Joshua Warren  0:06  
For an ecommerce company, it can be good to just maybe take a week, two weeks off from your backlog and to say, hey, we're gonna look with fresh eyes, and we're going to inject some innovation, we're gonna ask our team, if we have two weeks to focus on, you know, one or two things, what are the most important improvements we could make and gather that list? And I think you're gonna find some things that make its way to the top of the list that maybe weren't even in the backlog, or maybe you didn't have the right perspective on.

Darin Newbold  0:36  
Good day, and welcome to Commerce today. I'm Darren and I am your host for this episode. And we have our always fantastic guy, Josh, here to help you with all of your commerce questions and commerce needs for today. Our topic that we have Josh is an interesting one, it basically we got here, throw out your backlog, but for me, what the heck, what the heck is a backlog helped me there?

Joshua Warren  1:02  
Yeah. So backlog is basically just a list of tasks on a project that haven't been worked on yet that haven't been prioritized yet. So it's a term that comes from agile and scrub methodologies for project management. But we see it used while it means a very specific thing in that case, see, it used a lot just to basically mean, the list of things you know, you want to do on your project, but you don't know when you're going to do them yet that you use to set your next set of priorities. Okay, so

Darin Newbold  1:29  
it can kind of be could be a wish list a little bit, but sometimes it's stuff that really has to get done, but maybe it didn't didn't make it in the first round of launches, or go lives if you will kind of thing right, definitely. Okay. All right. Well, now you're saying throw it out. We just defined the heck out of it. I understand it. Why do I want to throw it out?

Joshua Warren  1:50  
Yeah. So social media tool buffer, actually had an interesting article, they did an experiment. They called it they said, we took a week off to build features that weren't on our roadmap. So basically, for a week, they said, Hey, we're gonna ignore our backlog, we're gonna ignore our roadmap, we're going to survey our team on what they would find most interesting or most pressing to work on within our tool. And then we're just going to do that work for a week. So that is, that is what they did at Buffer. And at Buffer, it's it's similar. If you've heard of ShipIt day that Elysium, the makers of JIRA, do or other companies sometimes just call it a hackathon, it's a similar idea. And over at Buffer, they actually were able to launch within that week 10 improvements to their product, including a number that had been asked for by a number of their customers for a long time. So it was a very effective week for them.

Darin Newbold  2:41  
Wow. And what are their customers? And just as a curiosity, what did their customers think of, of these results? I mean, how did they feel about them? Taking a couple of weeks off and not moving forward? Maybe on their project? How did that all play out for them?

Joshua Warren  2:55  
Yeah, for them, it really seemed to have been successful just because it gave a sort of vitality to their website, to their tool to the software they are building. So I think people seen, instead of waiting, you know, a month or two for a big new feature, seeing 10 new features rolled out that quickly, I think, made a lot of people pretty happy.

Darin Newbold  3:13  
That's interesting. I, as you know, I used to work for a company that they would shut down for at least just one day, they would only do it one day. Now the projects were focused wasn't necessarily on the backlog, but I get this, it kind of gives a a refresh to the teams in a way to kind of get the creative juices flowing again. But this isn't, this isn't pm today, or creative juices today. This is Commerce today. So helped me out Josh, we want to throw this backlog out. But merchants here are looking for ways they can make and do more with their with their e commerce and their solutions. So how does it affect that?

Joshua Warren  3:51  
Yeah, so every single ecommerce operation that I've had the opportunity to work with, they all have literally one thing in common, and that's that they have more ideas and more desired improvements than they have time. So they always, they're always generating basically the backlogs never getting smaller. It's always only getting bigger. There's one project I remember pretty fondly that they had a Trello board that just had, I think it was approaching 1000 cards on it. People had over the years. And so that's kind of what happens lots of times with these backlogs. And and the downside to that is if you have 1000 items to prioritize, there are some things that are just never going to happen. There's some things that and maybe they're not even that time consuming. Maybe there's something your team could implement pretty quickly. But it just never makes the list. And so for, for an E commerce company, it can be good to just maybe take a week, two weeks off from your backlog and to say, hey, we're gonna look with fresh eyes and we're going to inject some innovation. We're going to ask our team and when I say team, I don't just mean your development team. I mean your customer service team, your warehouse team, ask everybody what if we have two weeks to focus on on, you know, one or two things, what are the most important improvements we could make and gather that list? And I think you're gonna find some things that make its way to the top of the list that maybe weren't even in the backlog, or maybe you didn't have the right perspective on. So that's just kind of the start of how this can help an E commerce company.

