In order to ensure that we do have real, significant amounts of time to dedicate to product development, we now have this policy in place. It sets out how much of the team's capacity we are willing to invest in product work each cycle and in what circumstances that investment can change.
We've set aside a fixed number of development team points per cycle for product development starting August 2020, with no end date. We start with 50 points per cycle for the first 3 months, upping to 60 points per cycle from November 2020 (see "Timeline" below for details). Those points can be distributed amongst the teams at the discretion of the Project Manager and Technical Director, taking into account the client work and specialties of the teams.
Additional points may be allocated to product development cycles when client projects are delayed/cancelled, run under budget, or are closely related to a potential product improvement.
We've formally introduced the role of Product Manager to the business, a role that will be initially filled by Gavin. We're aiming for him to be able to spend 50% of his time on the product side of things, researching and developing Pitches, creating documentation and marketing material, and working with Victoria to sell our products to customers.
To help free up Gavin's time for this new role, we have opened up applications for a second Project Manager position, with the goal of Gavin being able to off board his Project Management duties in reasonably short order.
We plan to un-pause developer hiring by the end of May, with a goal of adding at least one new developer to the team by the end of September.
The primary focus of all scheduled product development time is Submarine, both the current version and v2.
The Product Manager may develop a pitch or two focused on either Store Credit or the Givex Integration, but we would expect that 90% of product time is on Submarine.
Product work for a cycle will be prioritised within the same process as client work. The admin team will be conscious of avoiding a situation where client work is always being prioritised over project work — this should be called out by the team if it's considered this is a risk.
If a team doesn't have the capacity to take on the full allocation of product development points in a cycle (eg, they can only take on 40/50 points), those points will be carried forward to future cycles.
This is development cycles 31 to 35 inclusive. (Includes product cycles 32 and 34).
As the development team's time is already fully booked out over this period, we weren't able to allocate any dedicated time to production development.
If capacity does free up over this period (a project is cancelled, delayed, or runs under budget; team velocities increase; we leverage Gavin to free up development time), we will try to allocate time to product development, focused primarily around preparatory work such as pitch development, architecture research and design, and development planning.
This is development cycles 36 to 39 inclusive. (Includes product cycles 36 and 38).