Sharegain’s R&D team collaborates with our internal stakeholders as well as our clients, to understand their needs and issues, and resolve them through technological solutions. As the company scales post series B, we sat with Amnon Cohen, Head of Product, to learn more about our R&D operation.
Amnon began by describing how the R&D team structures its workload. “Previously, our R&D model was based on receiving specific requirements and projects from the executive team, stakeholders, and the Sales team. Many call this system a ‘delivery model’, or an ‘IT model’.”
“Although our work received positive feedback from our colleagues and clients, we found that the delivery model resulted in various bottle necks and tension points. Another major issue with the model was that it stifled creativity – intelligent people don’t need to be told what to do. So, to let our team be their best, we pivoted to a new R&D model, the ‘empowered team model’.”
“We started by restructuring the R&D team into ‘squads’, which can also be described as cross functional teams, that focus on specific domain problems, metrics and outcomes. Today, we don’t give our squads specific tasks, rather we tell them what business or product objectives we want to change. The teams then have the freedom to come up with the metrics to measure their success, discover and deliver the best solutions in whatever creative way they think is the most effective, and in doing so they push the dials in the required directions.”
Evidence-based development
When asked about the typical pitfalls in R&D, Amnon shared, “developing something that no one uses or wants. It happens a lot if you assume customer wants and needs without directly communicating with them. One of the hard truths in R&D is that some of the things you come up with won’t work for the end user.”
“To avoid such problems, we deploy what we call ‘continuous discovery’, based on constant and direct communication with clients, our end users. We share work-in-progress prototypes, essentially co-creating with them, and we only start coding once we have evidence, from the end users themselves, that we have a viable solution.”
Empowering strong and successful squads
How, then, we asked Amnon, do you scale a team at pace? “In terms of structuring and organising our teams, we strive to only hire highly engaged, business oriented, exceptionally technical developers, as well as product managers and product designers that show ownership and accountability. We want to move faster with stronger and leaner squads and so we focus on coaching and mentoring our squad members to competency on all fronts. We are also developing our tech leads, to ensure there is enough support and effective leadership within each squad.”
“The ‘empowered team model’ is key to maintaining the R&D team’s high satisfaction levels, high productivity, and low churn rate as we scale”, Amnon continues. “Managing our product development on the basis of designing squads and setting objectives rather than specific top-down instructions, has enabled the R&D team to scale efficiently and sustainably. This positive feedback loop, based on excellence, accountability and trust, is a fundamental building block of our company DNA.”
Amnon Cohen is pictured above, second from the right, wearing the blue, red and white shirt.
Interested in joining one of our R&D squads? Visit our Careers site.
