Five Signs Of Fatal Start-Up Engineering

Engineering Fail

The numbers are not with start-ups. Depending on which statistics you believe, 90% of all new products fail, and even a veteran entrepreneur who has experienced IPO success, and has venture capital backing, will only succeed 30% of the time. Many factors have to be in place to make it in the long haul, and in my experience, your most likely failure will come from engineering.

To be fair, Engineering has the hardest job by far. Usually, marketing and sales only needs to be comparable to competitors, while engineering has to be better... and this all assumes that the value proposition of the business is valid in the first place. But if you find yourself in a business where the following points are happening all the time, run, do not walk, to your next opportunity

1) Road maps to nowhere.

If your scrum session never seems to address aspects of the business, or stays fixated on certain points while keeping other fields fallow, this is a major red flag. In most fields, standing still is falling behind, and if every aspect of the business isn't making some progress, you are likely to spend much of your time putting out different fires, rather than achieving a superior position.

2) 100% drama for release.

I have been at start ups where new releases happened during business hours, with no one on staff expected to trouble-shoot into the small hours of the morning, or with an unforeseen emergency kicking in over the weekend. At other stops in my career, every release caused held breath, thank you emails for heroic hours, and some team members fixing a major break point at an inhuman hour.

It is great when you have a team that's willing to go the extra mile, and if you have the camaraderie to kick through major challenges, there's nothing better. But if you are running into this every time out, it's a sign that your team either can't say no to overly ambitious plans, or just don't have the horsepower to deliver what's been promised. Neither situation will endear you to investors, clients or prospects. And in the long run, this will be fatal, because it will shake core confidence in the business.

3) Serving internal over external clients.

Helping internal teams work smarter, not harder, is a fine and noble goal... but at some point, it needs to be balanced against what might be required to support emerging business lines. Especially if you aren't suffering from intense employee turnover, or can't show that the internal comfort will result in increased business, making the staff happier than the people who pay the bills is a fundamental mistake.

4) Communication issues.

Not to be impolitic about this, but Engineering frequently brings in talent that is international in scope, and who may have issues in communicating with other aspects of the business. If your team is keeping to themselves to an extent that's nearly total, it leads to an easy "us vs. them" situation that's far from healthy. You are also at risk when communication is highly regimented or restricted from similar factors. This is also an easy factor in high turnover.

5) One way or no way.

Creativity in finding solutions is critical in getting a start-up to fruition, and so is timing. Your internal team may not be the best choice for getting to go live on individual projects, especially if the project involves competencies that are outside of their comfort zone. When an internal team isn't willing to concede projects to outside experts, or able to staff up to cover the shortfall, you've got a team that is putting their comfort in front of what's right for the business. You wouldn't put up with this from any other department, and you shouldn't do it with engineering, either.

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