These companies often have less aggressive growth goals than venture-funded ones. Non-venture funded tech companies: established tech companies that have not taken venture funding and are not publicly traded.These are typically growing companies with less proven business models. Venture-funded startups: startups raising pre-seed, seed, or Series A funding.These companies are typically valued at least at $300M, and are growing aggressively, often eyeing an IPO in a few years’ time. Venture-funded scaleups: startups with Series B or above funding.Many of these companies had previously been venture-funded. Public tech companies: publicly traded companies with technology at their core.I segregated the companies based on these categories: H ow do companies run projects? An overview of the survey results. Even within the group of large non-tech companies, some experiment with novel approaches, while others stick to doing the same thing that has been working well enough for years. A newly founded startup with five people will see success in different ways from a 1,000-person, slowly growing non-tech company. The summary of how companies manage projects is “it depends”. How do companies run projects? I ran a survey with over 100 responses. Project Management Approaches in the Industry However, it is not – and should not be – an end goal, only an enabler to reach that goal quicker. Project management is a piece in a complex and ever-changing puzzle. But there are other things that might have a greater impact on outcomes, such as focus, leadership approaches, how people work even without a process, and so on. I’m not saying how you run projects is not important: it is. The success of companies and project management approaches is not always correlated and this story is a reminder of this. Whatsapp out-executed Skype, built a more reliable messaging experience than Skype, and ultimately won the battle of messaging and communication apps. Early employees shared how they never even muttered the word and deliberately ignored all heavyweight processes. Unlike Skype, Whatsapp never bothered with a framework like Scrum. Though a much smaller organization, Whatsapp chipped away market share month after month, becoming the leading communications platform. However, while Skype moved over to Scrum, a competitor was executing ruthlessly: Whatsapp. Teams rotated Scrum Master roles, Agile coaches dropped in to give feedback on the teams, and Microsoft – which had just acquired Skype – was interested in taking inspiration from the speedup in delivery. Most teams delivered something every 2-4 weeks. We went from shipping the flagship Windows app once-a-quarter at best, to monthly shipping. Skype went all-in on Scrum, moving all teams to this methodology over a few quarters.Īnd the move to Scrum was seen as a success at Skype. All engineers and product people were sent to best-in-class Scrum training, facilitated by one of the Agile manifesto’s founders. When I joined Skype in 2012, the company had gone all-in on Scrum. Skype, Scrum, and the Reminder of What Matters Subscribe to get weekly articles like these in your inbox. This newsletter is especially relevant for engineering managers and senior and above engineers at high-growth startups and big tech. This article was originally published in The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter. How should you run projects in your team? I’ll share my personal take.īefore we jump in, here’s a personal story about why it’s sometimes hard to put a finger on how important project management approaches are.Why is the popular framework missing from most of Big Tech, and are there takeaways for companies operating outside this model? How are these done? How does the organizational setup of Big Tech influence how projects are executed? An overview of a survey with over 100 companies represented, plus key takeaways. Project management approaches across the industry.To answer the question of how different companies run engineering projects, I pulled in help from across the industry. Project management is a topic most people have strong opinions on, and I’m no exception. Menu How Big Tech Runs Tech Projects and the Curious Absence of Scrum
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