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Operations Overview

Proposal at how to categorize areas of operations for a small software publishing team. Parts of each area will overlap. We all wear hats in each area. We each have different strength areas where we will spend most of our time. We will find areas where we need outside help.

This is suggested to help us organize and prioritize our time as we work, and to stay on task in the aspect of the business we are working on at any particular time. It can be refined as we learn what works best for us.

It is designed to follow the natural flow of how a business runs. You have something to sell, you sell it, and then you take care of your customers. Rinse and repeat.

Think of it as our top level taxonomy for classifying tasks and time (business operations). Following the rule of three, they are:

  • PRODUCT
  • SALES+MKTG
  • SUPPORT

Product is the key area, it is what we develop and sell, and it should be everyone's primary focus. Everyone should be familiar with all aspects of the product as an operations function - not necessarily to be a coder, but all need to know generally how we develop, sell, and support our code.

In the Product category, the key activities are development and devops. They are separated to clarify their focus as separate functions of the business. Another way to think of it is manufacturing and distribution.

Development is in-house, it is all around designing features & functionality, writing & updating code, fixing bugs, managing security, performance, and testing. DevOps is how that code gets deployed in the field for sales, support, and updates, the latter of which are more aligned business functions with revenue and support. Development work is product creation, enhancement and updates.

Devops is the systemized process of moving it through the pipeline to sell and update it. Granted there is overlap, but for now I am defining the two function like this for dividing up and tracking tasks.

Sales & Marketing includes various demand/sales/revenue activities. Marketing is geared to pre-sales/demand generation, Sales is about transactions, payment, upgrades, licenses, and all the operations that run on Freemius. The Website is where customers and prospects shop and transact with us.

Support and Documentation are also part of the website. But as business functions they are a separate cost item and a distinct facet the customer journey as post-sales activities, which will have different focus (and possibly different staff) vs product and revenue, so they are classified separately to maintain that distinction.

Documentation is another overlap item, where it does help as a driver of sales when shopping for warez, but by and large it will be used by customers after they purchase.

HOW TO USE THE TAXONOMY​

I suggest using this taxonomy to keep focused on operations categories.

It is easy to get diverted. And sometimes that may be the goal - dinking around is good for R&D and learning. In which case, it should be tied to one of the three main ops categories.

Other times we will need to keep on the stick and get things done.

For example, if there are high priorities for Product at the moment, like a major update, or bugfixes, everyone involved should be tracking what they do to support Product goals. Make sure docs are updated, prepare social media and/or email updates to customers, etc.

The taxonomy can help keep the team’s top of mind focus on overall goals and objectives, to stay organized and on-task to make deadlines, to ensure we are in agreement on the priority at the moment, to minimize extraneous meetings, and coordinate to achieve our goals.