Travis Kimmel is the CEO and one of the co-founders of GitPrime. A company that provides data to help software engineering teams measure and improve productivity. Said another way, if a developer is stuck, it is often difficult to tell if they are just busy working on a problem or if they are stuck on a problem and need help. GitPrime helps managers identify when a developer might be stuck. Disrupting a developer to ask them if they are stuck can be very expensive since they are often deep into the problem they working on. When you interrupt the developer, they need to take time to get back into the problem and this can be very expensive especially at scale.
GitPrime’s hope to add some objectivity to team conversations so they move out of the realm of opinions. They are very careful to acknowledge that it is the combination of data and soft skills that help teams jump into the zone of high productivity and performance. The primary thing a team needs to do is make good decisions and GitPrime is helping software teams make better decisions.
Travis and his partner, Ben Thompson, noticed that there was an industry-wide problem. They had both experienced the problem. They are now working to be part of the infrastructure for the software industry. They are solving a problem they had. At the time of the interview, Travis felt like he was building a very strong team. He credits that to focusing on people strengths. Let people do what they are really good at.
More recently he and his team have been focusing on doing a better job of onboarding. He describes onboarding like trying to climb on top of the car from a motorbike. In the early days, they would put people in positions and tell them to figure it out. Now that they are more established, they have solved more problems and try to onboard team members much better.
For Travis and his team, they recognize that being explicit is very important for high performing teams and data is a subset of that. Data is one path to being explicit. This approach to being explicit even translates into how Travis and his partner Ben run their company. From the beginning, they have always been very open/explicit with each other. Putting issues on the table in a kind and respectful way and not letting it fester. Travis sees this as a very important to maintain the long-term relationship between him and his co-founder.
The three takeaways a glean from my conversation with Travis are:
- When you start a company with someone, you are signing up to be in the foxhole with that person for about 10 years. As a result, you need to be very open. You need to be very explicit. You need to protect the dynamic that made you go into business together.
- You need to understand that an idea is only a small part of it all and it is mostly execution.
- If your user doesn’t understand the software is not their fault. It is your design.