The concept of a small web studio in the harsh Siberian conditions
How to manage a small web-studio in a provincial town? Small - it is 3-4 people, taking into account the manager himself. Of course, I can’t give a ready-made recipe (not enough experience), but it’s very good to share some of my own thoughts.
In my opinion, this is the most important aspect, since the team is small and everyone constantly communicates with each other, knows about the successes and failures of colleagues (in professional terms, and sometimes not only), the mood of each affects the overall mood of the team, in general, all in the "theme" of the events. Earnings motivation should not be the basis, as the concept of "good money" changes over time, in recent times in a big way, as prices for goods and services grow. What we can do? We must motivate people with interesting projects so that work does not turn into a routine, each employee sets new and new tasks, proposes optimization and automation of some processes (which can also turn into an interesting task). At first glance - nothing complicated, how many tasks, just do it, take it and do it. But where is the interest? As a rule, all tasks are typical (product catalog, product pages, company section, location maps, etc.), so you have to invent tasks for yourself. Everything came up perfectly with the task - do it, but where do you get the time? Time is in planning ...
I studied and re-read quite a lot of time planning systems, but decided to stay on small leaves on a magnetic board. The tasks for each employee are posted on it, and as they are carried out, the sheet is transferred from the “for execution” field to “in work” and “completed”. The advantage is that it is always clear who is doing what, what and how many cases he has left, what has been done. Why board? Because you can transfer your tasks from a virtual presentation to a real one, “here it lies, written on a piece of paper”. I think that for now this is a real working system, which will save us a lot of time in discussing and setting tasks. The discussion will of course remain, but it will take less time, and just at the moment of discussion all the tasks will be put in order and in turn.
There are also “burning” tasks, they are written on a red leaflet and are considered urgent (anything can happen), the employee can immediately note for himself that there is an unforeseen task that needs to be solved and morally prepared. And it can not be put on the spot first "for execution". Also, the tasks on the leaflets should be written, approximately, equivalent. Let them be many, but it will allow you to navigate at least approximately in time (well, you can agree that each leaf takes 1-1.5).
I think this will greatly help in the development.
The main problem is that each person occupies a key position, and he has no replacement. There is a programmer, there is a coder, there is a designer (part-time manager), there is an illustrator. The success of the project depends on each person, and people should perfectly understand this. Over time, of course, we will have to expand and share the functionality, but for the time being we cannot afford it financially.
In the harsh Siberian conditions of a small town (300k population) there are not too many customers who understand that a quality website costs quality money, but there are (pah-pah-pah) customers. And these clients also turn into key ones.
The result is key employees - key customers. Excellent, straight stronghold of reliability and stability. Therefore, in order to somehow stabilize their existence, they decided (as early as a year ago, to be honest) to make their project (about it later) for myself. There are interesting tasks (motivation), not tight deadlines (planning, you can roll back the scheme described above) and it should bring financial stability to our work so that at least part of the client ceases to be key.
')
That's interesting to me to hear the opinion of the habrasoobshchestva, how do you like this model of work? What are the flaws? Tips?
Motivation
In my opinion, this is the most important aspect, since the team is small and everyone constantly communicates with each other, knows about the successes and failures of colleagues (in professional terms, and sometimes not only), the mood of each affects the overall mood of the team, in general, all in the "theme" of the events. Earnings motivation should not be the basis, as the concept of "good money" changes over time, in recent times in a big way, as prices for goods and services grow. What we can do? We must motivate people with interesting projects so that work does not turn into a routine, each employee sets new and new tasks, proposes optimization and automation of some processes (which can also turn into an interesting task). At first glance - nothing complicated, how many tasks, just do it, take it and do it. But where is the interest? As a rule, all tasks are typical (product catalog, product pages, company section, location maps, etc.), so you have to invent tasks for yourself. Everything came up perfectly with the task - do it, but where do you get the time? Time is in planning ...
Planning
I studied and re-read quite a lot of time planning systems, but decided to stay on small leaves on a magnetic board. The tasks for each employee are posted on it, and as they are carried out, the sheet is transferred from the “for execution” field to “in work” and “completed”. The advantage is that it is always clear who is doing what, what and how many cases he has left, what has been done. Why board? Because you can transfer your tasks from a virtual presentation to a real one, “here it lies, written on a piece of paper”. I think that for now this is a real working system, which will save us a lot of time in discussing and setting tasks. The discussion will of course remain, but it will take less time, and just at the moment of discussion all the tasks will be put in order and in turn.
There are also “burning” tasks, they are written on a red leaflet and are considered urgent (anything can happen), the employee can immediately note for himself that there is an unforeseen task that needs to be solved and morally prepared. And it can not be put on the spot first "for execution". Also, the tasks on the leaflets should be written, approximately, equivalent. Let them be many, but it will allow you to navigate at least approximately in time (well, you can agree that each leaf takes 1-1.5).
I think this will greatly help in the development.
Studio problems
The main problem is that each person occupies a key position, and he has no replacement. There is a programmer, there is a coder, there is a designer (part-time manager), there is an illustrator. The success of the project depends on each person, and people should perfectly understand this. Over time, of course, we will have to expand and share the functionality, but for the time being we cannot afford it financially.
In the harsh Siberian conditions of a small town (300k population) there are not too many customers who understand that a quality website costs quality money, but there are (pah-pah-pah) customers. And these clients also turn into key ones.
The result is key employees - key customers. Excellent, straight stronghold of reliability and stability. Therefore, in order to somehow stabilize their existence, they decided (as early as a year ago, to be honest) to make their project (about it later) for myself. There are interesting tasks (motivation), not tight deadlines (planning, you can roll back the scheme described above) and it should bring financial stability to our work so that at least part of the client ceases to be key.
')
That's interesting to me to hear the opinion of the habrasoobshchestva, how do you like this model of work? What are the flaws? Tips?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/60115/
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