Any employee of a large company , as a rule, has a clear circle of official duties. The designer draws, the developer writes the code, the analyst shovels mountains of information, the tester looks for tricky product use scenarios ... All these people work on one common cause, therefore they necessarily interact with each other, and the project manager coordinates their work.



What happens when there are only 2-3 people in a company , and they have the same range of tasks?



First, let's see what tasks any IT company has to solve. Since the compilation of a complete list of these tasks is not the goal of this article, I will confine myself to a brief outline. So:

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Areas of activity of an IT company

1. Product development
   
   
   • Analytics
   • Development
   • Testing
   • Technical support
   
   
   
2. Promotion and sales
   
   
   • Market analysis
   • Choice of promotion channels
   • Preparation of materials
   • Interaction with the target audience
   
   
   
3. Business development
   
   
   • Thinking through the strategy
   • Planning concrete steps
   • Search and attraction of partners
   
   
   

I happened to work both in a large company and in a startup, so I can compare.



In a large company there are functional departments, each of which deals with one activity - for example, a sales department, a development department. Inside each department there are several employees. Each of them also has its own narrow area of ​​responsibility. If a company works simultaneously on several projects, then in addition to the functional departments, project teams can be formed - these are groups of employees from different functional departments, each of which only works on one project.



If we consider only the development process, it may look like this:







Each person in his place, each is important for the overall result.



A small company is just a few people: one or two founders + there may be several employees. As a rule, they all sit in the same office (and sometimes the office itself may not be) and together solve all the existing problems.



Here is a slide from the presentation of our project - our team looks like this:







Several developers plus a handyman :) This structure of the company is largely due to the fact that the author of the project is a programmer himself, so product development was initially in the first place for us. We will talk more about this in one of the following articles in our blog . And now let's focus on the features of work in a situation where one person is responsible for several areas at once.

Pros:

Everything is concentrated in one hand

The universal specialist leads the client from the first acquaintance to the completion of the project. Since he himself controls all the processes, he does not need a coordinator. No need to spend time transferring information from one participant to another. And you do not have to wait until a colleague takes care of your task - as soon as a problem has arisen, you yourself decide it.



Sees the whole picture

Such a person knows everything about his client: how many employees are in his company, what does he pay attention to when choosing a supplier and what is his beloved cat's name. This allows you to make the best decisions - both when organizing interaction with the client, and when choosing ways to perform the tasks that he sets.



He is responsible for everything

In a large company, this happens: the sales manager promises the customer the golden mountains, if only to make the sale as soon as possible and get the coveted interest. When a client does not get what he wants, he no longer turns to the sales department, but to technical support. Support staff are forced to somehow smooth out the client’s negative, or strain the next link — the developers — to make the client's wishes come true. If a person realizes that he will have to answer for his words / actions at one stage of working with a client himself, then he will try to prevent the situation described above.



Single entry point for customer

In a good way, this should also be the case in large companies: the client contacts his manager with any questions, he solves the problem himself (if necessary delegating some of the tasks to specially trained people within his company) and then reports the result to the client himself. However, in practice, it often happens that the client is sent to the accounting department for payment of the client, to the technical support for work with the program, and to agree to the lawyer upon agreement. A single point of entry is important for customers, and with a universal specialist, this is achieved by itself.

Minuses:

Everything is concentrated in one hand

Yes, this feature has both positive and negative consequences. It is good when an employee works independently on projects and does not spend time on communication with colleagues. But what happens if he turns off the process for a while (for example, he gets sick or goes on vacation)? Other company employees will be completely unaware of his business. They will have to (depending on the urgency of the situation) either to take time until the universal specialist returns to the system, or to immerse himself in the project from scratch and try to somehow help the client.



Permanent flow immersion

The universal specialist, as a rule, becomes the founder of the project. The company is already functioning, and there is still no money to maintain a large staff — you have to independently maintain defense on all fronts. This means a continuous stream of important and urgent tasks, from which it is impossible to be distracted in order to do what the head really has to do. There is no time to look at the project from the outside and think about the next steps for its development.



Constant switching between cases

The load on the employee is very high, many important and urgent matters fall on him (the rest, as a rule, are simply ignored in this situation), and there is no one to delegate them. In order not to postpone matters for too long, you have to constantly switch between them. And whatever they say about multitasking, but any switching is a waste of time to dive into the right context.



Quality suffers

Firstly, one person cannot be a professional in everything. Secondly, too limited time for a task forces even a good specialist to seek a quick, not a better solution.

What to do?

Focus on the main thing

To begin with, of course, it is necessary to determine what is important for you at this stage of development. And then learn to say no to everything else. For example:

• Abandon complex rework that only a small segment of your audience needs.
• Postpone until better times the development of a new company website
• Do not waste time on dubious promotion channels

Part of the process to outsource

Now almost any task you can find an external artist. No own designer - you can hire a freelancer for one-time drawing of the logo or icons in the application. We need to increase sales - call centers and contextual advertising specialists are at your service. The same applies to accounting and legal issues: it is not necessary to delve into all the nuances of these complex areas yourself - it is better to solve them with the help of an outsourced specialist.



Hire more people

Sooner or later it will have to be done, but there is a problem. New people have to pay a salary. In order to have additional money, we need new customers. And in order to have time to work with new customers, we need additional employees. A vicious circle from which somehow you need to find a way out.



Any thoughts on this topic? I invite you to share them in the comments.