40 PM Networking & Drinks
8:00 PM End of Event

Get your tickets here!

+ Platinum Sponsors

AnitaB.org

AnitaB.org is committed to increasing the influence of women on all aspects of technology. Our local community expands our efforts globally to help individuals all over the world — especially those who are considering or currently pursuing technical careers — to access the resources they need to reach their highest potential.

Members of the global AnitaB.org Local community network organize events and provide one another with resources to navigate careers in tech. They organize valuable meet-ups, code-a-thons, and one-day HopperX1 events modeled after the Grace Hopper Celebration.

–

Microsoft for Startups

Microsoft for Startups is committed to connecting with people and building relationships that lead to growing local entrepreneur communities. We believe that people, not companies, matter most. People come up with ideas, build MVPs, raise capital, and ultimately launch Startups (companies). Our local team in Austin is focused on supporting startups interested in partnering with us to grow on Azure.

–

Reduxio

Reduxio is redefining data management and protection with the world’s first unified primary and secondary storage platform. Based on the patented TimeOS storage operating system, Reduxio provides breakthrough storage efficiency and performance, and the unique ability to recover data to any second, far exceeding anything available on the market today. Reduxio’s unified storage platform is designed to deliver near-zero RPO and RTO as a feature of its storage system, while significantly simplifying the data protection process and providing built-in data replication for disaster recovery.

Reduxio innovates with:

• Accelerated workloads with High Performing Flash Storage
• Self-Protecting primary storage
• Optimized storage utilization
• Built-in integration with public and private cloud services and object stores
• Protect and move data between on-premise storage and the cloud

Learn more at www.Reduxio.com and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

+ Gold Sponsors

Atlassian

Atlassian unleashes the potential in every team. Our collaboration software helps teams organize, discuss and complete shared work. Teams at more than 65,000 large and small organizations use our project tracking, content creation and sharing, real-time communication and service management products to work better together and deliver quality results on time. Learn about products including JIRA Software, Confluence, Stride, Bitbucket and JIRA Service Desk at https://atlassian.com.

–

Creative Alignments

Creative Alignments is disrupting recruiting using a pay-for-effort model that creates a talent partnership with our clients. Aligned with growing tech companies, we place top talent at less than half the cost of traditional recruiters. Our senior team recruits across all functions in the tech space. Reinvent recruiting with us!

+ Registration Sponsor

Beacon Hill Technologies

+ Morning Break Sponsor

7 CTOs

+ Evening Reception Sponsor

Stride

Atlassian’s Stride is a complete team communication solution built from the ground up to help teams more effectively work together. Stride was built to solve the biggest problems of team communication by bringing together context, conversations, and collaboration into one powerful product, allowing teams to move work forward. Our brand new communication solution has best-in-class team messaging, audio and video conferencing, and collaboration tools.

+ Community Sponsors

Ruta Maya Coffee

Allstacks

–

Austin Fraser Ltd

–

Beacon Hill Technologies

–

RetailMeNot

–

KungFu

–

IBM

The post Austin CTO Summit Sponsors! appeared first on Voltage Control.

I’m excited to announce that tickets are officially on sale for the first annual Austin CTO Summit. Take advantage of our super early bird pricing and grab your tickets today! If you know of any potential sponsors, please have them email me at douglas@voltagecontrol.co.

After two months of planning and recruiting speakers, Peter and I feel like the wind is at our backs. With over 80 speaker submissions it was no easy task to select the speakers as we had to reject talks we both personally wanted to see! We are announcing 15 speakers today, and more will follow in the coming days so check the ticketing site for more details soon.

Buy Your Tickets Now!

Whether you’re an engineering manager, VPE or CTO, at this full day, single track summit you’ll learn the latest tricks other companies are using to successfully build and run engineering teams. It’s not hard to find a gathering of technologists debating front-end frameworks, containerization or the relative benefits of Scala, Clojure and Go. Finding a group of geeks talking about the hard parts of building a successful engineering team is more challenging. Whether you want to hire smarter, refine your culture, improve your processes, manage more effectively or adopt better engineering practices or architectures, the CTO Summits are designed to help you to learn from top practitioners and to share experiences with your peers.

Attendance to the event is strictly limited to engineering leaders. No recruiters, non-technical co-founders or other business stakeholders will be allowed (we enforce this policy strictly and will refund tickets of anyone we can’t admit). That said, we’re not hung up on job titles. Some of our best attendees have titles like CEO or VP Product. As long as you can perform a technical code review, know how to submit a pull request and are interested in more effectively hiring, managing and organizing developers, we can’t wait to meet you!

This year, our fifteen presenters include the CTOs/VPE’s Reddit, Amazon, data.world & IBM. Tickets will sell out quickly, so get yours now!

Refund policy: Unfortunately we are unable to offer refunds for tickets. We are, however happy to transfer them up to one week before the event to another engineering leader.

The post Austin CTO Summit 2018 appeared first on Voltage Control.

I’m still amazed at how many startups don’t have test cases for their code. In fact, many of them have opted out of most devops and developer experience tooling such as continuous integration and automated delivery as well. I do understand that in the early days it is important to quickly deliver value to customers and continuously iterate and test new ideas. However, there must be a balance established between moving fast and moving carefully.

If more companies would conduct upfront research, market validation, and rapid prototyping, maybe they would have enough confidence their code will last to inspire them to move a little slower and follow best practices. After some initial research, running a Design Sprint is my favorite way to help an organization begin embracing the benefits of rapid prototyping and moderated user interviews.

