248. Q&A Episode: How to Keep Tech Teams On Track Without Micromanaging

Here are the listener questions Sophia Matveeva answers in this episode:

• What should I be asking in product meetings if I don’t have a technical background?
• I’m leading a digital transformation initiative, but my tech team keeps telling me things take longer than expected. Should I push back? How? 
• How do I know if I need a technical co-founder, or if I can build my product with an agency or no-code tools?

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• FREE download: Anonymous Survey on the Tech–Business Divide
• YouTube: How to Work with Developers: A Guide for Non-Technical Leaders

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction 

02:29 Navigating Product Meetings Without Technical Background

06:15 Managing Digital Transformation Timelines

10:56 Technical Co-Founder or Agency?

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Transcript

Sophia Matveeva (00:00.414)
Your main aim is to figure out and to keep their focus on how product decisions relate to business outcomes.

Sophia Matveeva (00:13.454)
Welcome to the Tech for non-Turkeys podcast. I'm your host, tech entrepreneur, executive coach and Chicago booth MBA, Safiya Matheer. My aim here is to help you have a great career in the digital age. In a time when even your coffee shop has an app, you simply have to speak tech. On this podcast, I share core technology concepts, help you relate them to business outcomes, and most importantly,

Share practical advice on what you can do to become a digital leader today. If you want to a great career in the digital age, this podcast is for you. Hello, smart people. How are you today? In this episode, we are going to do a Q &A episode. So I asked you a few weeks ago to send me your questions so I could answer them here.

And so today we've got questions from three listeners. And if you want to have your questions answered, obviously send them to info at techfornontechies.co and that email address is below in the trailers. So again, that's tech for non techies, rather info at tech for non techies.co. So today we've got questions from somebody who is working in digital transformation at a corporate.

We've got a question from a non-technical founder and we've got somebody who works in a strategy at a retailer. Okay, so by the way, if none of those things apply to you, if you are not exactly one of those people, you are still going to hear useful things about how to succeed in the digital age. So I suggest that you keep on listening, you keep on watching. And if you are enjoying this lesson, if you're enjoying this Q &A,

then please leave the show rating and review or just press like if you are on YouTube. Okay. So let's get to our first question. So we've got this email. I'm going to keep all of the names anonymous. So we've got somebody who's a strategy director at a retail company and they say that, okay, I'm in meetings with product managers and with engineers. And I don't know what I should be contributing in these discussions. So what should I be asking in product meetings?

Sophia Matveeva (02:29.599)
if I don't have this technical background and this is somebody who says they're a strategy director at a retailer. Well, so first of all, you are clearly there to bring some sort of value and that value is clearly not going to be technical, so don't worry about it. So obviously if you're a strategy director, you understand the company's business goals. So why the company is doing what it's doing, what the big vision is.

My advice in general, my advice in general for you is to focus, basically keep on bringing the focus to why are we doing this in the first place? So if you think about it this way, engineers focus on the how and on the business side, you focus really on the why. So for example, the product managers and the engineers might be discussing a particular feature. And so you could ask, how does this feature support our business objective?

So you could even say our business objective is to, I don't know, open three more stores in the US by the end of the next quarter. I just made that up, I don't know. But how would creating this feature support our expansion goals? You could also ask another kind of more general question. When they're talking about a new release, releasing a new version, you could say...

So what does success look like for this release? So essentially what are we looking for? And that brings people back to measuring. You shouldn't have a team that's only creating features just because it's fun to create them. You always want to measure results. So what does success look like and how does the success relate to our business strategy? Another question that you should be asking is what are the biggest risks in releasing this?

What are the biggest risks that we have in our product today? And if people start explaining to you in ways that you just completely don't understand, tell them and say, sorry, I don't understand. Can you just explain that to me again? Can you try it in plain English? And, know, don't be too apologetic about this because obviously if you're a strategy director,

Sophia Matveeva (04:47.917)
at a major corporate, you have done quite well for yourself. So you know some stuff. It's just, if you don't know technical jargon, you know, that's not, that's because you basically weren't, weren't worn with it. So don't be afraid to ask for explanation. But in general, your main aim is to figure out and to keep their focus on how product decisions relate to business outcomes. So you literally just say, how does this decision and the product relate?

to our business objectives. If you just keep on asking those questions, you'll actually be bringing in a lot of value. And in my experience, engineers and product teams can sometimes actually forget what the business's vision is. So even just by saying what the business's vision is and what the goals are, you're bringing in a lot of value. And also it's kind of your home turf. Like if you're the strategy director, you know what the vision is. So you're bringing in your expertise.

And this is exactly where you're there. Okay. Let's get to the second question. One second. So I've got somebody who works in operations in finance. So this person says, I'm leading a digital transformation initiative, but my team keeps saying to me that our releases are going to take longer than we originally thought. Do I push back? How do I keep on working?

without damaging trust. Okay, this is obviously me taking the questions and annotating them. Okay. So first of all, this happens all of the time. So if like, don't think that you're an idiot doing something wrong, this happens all of the time. So this happens, you know, in every situation, in every company that's going through a digital transformation. Don't, you know, yes, 70 % of digital transformations fail, but

It doesn't sound like you're necessarily on that path yet, so don't be afraid. So the first thing is you need to start asking for transparency, basically. So you could say, okay, well, so you gave me an estimate last week for, I don't know, it will take another month for this, but now this week, the estimate has changed. Why is that? Why has the estimate changed? Okay.

