Fertig.app #1 — The beginning
Over the next few months, I will try to build a SaaS platform from scratch and write down every step of my experience. The idea is to build an app acting as a hybrid solution to: deal with your tasks and manage your team easily !
Context
After working in project management, a startup and then being a consultant for a few years I quit my job when the Covid crisis was about to start. The main reason was to take some time for myself and really define what professional career would be the perfect fit for the next 5 to 10 years.
While I managed a few teams over the years I never really thought about it or analyzed what I was actually doing right or doing wrong. My wife started managing a few months ago and I realized that a main problem is to keep track of your teams progress in a smart way. As a consultant, one of the most time consuming was to create minutes, reports, weekly meeting slides and an efficient to-do list. We used tons of apps and solutions, from a Google spreadsheet to Microsoft Teams, Trello or Redmine. Whatever it’s always a mess when your goal is to manage your team instead of a large corporate project.
A good manager has nearly nothing to do.
That’s what my first manager told me back in 2011. Taken out of its context this might sound a bit extreme but the general idea was that your team, when well managed, doesn’t need you to intervene 90% of the time. If you reached that line, what do you do with the 90% of time remaining since you’re paid to do at least something for your company, your team and yourself ?
Use 10% to keep up with your team and 90% to be their customer service
From my point of view you should invest a maximum amount of time to help your team be more efficient, get rid of obstacles for them and if they’re overwhelmed by silly and time consuming tasks: get rid of these or get your hands dirty and dig into it with them.
That being said, we will need two things to do so :
- Know what your team is doing
- Invest minimum time and effort in tracking their progress
Trust is good, control is better
Probably the most well know quote from Lenin and the worst you can do to your co-workers. What you actually want to do is to have a task-focused discussion with your team instead of a 2-hour meeting lacking in structure and performance. And your manager will probably hope for the same, which means you don’t need to run dictatorship and excessive surveillance on your team but have a global overview of their work with regular updates.
Being born and raised in Germany, then educated and living in France I wanted to find a product name that meaning something in at least one of the languages. German was chosen: the concept of Fertig (meaning “done” in german) was born :)
The next article will be about creating the landing page with wordpress, see you soon !