Project A Tech Insights: Recent Episodes
Project A
Tech insights from the Berlin startup scene with Project A—a VC that helps startups build effective operational teams. Led by CTO Stephan Schulze, our tech team helps startups with all things software and IT. Every week we discuss what we’ve learned from the field and tackle the tricky questions that arise when you’re trying to build a strong and resilient IT team.
Who owns the task of user tracking? Is it Product Management? Is it Marketing? or is it the Data team? The answer depends on who you ask. But it's usually the front-end engineers who have to implement it. But with so many stakeholders, things can get complicated. That's why I decided to chat with our front-end team lead, Michael Lande about how he approaches the challenges involved in user tracking.
Perhaps your startup is growing too fast and you can't keep up. Maybe you're trying to throw together an MVP on the cheap. Whatever your situation, might have considered outsourcing some development work. But projects can go off the rails if you don't plan properly. We know both sides of the story because we outsource our developers too. So who better to ask about outsourcing than Project A's own CTO, Stephan Schulze?
Most of us know what an MVP is supposed to do. .. in theory. An MVP is an early product version that is simple, cheap, and quick to build, so you can test it with real users. But if it's so simple, why do some engineering teams get stuck iterating on MVP-quality code? Why is it so hard to throw the MVP away and start from scratch? In this week's discussion, Stephan and I try to clarify this conundrum with some concrete examples.
As the startup grows, the founding CTO has to undergo a painful metamorphosis into a fully-fledged executive. Or not. Some eventually step aside and allow a more experienced hire to assume the role. Could continuing education help technical founders evolve into well-rounded CTOs who stick around for the long haul? Something like a… CTO school? Merlin chats with our own CTO, Stephan Schulze, to address this very question.
Team performance and productivity—can you really measure it accurately? And is it worth the effort? These are eternal questions that most managers are perpetually re-evaluating. Fortunately, most software development tasks are logged in one way or another. Therefore, you'd think that it would be easy to measure developer productivity. But in reality, it's anything but simple —there are just too many data points. In this session, our CTO Stephan shares his views on how to filter the signals from the noise.
What do mid-career developers do next? You could go down the leadership and management path and become a CTO. But is that the only path available? In this edition of TechInsights, we talk about some of the different tracks that senior developers can choose from when considering the next step in their careers.
With the rise of product-led growth and the developer tools market, it seems everyone’s trying to get developers to notice their products. But getting the attention of developers is famously difficult. Traditional marketing and sales tactics tend to fall flat. So how do you do it? Well, one way to find out is to ask. So I quizzed our CTO Stephan Schulze on how he thinks marketers could reach “tech people” and what skills they need to talk the talk.
Generally speaking, observability is about measuring the health of your application's internal organs. But if your tech team is tiny, what do you prioritize? You can't observe everything under the sun, but nevertheless, there are some vital signs that you should always keep an eye on. I talk to our CTO Stephan about how he approaches observability when advising startups.
If your project "has issues" you should obviously flag them early on. But not too early. There's a subtle art to the timing and delivery of warnings. Our CTO Stephan and I discuss this art in the latest edition of Tech Insights.
Recently, our CTO Stephan talked about how to handle a critical incident in production. But what do you do after the emergency is over? This week we talk about how to pick up the pieces and learn from the experience. And it's not just about process. We also cover the emotional, human aspect of post-mortems and how to foster psychological safety.
Merlin talks to our CTO Stephan Schulze about how he handles critical incidents. This week, Fastly had an outage that made headlines across the world. One could only imagine what their SRE team went through to resolve it. In this discussion, we go through the key decisions you need to make and what to do after you've resolved the incident.
Starting in the cloud is a no-brainer if you're a small fish. It's cheap and convenient. But it might not stay that way when you get bigger. At least, those were the findings of a recent article by a16z. Merlin talks to Project A CTO Stephan Schulze about the implications of this article and whether earlier-stage startups need to plan for when they outgrow the cloud.
In this session, our CTO Stephan Schulze talks about why he sees things in terms of "products" vs "projects". For example, he's said that building a company website is a project. Conversely, an organization is a product — meaning that you should think of your teams as products when scaling them up. We discuss the different aspects of these two approaches and when you should choose one over the other.