Get sh*t out of their way!

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One of the mistakes I made in the early days at Snyk was not pushing hard enough for the first incarnation of the growth teams to relinquish code ownership over some surfaces they had historical responsibility for.

Squinting, it made sense for them to own those surfaces - in a past life, they’d contributed more code to them than any other teams, and they were technically best placed to maintain that code going forward.

Every team was trying to move ever faster to keep up with broader company growth and was focused on their own thing.

But from early on, some of that ownership led to a disproportionate amount of effort being spent on non-growth work.

I recall something in one of the growth teams’ regular updates along the lines of

Code ownership ambiguity has led to an inflation of interrupt tasks

We’re investing in better understanding the impact on our growth velocity of historical code ownership through tracking interrupt work in Jira and daily written standup threads for historical reference.

Growth teams need to be empowered to focus on growth.

Nobody wants to hear excuses about why a team hasn’t been able to focus on the things they should be focused on.

As a growth team, take stock.

Inventory everything you do that isn’t directly contributing to the current strategic growth focus and objectives.

Make leadership aware.

Find ways to eliminate those things, and fast.

Don’t let the situation drag on.

As a growth leader, understand if this situation exists.

It almost always will - but to what extent?

Then….get sh*t out of their way!

At Snyk, we had a bunch of these things, and working closely with other teams, we found more suitable homes for them, with teams that had reason to want to invest in the code because it was aligned with the outcomes that they were striving for.

Yes, there was a significant effort in the knowledge transfer that went along with the transfer of ownership, but in the end, everyone benefited, including our users.

Until next time! 👋

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PPS: The observant amongst you will have noticed that this post was published on a Tuesday. This is the first change I’m making to the newsletter based on early feedback from the reader survey, which highlighted that folks felt that Mondays were very hectic for them email-wise. So at least for now, I’ll be publishing the weekly post every Tuesday.

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