Below are some benefits and approaches to writing test cases that will hopefully help convince you to start writing tests for your existing code base or to include them as you begin building an MVP.

Modular Architecture

When startups are too eager to get a product to market, don’t understand the value in test cases, or are just too lazy to write test cases, they are setting themselves up for a painful testing retrofit in the future. Once you start writing code, it is important to immediately start writing tests and continuously growing and maintaining the test suites.

When teams wait to write tests, they run the risk of writing code that is difficult to test. Once they begin to write tests, they quickly realize that writing the tests requires refactoring the code. This refactoring can sometimes be non-trivial and often includes architectural changes. If the code base has grown considerably without tests, getting to an acceptable amount of code coverage can be time-consuming. When adding tests requires a considerable effort, convincing leadership to support the effort is a challenge. Teams that build tests in parallel with the product, don’t require approval to halt other work to write tests.

Test-Driven Development

Some engineers write tests prior to writing code using a process called Test-Driven Development, however, I find many developers do not work well under this approach. I recommend taking a Test-Driven Development mindset regardless if the tests are written before or alongside the code. The common mistake is waiting much too late to write the test cases. In addition to encouraging more decoupled and testable code, Test-Driven Development leads to fewer bugs and reduces the time to address bugs. Developers quickly determine if their code is working as expected without stepping through a manual process every time they introduce a change, allowing them to check progress after even the smallest change they make.

Don’t wait and test drive the car when is fully assembled at 100 miles an hour.

Regression Suites

A well-maintained regression test suite provides developers with instant feedback when they have unexpectedly introduced a defect in a piece of code that they didn’t actually change. Writing an extensive regression suite including all possible scenarios can be a time-consuming effort, especially for legacy projects. Instead, write a test case whenever a regression is discovered in production. Use the test case to recreate the production issue and only consider the issue resolved when the test case passes. In some cases, this approach actually speeds up the process of recreating the issue and almost always decreases the time required to fix and validate the issue. In addition to these productivity gains, we also now have a new test in our regression suite and can guarantee that this issue won’t slip into production again.

Hot Spots

Most products or systems have hot spots that are brittle and difficult to maintain. Whenever adding to these hot spots, modifying them, or using them in some unique new way, defects are common. With proper annotation on your bug tracking system, it is easy to identify and track these hot spots. When a large percentage of bugs are isolated to specific functionality or libraries, give extra priority to writing tests to address these hotspots. Investing time to build optics will allow you to target the test you write so that you can avoid expensive defects in the future.

Code Coverage

Code coverage is a measure of how much code is exercised when you execute your tests. Most tools display a list of folders with the percent covered and allow you to expand the folders to see coverage for their children. These reports will help you decide where you are your tests are lacking and point you towards new tests to write. Start by adding test cases for files and functions that are part of your most business-critical functionality. When adding code to an existing code base, consider modules that are easy to test or have little control flow first to build out your initial code coverage and expand test development capabilities. Next, focus on code that has complex control flow logic or is difficult to read as this code is likely to be buggy or hard to maintain confidently without tests.

Set a goal of 80% line and 80% file/line coverage. Use a code coverage tool and run it regularly, most teams tie this to their build and get reports on every build or once a day delivered to them via email or slack. Set up alerts and stay diligent on maintaining high code coverage numbers.

Continuous Integration

Continuous integration (CI) is a development practice that requires teams to integrate code into a shared repository regularly. When a developer integrates a new piece of code it is immediately verified by running a test suite as part of an automated build, quickly detecting any problems. Use a CI tool such as CircleCI, Jenkins, Travis, etc to automate the execution of your tests and code coverage to get more leverage from your tests.

Code Reads

It is a common practice to have code reviewed by a peer prior to integrating code into the continuous integration tool. This practice ensures that code readability, formatting, and even defects are identified early before any additional dependent code is built on top that it is expensive to correct. I’m a proponent of auditing the test cases when reviewing code. This is a great time to identify if the author of the changes didn’t include test cases for new code or if the old test cases aren’t adequate. Track issues found during code reads and issues that escaped code reads and should have been found. Encourage the team to be critical, incentivize them to actually find things and hold them accountable.

Social Testing

One of my favorite quality tools it what I call the “Test Fest”. Once a week or so I gather as much of the company as possible together for a social testing session. This practice is great at surfacing usability and visual defects as well as helping the team learn about new capabilities in the product that they haven’t seen yet. Test fest is also an opportunity for the team to share ideas and perspectives to increase empathy and obtain shared understanding.

Rainforest, an automated test platform, did a case study on Twyla’s test fest practice. You can read the case study here.

Conclusion

It’s easy to skip tests early in the excitement to launch code and gather user feedback. If you are starting a new project or if you are a bit further along and don’t have adequate tests, take the time to invest in the quality of your code base. You’ll find that you are more efficient and predictable overall. If you are uncertain if you are building the correct thing and are apprehensive about spending time on tests, consider a Design Sprint. You can get more insightful results in less time and you avoid technical debt.

The post Test Early and Often appeared first on Voltage Control.

A chief technology officer (CTO) is a C-suite executive who is focused on scientific and technological issues including web applications, mobile applications, electronic and digital media development. A CTO will guide your product strategy, market validation, architectural decisions, process optimization, recruiting, and hiring. Ideally, they will help you understand technology ROI, innovation accounting, and also help you understand where you can cut costs and where you need to invest.

I have assembled a list of all the potential skills and responsibilities expected of a CTO. Not all CTOs perform all of these duties but some do. I have also included quotes from Austin CTOs to give you additional perspective.

