Living Smarter not Harder: Building Mobile Products the Happy Way!

[Talk at AppDevCon, 16th March in Amsterdam]

In a world full of hustle and work harder, we at Buffer are trying to go at it in a different way. In this talk I would love cover what it means to lead a remote Mobile Team from idea to product reality. What challenges we found on the way and what things we are learning while approaching this whole process in a happy way.

Transcript

1. Building Mobile Products The Happy Way Living Smarter not Harder Marcus Wermuth Mobile Lead at Buffer 16th March 2018 - AppDevconNL
2. Not about Writing Code
3. This Talk is more About Mobile Teams
4. Warning: Freelancers this can still be interesting for you.
5. Warning: Freelancers this can still be interesting for you.
6. Attention: This will still be interesting for freelancers.
7. Hi I am Marcus
8. Mobile Lead at Buffer @mwermuth
9. From Engineer to Manager
10. My Journey
11. What does Buffer do?
12. Buffer Publish Buffer Reply Buffer Analyze
14. Culture/Values
15. We are a fully- distributed Company
17. Seems all quite good?
18. Mobile First
19. Disconnection
20. Mobile is (still) hard
21. Challenges
22. Reactive not Proactive
23. Copy of Web
24. Challenges
25. Something needed to change.
26. 3 Things I consider important
27. Build a Happy Team Be a no-ego doer $ Live Smarter not Harder
28. Build a Happy Team
29. Build a Happy (remote) Team
30. What does that mean?
31. Artificial Harmony
32. –Patrick Lencioni “Great teams do not hold back with one another. They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal.“ http://bit.ly/artificial-harmony
33. Team
34. Happy
35. – Albert Schweitzer “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
36. Team > Product
37. Can we measure it?
39. How can we influence it?
40. Culture
41. (Remote)
42. Purpose
43. We will aim to build beautiful, high quality and focused mobile products that will enable our users to achieve everything they need to do while on the go. Mobile at Buffer will work alongside Buffer’s web products to provide the best knowledge about iOS+Android, and help build context aware products. Mobile Vision
44. - Mobile Developer at Buffer “This is huge for us, because it helps solidify what we are about over in mobile and how we get things done. We haven't had something like that before so it's super exciting!“
45. Trust Transparency
46. Have fun!
47. Live Smarter not Harder $
48. Sounds nice, but…
49. …does it work?
50. Under the right circumstances!
51. What is the alternative?
54. Would you like to work 14h a day?
55. Don’t make things hard for yourself.
56. Continuous Integration
58. Tests…
59. Quality means less stress!
60. Advocate for Quality + Refactoring
61. Learn to say no!
62. Source: http://blog.crisp.se/2016/01/25/henrikkniberg/making-sense-of-mvp
63. http://bit.ly/buffer-cycles
64. 2 week free roaming
65. Make small changes first!
66. Be a no-ego doer
67. Missed Opportunities
68. Missionaries > Mercenaries
69. Don’t forget who you are building it WITH.
71. Constraints
72. iOS vs. Android
74. Talk to each other?
75. Yes but not only!
76. Build Connections
77. Friendly not necessarily Friends
78. Ignore the Organisation Chart
79. Snackchats bit.ly/buffer-snackchat
80. Don’t forget who you are building it FOR.
81. Motivation
82. Reviews
84. Customer Support
85. Accountability
86. Advocacy Days
87. Question the Status Quo!
88. Build a Happy Team Be a no-ego doer $ Work Smarter not Harder
89. Dank je Thank you! @mwermuth
90. Q&A @mwermuth