Work smarter not harder

The vacation period is soon over (at least in Finland) and people are getting back to work. Hopefully you had the time to reflect on past experiences, and maybe it would be time to do things smarter and not just “as usual”? Else the same problems and issues will soon rise.

A common issue we see in organizations is that a business needs a product faster than they thought they would, but the development team takes time to get up to speed. They don’t have enough resources or expertise, they have too many daily tasks – whatever the reasons, they can’t accomplish what the business needs in the timeframe they’ve been given. 

The situation can feel frustrating, de-motivating or even hopeless, leading to escalations and internal conflicts. From our point-of-view it usually boils down to 2 things. 

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1. Prioritization: Identify core and non-core tasks

In every project, there are tasks that only certain people in your team can do. Creating software is no different. These tasks that only your team can (and want to) do are your core tasks. Core tasks require deep domain knowledge, focus and understanding of your company's business. They are activities that improve your services’ value for your customers, and act as a direct source of profit or are the things that build the business IPR. 

Any other tasks that are boring, repetitive, and require low-to-moderate domain knowledge are non-core tasks and don’t have to be done by your team. These could be things like fixing bugs, troubleshooting, refactoring or updating and implementing UI design. 

According to studies it takes 23 minutes to switch between tasks. With our customers we have identified that 20%-40% of all tasks are non-core tasks, but still tasks that need to be done. By combining task switch time with amount of non-core tasks that the core team has to handle, it’s quite easy to see why internal issues and frustration rise.

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2. Flexibility: Identify core skills you need in your team 

As talented as your team members are, their tech skills will be specialized. This will mean that they might not have the required skills for a certain project, or at least parts of a certain project. Requirements between projects can also differ. Take note of which skills are specifically required for your project and what the confidence of your team is in handling them. These could be programming languages, tech stacks, logic, architecture, backend and also front end related tasks all the way to module design support. 

One common example is Hubspot development, where we both support designers in creating the desired solution and when ready to develop and implement it. This way the core team can focus on solving the customer problem and design of the desired outcomes. Deep tech skills in this case are by design not part of the core team setup, but in most cases the core team has the deep tech skills we then augment and extend.

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Time to work smarter?

It’s easy to start working with us. You don’t need excessive documentation or to know exactly what you want us to do, all you need to do is get in touch with us and have a rough idea of the tasks you’d like to give us. With a consultation, we can tell how we can best help you and start collaborating to build the software of your dreams!

What’s more is when you work with us, we offer platform transparency so you can see our developer(s) move through the tasks that you’ve assigned and keep an eye on how the work is progressing. You never have to worry and can stay present and involved, all while sharing the burden of the project with our very capable developers. 

It’s a no-brainer. NerdCloud can help you to speed up your business project like you never thought was possible! With fast results, guaranteed code quality, a seamless partnership, and whatever you need whenever you need it, we’re confident that we can help you to complete your project easily. 

If you still have more questions, we have a lot of answers available here, in our FAQ section. If you need more information or want to begin a partnership with us, please do get in touch with us today!

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