The Face of the Product and Technology

A CTO is often the face of the technology and product. If outward facing, they will attend important sales calls and speak to the technology strategy and vision. They will attend conferences and tradeshows to evangelize your product and technology. One particularly outspoken CTO is Werner Vogels, from amazon, check him out if you haven’t already, he usually comes to speak during SXSW and he is always entertaining.

“CTOs are typically inward facing or outward facing. The former are typically the chief scientists or primary innovators of nascent companies and focus on building the initial invention. The latter are strategists and evangelists and focus on product-market fit, market trends, and product planning. Many CTOs grow from inward to outward facing as their companies grow and the demands of the position change.“ — Neil Dholakia, CTO, Keller Williams

Business Liaison

Working closely with stakeholders, CTOs help ensure that the business objectives and needs align with the current and future technology strategy. They translate business speak into technical terms and also explain technology solutions in layman’s terms. This allows both the business and technology teams to understand goals, business objectives, technology, and potential solutions.

“l always make sure I’m meeting my coworker’s needs and expectations by Make time to listen to them and then asking ‘Where am I wrong?’ as I only improve by addressing my deficiencies.” — Robert Reeves, CTO, Daticle

They collaborate with your executive leadership team to identify how technology can be used strategically to accomplish all company goals while mitigating risk. They seek the 80/20 economical solution, present options, and discuss tradeoffs.

“A CTO’s real value is in finding opportunities with asymmetric payoffs. A large part of S3’s success derives from the compounding benefits of these opportunities.“ — John Standerfer, CTO, S3

Product Strategy

In collaboration with the executive leadership team, a CTO will translate your corporate mission and vision into a coherent product strategy. They will articulate how technology can be used strategically to accomplish all company goals while mitigating risk. Starting with an audit of your current strategy, the competitive landscape, a deep understanding of your business objectives, and customer discovery, a CTO will develop a holistic product roadmap that will provide you the unfair advantage you need to succeed in the market.

“I’m responsible for ensuring we execute on our business and product strategy and I straddle the line between technical perfection and business needs.” — Meetesh, CTO, The Zebra

Most organizations frame their software work from the perspective of projects, when in fact software must be treated as a product, which requires dedicated nurturing and care. A talented CTO will enable your technology pursuits by conducting a technology transformation from project to product focus.

“A CTO must drive cohesive product strategy and execution inclusive of go-to-market and technology considerations. The most innovative product strategies often result from ‘making puzzles out of pieces that were never considered to be combined’. Think ‘Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups’ for business domains.” — Jim Colson, CTO, IBM Watson Solutions

Their charter is to see the big picture and develop it into a roadmap, adjusting for insights from customer discovery and driving towards product market fit. They adopt, measure, and manage key product performance metrics.

“The CTO’s role is to outline the technical vision and empower the team to execute. I spend most of my time researching technologies, prototyping ideas, and evangelizing what the team is building and why it’s relevant to the long-term vision.” — Bryon Jacob, CTO data.world

Technical Architecture & R&D

A CTO tracks and shares technology trend insights for your industry. They will provide strategic technical guidance and direction with attention to scalability, security, quality, maintainability, and reliability. A new CTO will conduct a thorough audit and a holistic technology assessment, in order to codify your strengths and weaknesses.

“A CTO is in the business of scale, for whatever an organization has as its core metrics. Getting there involves building an environment for tech people based on clarity around those metrics.” — William Ballard, CTO, GLG

Vendor Management & IT

Unless you have a dedicated CIO, your CTO will be responsible for IT as well. They will manage the steps necessary to identify, select, and integrate your software and IT vendors, including third party product dependencies, email, network, wiki, intranet, project management, and telecommunications. They will review and negotiate all related contracts. They are responsible for detailed ROI evaluation, build-vs-buy determinations, budgeting, and overall tech capital allocation.

Build and Grow the Product Team

Proficient in building, motivating and inspiring talent, a CTO can invigorate your organization to achieve new heights. They will advise and guide you through proper recruiting and on-boarding techniques including proper methods and procedures for attracting and retaining top technical talent.

“A CTO must be able to build an effective team. That means creating an environment where people have authority, autonomy, and accountability for the work they do. Authority to make decisions. Autonomy to self-manage. And Accountability for the first two.” — Allen Darnell, CTO, Silver Car

A veteran CTO will have a well-established network and will leverage that network as they are assisting you in building your team of software professionals. They will draw from their expert perspective and are capable of applying a broader spectrum of experience across many technologies as they help you plan your engineering process and culture.

“The CTO role varies greatly with company size, growth rate, and use of technology in the business, etc. But every CTO must foster strategic communication, prioritization, and alignment across the full organization in order to succeed.” — William Baxter, CTO, Seriesx

Product Process and Developer Experience

A CTO, sometimes with the support of a VP of Engineering, will identify and manage your development methodology. This includes all developer experience and related touch points from source control, build tooling, continuous integration, deployment machinery, DevOps, and release strategy.

“The key to being successful at Whole Foods was to embrace the culture, and match your activities, services and language to it.“ — Mike Clifford, former CTO, Whole Foods Market

Their efforts in this area can increase release velocity, improve the quality of deliverables, create and enhance safe visibility into production for dev and QA teams, create transparency for non-technical staff into the technical organization, and promote end-to-end responsibility and shared ownership for all aspects of software delivery.

