Nurturing Top-Notch Tech Teams

Over the last 10 years, Atomic Object has grown from 7 to 43 employees. We’ve tried many ideas to enhance our engineering culture, build strong bonds between team members, and increase business alignment across the company. We keep what works and throw out what doesn’t. Here are a few ways we build connections between team members and keep our culture strong.

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1. Mike Marsiglia and Drew Colthorp www.atomicobject.com Nurturing Top-notch Tech Teams
2. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 2 Our Challenge
3. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 3 We are poly-skilled, co-located, teams of makers
4. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 4 helping companies & entrepreneurs create multi-platform software products
5. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 5 that people love to use.
6. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 6 We love making awesome software,
7. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 7 and we’re dedicated to our culture,
8. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 8 so as we grow,
9. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 9 we want to hold on to the things
10. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 10 that make us strong and unique.
11. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 11 Atomic in 2002 • 7 employees — all developers • Close-knit • Direct access to everyone • Communication is easy
12. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 12 Atomic GR in 2013 • 43 employees in two offices • Developers, designers, testers, and more • Communication is a challenge
13. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com How do we teach and integrate new employees? How do we build bonds? How do we keep our culture strong? 13
14. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 14 Economics of AO
15. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 15 Economics of AO Annual class for new employees The basics of how our business works: • how we make money • how we spend money • how we stay competitive • other metrics we care about Taught by President or Vice President
16. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com Economics of AO Topics • Basic financial terms • How to read our profit and loss statement • Our open books management • How to use our company financial model to experiment with ideas We’re considering adding other classes: • The Marketing of AO • The Communication of AO 16
17. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 17 Information Radiators
18. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 18 Information Radiators Why? • Economics of AO not visible, not on peoples’ minds. • Want to encourage continual awareness • Radiators aren’t “Out of site, out of mind” • Encourages thinking that’s consistent with the operation of the company and business model.
19. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 19 Information Radiators Types • Continuous Integration Monitor • Stoplight • Server Monitor • Central Dashboard
20. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 20 Central Dashboard
21. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 21 Central Dashboard Shows how busy/billable every employe is. • X axis – Average hours/week for current quarter • Y axis – Percentage of time spent on projects Each person will fall into 1 of 3 quadrants: • Green zone – Working full-time & highly utilized • Yellow zone – Evaluate your non-billable activities; are you using your time wisely? • Red zone – Not meeting expectations Utilization
22. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 22 Central Dashboard Possible Risks: • Competition to have more hours • Non-billable time isn’t bad – should just be considered against other possible activities (billable or not) Utilization
23. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 23 Central Dashboard Each employee blogs every 40 days. As your due date approaches, your bar grows shorter. • Yellow means 10 days left. • Red means you’re overdue. Blog Radiator
24. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 24 Central Dashboard Shows how our active projects are testing. Continuous Integration Aggregator
25. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 25 Central Dashboard Real-time analytics via ChartBeat. Blog & Website Traffic
26. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 26 Culture Pairs
27. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com Culture Pairs We practice pair programming – what about a culture pair? • Every new employee is assigned a culture pair • Form a relationship • Transmit AO culture • Make it easy to ask questions • Actively seek out opportunities to teach and learn Mixed results: participation tends to drop off quickly. 27
28. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 28 Pair Lunches
29. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 29 Pair Lunches Goal • Foster personal relationships Rules • 2 employees have lunch together • Company pays • Not more than once a month for each pair • Encouraged to talk about fun or personal topics
30. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 30 Pair Lunches Graph shows our pair lunch data for 2012: • 228 pair lunches; that’s 450ish hours of bonding • Lots of people participated • Lots of random connections • Bold lines show common pairs (they’re rare, which is good)
31. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 31 Spin Down
32. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 32 Spin Down • Monthly Friday evening party w/bartender & snacks • Chance to bond, share project stories • Invite families, customers, sales opps, potential hires
33. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 33 Workshop Series
34. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com Workshop Series Why? • We’re becoming a firm that specializes in product dev. • We all do design. • Needed a way to spread design thinking about the company. 34 Strategy Scenarios Sketching Planning Prototypes IA & IxD Patterns Markup Coding Hi-fidelity Design Designers Developers
35. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 35 Workshop Series Internal, crowd-sourced professional dev. series • 10 Workshops (5 after work with beer & 5 during lunch) • Average attendance: 22 (Min: 18, Max: 30) Topics included • What is design? • Storytelling • Design thinking • Visualizing ideas • Visualizing data
36. @atomicobject spin.atomicobject.com 36 Tactic Cost Impact Economics of AO 2 hours per new employee Business understanding Information Radiators Design and Development time Personal responsibility Culture Pair Free Distributed management Pair Lunches $28 per pair lunch Personal relationships Spin Down $500 per event Personal relationships Design Series $19/hr of training Broader design knowledge