Sophia Matveeva (07:14.383)
And again, if they explain things to you in a way that you don't understand, ask for clarification. What you often, what on the business side, we often don't know is that actually we are making it harder for ourselves by basically asking for super complicated things that take ages to create. So what I like to do when this kind of thing happens is to say, well, are there things that we can take out? Like what features can we delay?

What can we take out? know, if we needed to release something in a month's time out of all of this, what could we realistically do? And then that way you're getting into this collaborative decision-making where, you know, like the worst thing is when the business leaders are saying, we want this and the engineers are saying, that's impossible. And then that's where the discussion ends. And like, that's really not productive. Whereas if you get into this conversation of, okay, well,

what can you do, what's realistic? And then you start saying to the engineers, well, okay, so these features are really important because our key customers said that they need this in the next month, but these features are not super important. They're kind of nice to have and we can wait until a bit later. And then that way you get into collaborative decision-making and then also you can start understanding why some things take longer. You basically can also

do just time boxing and you can say, okay, if we needed to ship in two weeks, what could we ship in two weeks? That adds value. And then just say, okay, in two weeks, this is what we have agreed together. Make sure it's together. And then if you agree together, then it's actually much more likely to happen.

Sophia Matveeva (09:02.797)
Don't challenge the timelines necessarily, but challenge the priorities behind them. So maybe there are priorities that engineers have been working on that actually you think are not necessarily priorities, and this is where collaboration is really, really important. So in the last episode, I talked about doing an anonymous survey to understand the tech and non-tech tension.

So it sounds like you might have some of that. I'm not sure, obviously I don't know about the situation exactly, but it sounds like you might have this kind of tech and non-tech tension at your company. So if you haven't listened to last week's episode, go and listen to that and then get that anonymous survey to survey your tech team and your business team, basically understand what's really going on. that's at techfornontechies.co forward slash survey and also in the show notes.

There is an episode that I did recently on how to work with developers that I think you might find super useful. Okay. Now we've got a question from a non-technical founder. Okay. This. So she says, I'm not sure whether I should find a technical co-founder or hire an agency. And you talk about building things with no code tools and AI. So what, how do I decide? Okay. That's quite a broad question.

So basically it just depends where you are in your journey. So if you are super early stage, like if you're at the point where you have an idea, you think it's going to work, you have only spoken to some people basically just to find out what the problem is, you are still in the very, very early stages and this is not the time to be spending money on expensive people.

So if you are still in this validation time, I would suggest that you use no code and specifically AI tools to create a prototype and test it. There are lots of episodes that I've done earlier on how to use AI and no code tools, but my favorite to create a prototype are Galileo and Wizard, and Wizard is spelled U-I-Z-A-R-D, but there are lots of others. basically create a prototype using AI tools.

Sophia Matveeva (11:25.945)
test it, so basically take it to your target users, get some feedback, and then you start finding out does the thing that you want to build, does it actually need to exist? So if you're still validating, you're not hiring anybody. If you are past that stage and you know that the thing, you've actually got some evidence for why this thing needs to exist, you have created a prototype, you've tested it with some people, then okay.

This is when it's time to really considering what like bringing other people in. So if you're building something incredibly complex, a technical co-founder could be useful. But in my experience, people who are just spending their time hunting around for a co-founder, they're actually not working on building the business. And that's really not a good idea. That will hold you back. So my advice is if you've done the validation, start basically bring on board

whoever you can, whoever you can to help you create it. if you can, if you've got some money, you can hire an agency. If you've got a little bit like a tiny amount of money, you could hire somebody maybe from Upwork to help you build something potentially on Bubble. Or maybe, you know, a fairly junior full stack developer. Maybe you could get some full stack developers who are still students to help you create a first version. I've seen companies do that.

So basically use whatever tools you have at your disposal to bring in some sort of technical help. And at the beginning, just be aware that your first technical help is probably not going to be your forever technical help. know, everybody looks at kind of like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and sees this amazing bromance, which is slightly deteriorated later, but that's another story. But essentially they see this collaboration from

young age to building this multi-billion dollar company. Okay, that's wonderful, but a lot, you know, that doesn't happen most of the time. Most of the time, the first technical collaborate or hire that you're going to have is not going to be with you forever. So get whoever you can to help you build it. Be careful of bringing in co-founders at an early stage before you've done anything with them, before you've really worked with them, before they've delivered anything.

Sophia Matveeva (13:53.643)
Because if you start signing equity agreements and you start giving away equity, even if it's vested, and then you figure out three months later that they're just not that dedicated and that they're a co-founder of five other startups, then you're just going to have to unwind that. So basically to recap, she's still validating UCI no-go tools. If you are past that stage, bring in whoever you can with the resources that you've got. If they are not the

You know, you're forever person, that's fine. Just build something, get some validation, get some traction, maybe get some customers, even with a simple product with not particularly scalable technology. After you've done that, you can then either raise money, get some money from an accelerator, get some money from a customer and upgrade, maybe start working with a better agency or start hiring more expensive people.

I hope that you have all found this useful. Tell me which ones, which questions resonate with you most, which answers you found most useful. So let me know by either commenting below or just sending me a message. You could get in touch with me on LinkedIn, on Instagram, but if you want to have your questions answered, then write to info at techfun and techies.co. And if you found this episode useful, as always, I'm asking you please like this below.

or leave this show a rating and a review. Thank you very much. I shall be back with you next week. Ciao.