“Security needs to be top of mind for any CTO. Some of my most satisfying projects are when we make improvements in, say, developer productivity that also pay a “security dividend”. I love it because bad solutions in improving security and reducing engineering friction can be at odds with each other — great solutions enhance both.” — Eric Falcao, CTO, Spredfast

Security, Compliance, and Disaster Recovery

A CTO develops and implements organization-wide policies and processes for site availability, information security, and privacy as well as Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning. They shorten the sales cycle, mitigate risks, and provide assurance in the context of technical due diligence. They provide a variety of compliance solutions for such cases as SOCS and PCI.

“There are two types of CTO’s: Up-and-Out, and Down-and-In. Down-and-In CTO’s are expected to solve really hard technical problems; Up-and-Out CTO’s are expected to explain to the rest of the world the value of the really hard technical problems their company has solved. A world-class CTO is expected to do both.” — Tom Bishop, CTO

Technical Due Diligence and M&A

CTOs routinely audit technology options from a technical feasibility perspective in addition to cost benefit. Once they understand ROI and necessary technical parameters they make a recommendation on the most advantageous route or present alternatives with associated trade-offs.

“Acquisitions at HomeAway were uniquely challenging as they were primarily business driven decisions. We had to immediately plan for supporting multiple disparate platforms while planning actual integration into our core platform.” — Alex Victoria, CTO, Civitas Learning

They all play a critical role in M&A and other diligence activities. When your company is looking to acquire a company, they will conduct a thorough analysis of the target company’s culture, technology, and security. If your company is the acquisition target or if you are raising money, your CTO is responsible for insuring that all the requested information, processes, and procedures are cleanly documented and available for inspection.

Conclusion

Depending on the industry and size of a company the CTO role varies widely. Hopefully this overview provided some perspective of the full gamut of skills and responsibilities expected of CTOs. If you are currently looking for a CTO or technical co-founder, I’ve included some resources below that may help you in your search. If you are looking in the central Texas area, send me a note, I run a meetup for CTOs and sometimes know of folks who are looking around for something new.

Fractional CTO

A fractional CTO is an accomplished CTO who can provide trusted advice and technical guidance you require at a fraction of the cost, freeing up budget for individual contributors who will execute efficiently and effectively under their leadership. A quick search of linkedin will help you locate a fractional CTO in your area.

Online Resources & Boards

The following job boards and other related resources are a cost effective recruiting tool. Most of these are going to skew towards less experienced candidates, but if you are willing to spend the time, you may find a good fit.

• Austin CTO Meetup
• Built in Austin
• Indeed
• Hired
• AngelList
• Y-Combinator — Hackernews

Retained Recruiter Search

A retained search by an experienced executive recruiter is your best option to find a seasoned CTO candidate.

• HireStarter
• SPMB
• Stringer Executive Search
• The Bidding Network
• Whiterock Partners

Douglas Ferguson is a Fractional CTO and founder of Voltage Control. Voltage Control specializes in Innovation Workshops such as Design Sprints. We facilitate Design Sprints in Austin, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, New York, and San Francisco. Please email douglas@voltagecontrol.co if you are interested in having him facilitate your Sprint, coach your team on how to run an effective Sprint, or are curious to learn more about how a Sprint might help your company or product.

The post What is a CTO? appeared first on Voltage Control.

If you have spent any time studying design thinking or frameworks for co-creation you’ve likely heard the phrase “trust the process”. While working on Google Hangouts at Google and later running Design Sprints for Google Ventures (GV) portfolio companies, Jake Knapp refined the Design Sprint process. Through thoughtful exploration, and trial and error, Jake honed a process that can be trusted to deliver results. The supplies and tools he recommends in the book are an integral component of the success of this process.

All of the supplies are listed in the book, however, I’ve noticed that many people don’t understand their importance. They either use whatever they have lying around or they substitute similar items without understanding why Jake recommends these specific products. Below, I provide further explanation of why each item is important and its function and purpose in the Design Sprint process. For your convenience, I have amazon links for all products to allow for a quick purchase. I also point out common substitutes that don’t work well and are best avoided.

**Purchase the all the supplies from Amazon using the Voltage Control Sprint Supplies list.**

Time Timer

Everybody loves the time timer. If you are like me, once you use it during your Design Sprint, you’ll start using it for all types of meetings. I especially find it helpful for timeboxing broad discussions, and for creating time for individual work prior to making an important decision. There are a few different models and it is worth discussing the differences. The classic Time Timer has a hard plastic exterior and is available in 3″, 8″, & 12″ sizes. The 8″ classic Time Timer is the model you often see Jake Knapp holding in photos. The 12″ is quite large and is best suited for larger workshops. If you are considering going smaller I would recommend the silicone exterior “mod” model. It is much more durable and it’s small size means that it is a bit more portable. None of the Time Timers come with batteries, so remember to buy batteries. Get 2 Time Timers; one to keep track of your current activity, and one to remind you
when to take a break

Post-it Notes

The 3×5 Post-it notes are the number one tool for capturing your thoughts during the sprint. Make sure to get the canary yellow as they provide the best contrast when reading from across the room. Make sure you buy the standard Post-its and not the “Pop-Up” that are arranged in an accordion pattern. If you get the “Pop-Up” variety you will end up writing upside down and they will flop down when you put them on the wall. Size matters, and the sprint book specifically calls for the 3×5 Post-it notes, as the landscape perspective works perfectly when capturing big ideas with the larger markers. This combination helps you write just the right amount. Also, when sketching, the 3×5 Post-its work well as either a desktop display in landscape orientation or a mobile screen in portrait orientation.

Don’t be tempted to use some 3×3 Post-it notes that you have lying around.

