

Ask HN: How do startups manage their systems, policy and procedures? - technology

What do companies like Google, Microsoft or Apple do to manage their systems ?<p>There is alot of talk about the methods to improve systems like Theory of constraint, Six sigma and lean thinking, how does that goes into all of this systems approach and managing them from a startup perspective ? According to the book E-Myth by Michael Gerber and The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt; these folks advocate systems thinking and creating systems in your company.<p>But what if I'm a small startup with 10-20 employees, do I really need systems ? What if nobody cares about these documents and just do what they think is worth doing according to them ? And how do these systems/documents will help me in case of some disaster e.g. marketing failure or no revenue from products ? How do I get most out of these systems ?
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danielhodgins
Creating systems is an excellent way to standardize simple, repeatable tasks
so that you can delegate them. A system, process or procedure can be reduced
to a checklist or diagram that shows each step that happens in series and/or
in parallel. Using an iterative approach you can improve these over time.

Many aspects of a startup require deep knowledge and expert judgment and
intuition about customers, markets, trends and products. These creative,
strategic and technical challenges such as customer development cannot be
delegated - the founders must execute them.

The premise behind E-myth by Michael Gerber is to 'franchise' your business
model by standardizing all possible aspects of it. I think Gerber would agree
that you need some initial level of traction with customers before you start.
Standardizing too early would be waste unless you have figured out what
customers want. My best guess about the time to standardize would be once you
have achieved product/market fit, and your business model is ready to scale.
At that point, you can invest $1 into your business and know that it will
generate a customer lifetime value that's some multiple higher.

Some takeaways:

* Don't spend too much time too early on systems, processes, and policies beyond those which relate directly to customers and sales. * Standardize any task you have mastered that's time consuming, simple and repeatable, and taking you away from mission critical tasks such as raising capital or gathering customer insights. Invest time in creating a simple checklist someone else can follow for any given process/procedure/task/activity (whatever you want to call them), and free yourself up for other high value activities. I have delegated/outsourced/offshored certain tasks such as data entry overseas with some success.

I would be glad to answer any additional questions you have about this -
hodgins dot dan at g mail dot com.

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aymeric
A "system" can help formulate a better way of doing things.

For example, look at this website (not affiliated), they have a system in
place that takes their leads through different steps:
<http://devfu.com/get_started.html>

By documenting it and in this case by publishing it to the client, they save a
lot of time because the client will be better qualified, more prepared when it
is time to meet, and will already understand how they work.

So documenting how your people do things is useful because it will help find
ways to improve the way they do them. You will be able to identify flaws or
redundancies.

Or if the way they do it is perfect, at the very least, by documenting it you
have a way to reproduce it in the case they go away with their savoir-faire.

I was considering developing an app to help a small business manage their
processes (<http://documnt.com>) but I think <http://howtracker.com> is on the
right track already.

An example of system you might be using would be the Scrum methodology. By
writing down what process devs should use, you will legitimate the Scrum
Master and make his work easier ("Hey guys, please send your daily scrum
email").

Cheers,

Aymeric

