A CTO’s View of the Startup Process

Stage 6 – Scaling and expanding or pivoting 

You should:

✪	Expand – After analysing the results and figuring what you want (or need) to change, you should plan your features like you did in stage 1.
✪	Scale – If things went well, you may need to make the app more suitable for a larger volume of user activity. Scaling is normally achieved by making the code more efficient, using a different DB structure or technology, or by adding computing power (upgrading, replacing or adding servers, or adding resources if you use cloud computing).
✪	After expanding, and even more so after pivoting, you need to check if your metrics are still suitable to what you are developing, and if they aren’t, you need to adjust them and plan the way to measure them in your next version.

My part in this stage:

✪	I will help translate the feature plans into technical documents (like in stage 2) and suggest alternatives and options that will make the development more efficient and with better value for money.
✪	I will explain technical ideas to you, so you’ll be able to make the right decision about each stage and change.
✪	Before starting the development process, I will make sure the developers understand what is required and that the development will be done efficiently and will work well with all the existing features.
✪	If needed, I will be in touch with the development team during the development to make sure everything is going according to plan, answer questions if they have any, and report back to you.

My aim is that after a few iterations of stages 5 and 6, you will understand the major concept of the technology used in your project, and your lead developer will learn the decision-making process so they will be able to manage the development based on financial information, marketing requirements, customer psychology and other general business requirements, in respect to the technology.

➠	Go to the next chapter