Felt Tip Pens

These felt tips pens are a bit magical. Since people aren’t accustomed to using them, they seem to immediately illicit creativity. Perhaps this is also because we used pens like this early in our school days, when we were in art class. Regardless, these pens are great for the sketches, as they provide better contrast than ballpoint pens or pencils, allowing you to read from further away. They are also the ideal size, so you don’t write too much or too little.

Dry Erase Markers (Black, Red, & Green)

Dry Erase markers are used by the Facilitator or graphic recorder, if you have one, throughout the Sprint to capture what’s happening in the room. The black ones are used for checklists and capturing main points. The red and green markers are handy when you want to embellish your map and other graphics. They can also be used in tallying votes, when not using the dot stickers, such as voting on your top sprint questions, or when conducting a note-and-vote.

Highlighters

The Sprint book doesn’t mention highlighters when listing out sprint supplies, nor does it reference the use of a highlighter during the concrete examples and stories provided. After running numerous Sprints, I’ve found highlighters to be a facilitator’s friend. I often have someone highlight copy that resonates with the team when we are reviewing sketches. This is handy during prototyping, as we can use this copy. I also recommend that new facilitators highlight relevant sections of the book that will help them remember critical elements in the heat of the moment. The highlighters can also be handy during sketching to help bring focus to specific notes you are most excited about, including in your sketch.

ChromaLabels

Dot voting is probably my favorite thing about Design Sprints. Whether it is the smaller dots and the team is marking the pieces that are compelling and exciting to them or the larger binding votings, the energy level in the room is elevating and infectious. Stick with the ChromaLabels. The Averys are tempting as they are less expensive, however, the ChromaLabels are easier to move, because the dispenser makes handling much easier, and the Avery stickers are difficult to remove from glass. You will need 3/4” (0.75) pink dots and 1/4″ (0.25) blue dots.

Printer Paper

Printer paper is mainly used for note-taking and for assembling your sketch. It’s always handy to have scratch paper around anyway, so make sure your printer isn’t running low or simply stock up.

Masking Tape

Get 1 roll of masking or painters tape for posting solution sketches on the walls. Some walls don’t play nice with post-it notes, so having this tape around to hold up notes can prove helpful.

Healthy Snacks

Last but not least, make sure that you have ordered snacks. You have to take care of the humans! In addition to making sure you have planned for daily lunches to arrive on time, have some snacks on hand so that the team can avoid becoming hangry. It is best to avoid sugar and excess carbs, instead focus on protein and fiber. You may be tempted to get donuts, pastries, bagels, or other sweet treats to celebrate this great work you are doing, however, this will undermine your creativity and zap your energy. Instead, consider low sugar, protein-rich foods such as nuts, jerky, vegetables & hummus, fruit, low-fat yogurt, and protein bars (check the sugar content). Use these same guidelines when ordering lunch; consider salads or some other light fare.

Optional Supplies

The Sprint Book

While not required, I highly encourage you to buy a copy of the Sprint Book for every member of the team that is participating in your Design Sprint. I’ve noticed that when teams read about the process, they find it easier to dive right in on Day 1, and they have better expectations around potential outcomes of the Sprint.

Flip Charts

If you have limited whiteboard or wall space for post-its & sketches, flip charts can save the day. Consider getting 1 or 2 pads just in case you need them, they always seem to come in handy, especially if you can’t reserve the same room for the full week.

Webcam

If you are running remote interviews and need your candidate to see you, or running an in-person interview and need your observers to see your tester and the actions they are taking, don’t forget to get a webcam.

Rolling Dry Erase Board

If you are short on dry erase boards and wall space, consider a rolling dry erase board. Even when I have plenty of wall space, I love having a few of these boards on hand. It’s great to have the ability to move them from room to room or team to team. They also rotate, so you can have 2 different sets of content handy in the same place.

Dry Erase Paint

Dry erase paint can be handy if you don’t want to hang actual whiteboards, or want to cover more space without buying tons of whiteboards. Turn your wall into the whiteboard!

Hopefully, this list of supplies helped you get a handle of the purpose and reasoning behind the recommended supplies. I’m confident that your Sprint will run better if you buy the proper supplies as I’ve seen it make it a difference in all of the Sprints I’ve facilitated.

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Over the last 20 years, as I have observed, advised, and launched numerous startups, I’ve come to the conclusion that early to mid-stage companies don’t require dedicated executives for every function. A CTO is a role that doesn’t require a full-time commitment for many modern software ventures. If you are curious to learn more about what a CTO does, including quotes from some of Austin’s best CTOs, check out my story “What is a CTO?”.

As I was considering what I would do after Twyla, I kept coming back to this idea that most software companies don’t require a full CTO and the possibility of a market opportunity for me as a fractional CTO. As I would do when launching a new product, I decided to put my hypothesis to test. I began to meet with VCs and CEOs of Austin companies to better understand their needs and where I could provide value. These conversations allowed me to both validate the opportunity and to discover the 5 most common scenarios when companies need a fractional CTO.

When to consider a fractional CTO

The key business benefit of retaining a Fractional CTO is that they provide the same expertise and capability of a full-time CTO without the associated level of salary, benefits and overhead associated with adding a top level executive.

You are launching a new company or product

Most founders that I speak to, have been given the advice that they need a technical co-founder to be successful. Armed with this advice, they either hire someone who lacks leadership and business experience, or hire an experienced CTO with the expectation that they will spend a lot of time in the weeds. Both of these situations are not ideal. The junior CTO will have gaps and must learn as she goes and the senior individual must context shift between the strategic and the hyper tactical; this dynamic shifting is difficult and rarely executed well. Additionally, they will likely focus on growth and will be a drain on the resources needed to execute the tedious detail work needed to test your market and grow your business.

