The Minimum Viable Technical Team

Constraint driven exercises are one of the best ways to creatively solve problems and think deeply about your product and business.

They're a rare opportunity to free yourself from existing mental models and truly rethink.

Here's one that you might think is ridiculous but is worth pondering every few years:

Imagine a world where you can employ only one technical team member. What role would you keep? What other changes would you need to make?

Sounds ridiculous, right?

But it's highly applicable at both ends of the business spectrum; startups making their first technical hire and big companies forced to lay off team members think this way all the time.

We've thought about it as well. Not just as a constraint-driven exercise but as pattern-matching across the hundreds of technical and business teams we've worked with.

The Minimum Viable Technical Team

We're not trying to make the case for getting rid of people. We've simply identified the one role that nearly all successful products have - a product owner.

You can outsource nearly anything - development, design, maintenance. But you can't outsource ownership. If you have a product that users rely on, you need someone internally to own it.

Product owners bring a unique blend of four things: Business acumen, technical knowledge, strategic chops, and tactical ability. They know what the product should do and how it impacts the business. And if the product already exists, they know how the system works and the improvements needed to grow users. They're aware of technical constraints and possibilities, and can empower others to implement solutions.

But most importantly, they can answer questions about how the product should work. It seems rudimentary, but the ability to adequately answer future state product questions is one of the biggest indicators of product success we see.

We're lucky we aren't limited to one-role technical teams, but don't be fooled - we all live in a constraint-driven world. And when it comes to the size of your internal team, the right size is always slightly smaller than the opportunity in reach.

If you're a technical leader, here are ten more constraint-driven exercises to help you improve your business and future-proof your product. Taking time to consider extreme possibilities might help us solve the more realistic challenges we face every day.