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I've experienced joining a startup and noticing there are so much work to do. I started to write a list of stuff to do and it's huge. Difficult to prioritize co

I've experienced joining a startup and noticing there are so much work to do. I started to write a list of stuff to do and it's huge. Difficult to prioritize correctly. Very tempted to yak-shake all over the place.

vosper 4y ago
And here I am with my puny razor, when I could have been shaking the thing!
ryanbrunner 4y ago
I've worked for small (< 100 employees, and mostly < 20) startups for more or less my entire career, and one thing that's been helpful for me is to never try and think about EVERYTHING you need to do, and aggressively try to eliminate any effort to do so. If you have any influence over a backlog, roadmap, or list of stories, advocate eliminating anything that's not an immediate concern (bugs are an exception - sometimes it makes sense to purge outdated bugs, but it shouldn't be done lightly). Delete the stories, take things off your roadmap. Almost without exception, they do nothing but generate stress about an insurmountable amount of things to do, more than half of the things won't ever be worked on (which is good! it means you learned something else was more important), and will just lead to people, both internal and external, getting frustrated that "things aren't getting done" even when they are.
- lbriner 4y ago
  I think this sounds great in theory (and I do agree with you) but depending on how many people you have in the company, you will have sales arguing for one thing, devs arguing for another, product might want another and marketing need the stats to do their job. One of the hardest things is prioritising dissimilar tasks, especially since the return on investment is not always easy to see or might take a number of weeks/months. Maybe the marketing stats really help marketing target more of the right people but maybe they don't or maybe something unrelated stopped the figures from improving after you did the work. I suspect someone has done research on how to add real cost/benefit to some of the intangible things to try and objectively rank them.
  - ryanbrunner 4y ago
    Oh for sure, I don't think what I'm suggesting is a solution in any way for how you decide what's most important. But a lot of times, "throw everything on the roadmap / backlog" is really a non-solution in disguise - rather than making tough decisions about what's most important, the answer becomes "everything".
caseysoftware 4y ago
There will ALWAYS be a long list of things to do. You have to prioritize on what will a) move the business forward or b) unlock other people/opportunities that will move the business forward. That could mean improving features, sales funnel, marketing, hiring, or a ton of other things. It really matters on what the risks/opportunities are at any given moment.

vosper 4y ago

And here I am with my puny razor, when I could have been shaking the thing!

ryanbrunner 4y ago

I've worked for small (< 100 employees, and mostly < 20) startups for more or less my entire career, and one thing that's been helpful for me is to never try and think about EVERYTHING you need to do, and aggressively try to eliminate any effort to do so. If you have any influence over a backlog, roadmap, or list of stories, advocate eliminating anything that's not an immediate concern (bugs are an exception - sometimes it makes sense to purge outdated bugs, but it shouldn't be done lightly). Delete the stories, take things off your roadmap. Almost without exception, they do nothing but generate stress about an insurmountable amount of things to do, more than half of the things won't ever be worked on (which is good! it means you learned something else was more important), and will just lead to people, both internal and external, getting frustrated that "things aren't getting done" even when they are.

lbriner 4y ago
I think this sounds great in theory (and I do agree with you) but depending on how many people you have in the company, you will have sales arguing for one thing, devs arguing for another, product might want another and marketing need the stats to do their job. One of the hardest things is prioritising dissimilar tasks, especially since the return on investment is not always easy to see or might take a number of weeks/months. Maybe the marketing stats really help marketing target more of the right people but maybe they don't or maybe something unrelated stopped the figures from improving after you did the work. I suspect someone has done research on how to add real cost/benefit to some of the intangible things to try and objectively rank them.
- ryanbrunner 4y ago
  Oh for sure, I don't think what I'm suggesting is a solution in any way for how you decide what's most important. But a lot of times, "throw everything on the roadmap / backlog" is really a non-solution in disguise - rather than making tough decisions about what's most important, the answer becomes "everything".

caseysoftware 4y ago

There will ALWAYS be a long list of things to do. You have to prioritize on what will a) move the business forward or b) unlock other people/opportunities that will move the business forward. That could mean improving features, sales funnel, marketing, hiring, or a ton of other things. It really matters on what the risks/opportunities are at any given moment.