I am shaping up my first ShapeUp project I find myself in a position where the project that is shaped requires a large amount of a Front End resource and a small amount of a Back End resource. (My team is 2 FE and 2 BE resources) I’ve heard that my Job as Product Manager is to “keep them busy”. I am unclear on how to handle these situations.
What do I do with the developer’s extra time?
Am I shaping up projects that aren’t meaty enough?
Am I gauging my team by the wrong metrics - output vs. outcomes?
Currently I find bugs to work on but that feels misaligned with the ShapeUp system to fill out a sprint.
Context: I am trying to migrate my team to a ShapeUp mentality so these first project wins are crucial.
When we make bets at the betting table we choose the team size to fit the size of the work. One project might get 6 weeks, 1 designer, and 2 programmers. Another might get 6 weeks, 1 designer, and only 1 programmer. Those are all variables you can play with. And then whoever isn’t part of that team is available for a different bet in the same cycle.
Another possibility is to include both programmers in the team for that cycle, but give them more than the one project. This is kind of a mixture of big batch and small batch. There might be one major project that the team should accomplish in that time, and then you might also shape a few small things that you think the others can also accomplish knowing the mix of work.
Recently we’ve added Google Sign to our app, that was 1 project, we made the bets and had to assign 3 people.
Marketing web frontend developer (to handle the flow on the web)
App frontend developer (to handle the flow in our app itself)
Backen developer (to prepare all the infrastructure and API)
The thing is that this project heavily depends on the backend work, the frontend guys had their “coding” of designs ready in a few days and then they had to wait for the backend developer to publish everything.
Then the frontend developers complained after the project ended that they had to wait for the backend and didn’t have any time to test things, etc.
So my question is, how do you deal with these types of projects? Of course, I can have some small projects for the frontend devs to do while waiting, but still, there is the waiting time and less time for the actual completion part.