A fractional CTO is especially valuable in the early stages of a company or new product, as you are validating your market and testing various product strategies; allowing you to keep your burn low while you adapt and learn.

My clients hire and retain me to assist them with testing and validating potential solutions, assessing the technology landscape to highlight risks and opportunities relevant to their business, creating their product roadmap, and determining the most cost-effective way to quickly make progress towards business goals. They also include me in their pitch deck to help them as they progress through the necessary milestones to raise money and eventually grow to the point where they need to hire someone full-time.

You desire more visibility or confidence in your existing team

If your team is struggling but you are unsure of the cause, have a fractional CTO conduct a holistic technology assessment. They will help you understand why you are consistently missing deadlines, why the team’s not getting along, or why you have a general feeling that you’re not getting your money’s worth from the team.

In addition to a standard technical audit focusing on assessing operational excellence such as competencies and capabilities, I conduct a thorough audit with attention on organizational health. I’ve often found that most problems product teams face stem from relationships and lack of coherence or focus, so I’ve learned to start there first. This approach helps me guarantee that any changes made will become habits and truly transform your organization.

I’ve often found that most problems product teams face stem from relationships and lack of coherence or focus, so I’ve learned to start there first.

Your existing team needs some oversight or guidance

If you’ve opted against hiring a senior leader and instead hired junior developers, a lead developer, or outsourced development, you probably lack confidence in their ability to make the right strategic product and long term architectural decisions. Likewise, when a technical cofounder or junior CTO is struggling or simply lacking some of the skills now required of them, a fractional CTO will help them learn and adapt to the new skills required of them as the organization grows.

My clients depend on me to coach, mentor, develop and inspire their team, who I grow both personally and professionally to perform at their peak potential. I help my clients determine how and when they need to invest in growing the team. When it’s time to grow the team, I advise and guide them through proper recruiting, onboarding, and retention techniques. I have a well-established network and will leverage that network to assist in locating, attracting and retaining top talent. I draw from my diverse background to apply a broader spectrum of experience across many technologies when enhancing process and transforming culture.

You’ve lost or may lose your CTO

If you have abruptly lost your CTO, or need to end your relationship with them and don’t have someone ready to fill the role, or are struggling to attract the right full-time CTO, a fractional CTO can easily fill the gap. Providing this level of continuity is important for the health and focus of your team, the confidence of your customers, and the predictability of your software delivery.

One of my clients recently lost their CTO, and as their fractional CTO, I am providing all the value they need in 10 or fewer hours a week. They rely on me to attend weekly staff meetings, conduct one-on-ones as needed, audit technical designs, oversee DevOps, and provide sales support. They are delighted to have the confidence to tell investors that the product is still on track and the team is engaged while they have simultaneously reduced monthly burn.

You’ve never had a CTO and need a tech strategy

When your executive team lacks a seasoned CTO or CIO, your CEO, CFO, or COO is responsible for technology. They are often overwhelmed with technology vendors, technology strategy is unclear, releases lack predictability, quality suffers, and they find it challenging to make swift decisions. In today’s business environment, software is touching everything. Organizations of all types should consider how they remain relevant and grow with the demanding ever-shifting technology landscape.

I help clients to answer questions like:

1. “What do our customers actually need?
2. What should we build?
3. Should we hire or use a vendor?
4. How will this integrate with my other systems?
5. Can our systems support growth?
6. What do we need in order to invest in our team?

Many organizations lack a product mindset and instead think all of their software work as projects. In this case, I help my clients reframe their perspective from software projects to a product mindset. These clients benefit tremendously from this digital transformation which unlocks their ability to fully achieve their technology pursuits.

A fractional CTO can provide that trusted advice and guidance you require at a fraction of the cost, freeing up budget for individual contributors who will execute efficiently and effectively under their leadership.

Getting started with a fractional CTO

It will likely be a long time before you need someone full-time, but you simply can’t go without a CTO in the meantime. You need something more than an advisor but less than a full-time CTO. A fractional CTO can provide that trusted advice and guidance you require at a fraction of the cost, freeing up budget for individual contributors who will execute efficiently and effectively under their leadership.

If you are uncertain where to begin, start with a finite initial engagement and then move to a retainer after you’ve seen results and are comfortable with the working relationship.

Unlike vendors, I am independent, I am on your side and in it for the long term; I am a vendor agnostic trusted advisor.

Working with a fractional CTO

Every organization battles some level of uncertainty and risk. Meeting with a fractional CTO regularly, to establish a foundation of understanding, will allow them to quickly dive into any problem that arises and help you develop a swift mitigation plan.

Unlike vendors, I am independent, I am on your side and in it for the long term; I am a vendor agnostic trusted advisor. Even though I may not be on-site, I am always available and thinking about what you need and how to get it for you. Keep me updated regularly, so that when you have a critical problem, I am up to speed and can quickly help you address the issue.

Transition Plan

Once the time comes to hire a full-time CTO, I help my clients find the right person if they cannot promote from within. Sometimes I locate this person through my own network of CTOs. I run a meet-up for CTOs and generally know who is looking in Austin. If we need to cast a wider net, I will work with them to select the best recruiter for a retained executive search.

If you have questions about the fractional CTO model or are in need of my services, email me now at douglas@voltagecontrol.co. I’ll be happy to sit down and talk through your needs and challenges. The first meeting is always free.

