One of those things that you have to do a lot of as a small startup is switching between planning and execution modes… sometimes too quickly.
Recently we started working on advocacy tools that 5 Calls could provide to other groups, giving them the same sort of mobilization that we are able to generate for our own topics.
As we’re making this switch over from campaign tools to advocacy tools and thinking about what is compelling for other orgs, there’s a lot of planning for what a product actually looks like (and that’s different from what we actually use for the 5calls.org issues, for a few reasons) and because we’re later to the game than I would have liked, we need to figure that shit out relatively quickly.
So a lot of thinking goes into what the product is, and I try to organize as best I can into what is MVP-worthy versus what is something we can build down the line.
The weird part is that we found someone to pilot this new product with very fast, almost before I was even sufficiently happy with the definition for what it was going to be, so swapping over to build, build, build mode was sudden.
Now that the MVP is done, I realize how much I forget about the planning part when I’m busy putting all the pieces together. It’s time to revisit the plans and see what we did and what might be next.
Perhaps some one with more discipline can do both modes at the same time. I find switching between the two very taxing, so I do as much of one as I can before I need to switch to another to move the product forward.
I imagine this is easier with a dedicated product side and engineering side! Hopefully in the future we’ll have that luxury, but for now I have to make sure I’m covering both with some regularity.