What a lot of young and small teams don’t realise and need to in order to scale, is the sheer amount of communication needed within and around their company to keep it running well. And it is indeed needed, because predictability matters, even moreso than velocity or cost savings. Knowing what’s going on allows planning for the future, whereas speed and savings only lead to disaster faster. I’ve felt this dysfunction numerous times, but also had to be reminded of the “right way” regularly. Because it’s easy to forget about the elementary basics while focused on day-to-day tasks.
The company is everyone's responsibility. Do not wait for things to happen. Make them happen.
Source: Remark of my former CFO (paraphrased)
As long as the above is true for everyone working at the company, it's difficult to completely fail any project the company sets out to complete. And once this is established, we can move on to pushing information instead of pulling.
From:
Towards:
Pushing information rather than periodically asking for updates does require some trust, comfort, and discipline from all team members to work reliably. But it is far more efficient. By the way, programmers especially should know this, because it corresponds with some of the design patterns they learn when integrating systems :) And it is another form of “delegation” - a keyword that managers eventually hear on their career path. Because it’s just so darn valuable to do and do extensively.