The post Maybe You Need a Fractional CTO appeared first on Voltage Control.

I met Douglas in the mid 1990’s when our shared interests were primarily music. Our paths diverged, as friendships made in your late teen years often do, but I always thought fondly of my principled, punk friend. Independently, each of us established digital-centered careers in the dotcom-heyday of the late 90’s and early 00’s.

In the 2010’s, music brought us together again. This time it was music + technology at the SXSW Interactive, Film, and Music Festivals. It was refreshing to catch-up and talk about how our careers evolved. My career evolved into consumer strategy and production for digital projects; Douglas’ career evolved into technology leadership and strategy for digital products.

Digital Entrepreneurship

The late 90’s and early 00’s were exciting for early tinkerers in the digital world. Because we were working in a new medium, everything was unprecedented. Those who worked in the digital world in those early years have entrepreneurship in their veins; they’re always looking for new ways to solve problems with likeminded folks. As we conversed over avocado margaritas in 2013, we realized our disparate backgrounds would make us great teammates. We just needed a project.

A Project Emerges

In 2014, we got the chance to tackle a project together. I was assembling a team of digital professionals to build a digital team within the Philadelphia Water Department. I needed team members who could consult, guide, and build team skills on the newly developing team within the city. I asked Douglas to join the team because of his extensive knowledge of AWS best practices.

The Role Expands

We expanded his role on the team once we discovered his superb tech leadership skills. It was clear his ability to rally the team and organize processes to improve our focus would breath more life into the project. In the first meeting, Douglas identified $2,000 a month in savings based on extraneous AWS instance allocations. His recommendations helped us increase security across all digital properties, consistency in the work created by the internal team and contractor, and visibility and control over the work being completed by 3rd party developers. Teammates, from all levels, have found Douglas to be a great collaborator, great leader, and a reliable team member. Douglas’ AWS-role expanded to a broader fractional CTO consultant for the PWD digital team.

We are still doing great work for our shared client. With his leadership, we have established a plan for growing the technical skills of the digital team, a timeline to execute on, and clear standards that all consulting partners use (which allows our small team to have a larger impact).

Conclusion

I am consistently impressed with Douglas’ technical solution design, process optimization, agile project management, and requirements analysis abilities. We knew Douglas would provide tremendous value as an AWS consultant for our client, but as we worked with him we found something much more valuable. As a Fractional CTO, Douglas guides us through the technical landscape with an unfettered vision, providing tremendous value to our team in about 2–3 hours per week. We enjoy working with him and will keep him on the project as long as we have a contract with this city agency.

The post Looking for a consultant; found a CTO. appeared first on Voltage Control.

When talking with potential customers about Design Sprints I always spend some time explaining how to properly conduct the interviews on Day 5. I still encounter quite a few entrepreneurs and proprietors who are not familiar with this style of user research and confuse it with focus groups or usability studies. Without proper context on how to prepare and conduct these interviews, the outcomes are flawed and not reliable. In an effort to help you dive into your first interviews, I’ve compiled a list of common mistakes and pitfalls.

Poor Recruiting

Recruiting 5 users in 2–3 days is often a challenge. First, be super careful that you are talking to the right people; take the time to prepare a proper screener. Ask yourself what fundamental research questions you need to answer, then work backwards to determine who you need to engage. Otherwise, you risk tainting the experiment by talking to people, then challenging the recruit. Be explicit up front.

Consider the following:

• Are you looking for a new or existing user?
• Are they people who fit your Sprint target?
• Whom should we exclude?

Ask yourself what fundamental research questions you need to answer, then work backwards to determine who you need to engage.

Insufficient Interview Preparation

Build an interview plan. Start with a reminders section of important logistical things that are often easy to forget when in the heat of the moment, i.e. clean up desktop, turn off notifications, turn on caffeine app, etc.

The most neglected part of an interview is the ice-breaker. The next section of your plan should include your chit chat and warm-up questions. Think of your interviews as a flow or story arc. How will you transition and slowly guide the conversation into the topic that is at hand, without them realizing it? It is often helpful to review the recruiting screener answers for specific details about each user. Using these user specific details can help you build rapport and put them at ease.

After the warm-up questions, include a section per prototype/site you are testing. These should include your Sprint questions and any additional questions you now have, after building the prototype. Remember to challenge your assumptions.

Not all the links in the prototype will work. Spend time to familiarize yourself with the prototype so that you can assist this user when they get confused or lost. This will ensure that the interview keeps moving fluidly. Sometimes I will mock interview one of the other Sprint participants or my wife so that the first interview of the day runs without a hitch.

If you are conducting an in person interview, remember the breath mints!

Not building Rapport

Building rapport is important. When your user arrives for the session, pay close attention to your tone and body language. Smile and do whatever you can to make sure they are comfortable and feel taken care of. It is tempting to jump straight into hard questions, but if you do, you’ll come across as a lawyer and your user won’t likely open up to you. If you are conducting an in-person interview, remember the breath mints!

Pitching Your Ideas

Founders are habituated to pitching their ideas. They are pitching to convince investors to fund them, employees to join them, other companies to partner with them, and customers to buy their product. This makes it really hard for founders to switch to a listening mode, as they are in a different mode. They are pushing, not pulling and aren’t truly open to the candidates feedback. It is critical that the interviewer not present or show things, but instead simply setup the environment and begin to observe and listen.

Taking Your Own Notes

When taking your own notes, you are distracted and will miss much of the nuance. With a dedicated notetaker, you can concentrate on subtle cues from the user and dig deeper to extract more insights from them. Likewise, your notetaker will take better notes, as they can concentrate on simply capturing all the details, without having to concern themselves with the conversation.

Don’t reject feedback simply because you don’t hear what you want to hear.

Confirmation Bias

Most people are afraid of being wrong. We are taught from a young age to always know the correct answer. Because it is uncomfortable to be wrong, our brains skillfully steer us away from discovering we are wrong. As a result, it is tempting to discount or explain away evidence that doesn’t match our assumptions. Don’t reject feedback simply because you don’t hear what you want to hear.

A simple way to avoid confirmation bias is to craft your interview questions such that they attempt to disprove your assumptions. Ask yourself, what are you afraid of hearing? Keeping referring back to Sprint questions. If you truly got pessimistic, then those questions should guide you away from confirmation bias.

Stakeholders Not Watching in Real-Time

When stakeholders don’t watch the interviews in real-time, it is impossible for them to empathize with the user. If they rely on a summary from the team or are simply reviewing a previously recorded session, they will inevitably rely on their prior assumptions and will be skeptical of anything that doesn’t align with their current opinions.

Rambunctious Observation Room

Interviews are often exciting, as they can lead to both cheerful and heartbroken moments. Similar to a sporting match, it is easy to fall into a mode of cheering and booing. When this happens it is extremely difficult for anyone in the room to take objective notes. These moments are usually followed by more nuanced reactions or comments which are usually lost in the chaos. If your team, like many, are susceptible to this behavior, consider having everyone use individual headphones. This reduces the temptation to speak out and when someone does, they are less distracting to the others in the room.

Jumping to Conclusions

It is important to remain objective throughout the entire day. Don’t extract meaning from what one individual user tells you. Instead, wait for the patterns that emerge after interviewing all 5 of the users. Also, remember that at the end of the day, you are susceptible to recency bias. Your memories of the last interview are more vivid than the first. Provide ample time to digest all of the interviews and adequately synthesize the learnings. I advise my clients to meet the following week to discuss their insights and key takeaways.

The post Common Sprint Interview Mistakes appeared first on Voltage Control.

We immediately began validating the market through conversations with individuals in the health, fitness, HR and employee wellness communities. This research made it clear to us that there was an appetite for this type of program.

…the timing could not have been better when Douglas reached out to us with an interest in serving on our board.

Our goal was to produce an event in April that would encourage the community to become more active and live a healthy lifestyle. The resources to establish the necessary technology were beyond the means of our nonprofit, even with “non-profit pricing” from long term tech friends.
Time was running out; it was Thanksgiving and we hadn’t secured resources or a plan to get them. Things were not looking good. Needless to say, the timing could not have been better when Douglas reached out to us with an interest in serving on our board.

After an initial meeting with me and Will, Douglas asked if he could meet some of the other board members. Several of our board members and I met Douglas for lunch the day after Thanksgiving and walked through our programs and structure in more detail. We couldn’t have been more pleased to hear Douglas say, “I like what you guys are working to accomplish; I’d like to help you out”.

Douglas promptly got to work and delivered us a Christmas miracle. After a thorough audit, he simplified and organized our concepts, recruited technical talent who practically volunteered their time and helped oversee development of the product. Due to these efforts and my delight, we launched Million Mile Month on April 1st, 2014.

With Douglas’ guidance, we expanded HealthCode from one annual event to 4 quarterly events, amassing over 4.7 million miles of activity with estimated healthcare cost savings approaching $1 million. HealthCode programs now host over 36,000 participants, representing all 50 states, 30+ countries, and 150+ organizations. None of this would have happened without Douglas.

Douglas brings a unique perspective to building technology that I had never previously witnessed. He possesses an invaluable practical sense of technology along with an eye for business economics and financial realities. Douglas increased user satisfaction and improved engagement by first identifying and then addressing the key components for success.

I am continually amazed by Douglas’ ability to see the art of the possible, to cut through the crap to ensure we target cost effective, consumer engaging solutions that align with business objectives. From recruiting and coordinating the tech team to leading our product strategy, Douglas has been invaluable. I only wish I had known Douglas 10 years earlier.

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Regardless of what process religion you prescribe to, it is hard to argue with the benefits of iterative software development. Unfortunately, it is not enough to simply understand the benefits of listening and reacting to your market’s response to what you are building. Create a culture that supports continuous improvement and systems that support iteratively building and deploying software.

Many legacy projects suffer from lack of modularity and tight coupling between components. Modifying systems with these characteristics becomes more and more tedious and cumbersome as time passes. This can make it difficult to change one part of the system without introducing problems in other areas of the system. This problem is exacerbated when you lose members of the team who have special knowledge and additions to the team have to spend months mining out this tribal knowledge. Often these systems lack proper test coverage to alert you to defects you’ve introduced in other parts of the system.

When planning a new system or new product, consider how you will iteratively evolve the system.

When planning a new system or new product, consider how you will iteratively evolve the system. Ideally your architecture is flexible enough to withstand rapidly changing priorities and business objectives. Microservices is an approach to architecting software systems where components are deployed as individual distributed services. Typically, microservice deployments use docker containers to maintain component isolation and increase compute density.

Does your software architecture allow you to efficiently test new ideas while minimizing risk?

Whether you build your system as a monolith or as microservices it is most critical that you decouple your functions and features. This will limit the risk of unexpected interactions between components. Does your software architecture allow you to efficiently test new ideas while minimizing risk?

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