Darin Newbold  5:17  
So Joshua, that sounds really, really cool. But my my guess is, is that as an E commerce manager, or even a CMO, or for someone that's, that's listening here, is probably saying, Well, that sounds really awesome. But my boss, CIO, CFO, see, whatever, oh, might not be excited about us taking a TV timeout, per se, for one, two weeks to do all this. So maybe, what are some ways to justify this? What could this you know, what's the potential ROI and, and maybe how could someone, I don't know, package that or put that in a way that's going to help make this successful for them,

Joshua Warren  6:00  
I think after you've done it once, it'll be a lot easier to justify the first time, definitely have some ideas for how you can position it. But I think once you've done it, once the the benefits of it normally is going to be pretty obvious. And it will become a regular, you know, probably just a once a year thing, but I could see it becoming routine for a lot of companies. But you know, the ROI, it's interesting, you ask that the first thing that comes to my mind actually isn't about improving the ROI say of, you know, I'm not thinking improve your average order value, improve your conversion rate, things like that, where my mind first went is, your team's going to be happier with this. Because sometimes they're working on stuff that they just aren't interested in, they don't see why it's important. It doesn't really connect to you know, what they're hearing, you know, especially again, kind of going back to thinking of your customer service reps. They're getting complaints every day, and they're getting feedback every day from your customers. And if they look and they see, hey, all these items are at the bottom of the backlog, they're buried, they're never gonna get done. That's pretty demoralizing. While you show them, hey, we're going to take a week off, we're going to focus on those items, we're gonna prioritize those items, they see the results, they see how customers are happier, their jobs a little bit easier. I think you're gonna see higher employee engagement, morale and better retention.

Darin Newbold  7:13  
Yeah, get rid of some of that, that drudgery that can be with these with these large backlogs. So also thinking about this kind of looking at at projects and stuff this would be for, for a merchant that maybe already has a has an existing site that is going through the continuous kind of adjustments and and movements. This is not really for maybe a a new build or a new a new project or new launch? Or would it?

Joshua Warren  7:44  
Yeah, I think for most most new implementations, you're not going to want to do something like this, I think of an implementation is taking more than a year, which hopefully, it's not because my experience ecommerce implementations that take more than a year, by the time you're done, you're already having to do new work, because so much has changed in the industry. But if somehow, you know, your ecommerce implementation is taking multiple years, you might want to consider something like this. But for for the average implementation for simulation is running really well. This wouldn't be something I would recommend it really is for those people with the the existing sites, and especially if you have an existing site that you're doing constant improvements and upgrades and enhancements to

Darin Newbold  8:24  
now, is this something that that would only be undertaken internally for a merchant? Or would they maybe involve their system integrator that that maybe has been involved with, with launching their side? And maybe some continued maintenance? Would they? Would they have an involvement in taking this time off? And maybe working through the back working through a new backlog? Or?

Joshua Warren  8:45  
Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's basically whoever is doing the work. So if it's an in house team, they would be the ones taking the time off, if it's an external team, like a solution partner than they would be the one that's kind of taking the time off the backlog. We we've never had a chance to do exactly this. But the closest we came to it was actually a rather large omni channel retailer where they had an internal team. And they were working also with the agency team that I was working with. And they did this as a group, they actually all came together, gathered everybody together in one place and said, Hey, whether we work for the agency, we work for the merchant, we're a consultant, all of us want to see the site succeed. Let's brainstorm some new ideas that we can implement together.

Darin Newbold  9:28  
Wow, that could be I could see that being very powerful. It would need to be managed, obviously, but that could be very, very powerful. Well, this sounds like a ultimately a really good idea for for merchants to do that. Do you have any other suggestions that they might need that could help them? Throw out the backlog?

Joshua Warren  9:49  
I think viewed as an experiment, and definitely just look at it as something you're going to try. Try to write down and this is a big part of selling it up to try to write down what you're expected outcomes are from this experiment. And then afterwards kind of right? Did we reach those? What went? Well, what didn't. And that way you can iterate on it and you can, you know, try something, maybe you decide, you're not going to put your whole team on this, maybe you decide it becomes something where half your team is going to do this, or different iterations like that. So don't view it as, Oh, you must do exactly this way. And instead just look at it as an experiment and kind of tailor it to your business.

Darin Newbold  10:25  
Okay, would you one other thing I just thought of is, would you would you maybe consider doing it for a shorter period of time, maybe even just two or three days, depending on the size of the of the of the site? And obviously, the backlog as well, but maybe two or three days to kind of do a test run? Or is there do you think there's a sweet spot of hey, it really does need to be a full week? Or does it need to be like a sprint, a two week sprint,

Joshua Warren  10:52  
I think there's definitely a sweet spot. And a lot of it's going to depend on the tasks that you're working on the ideas that you have. I think it's going to be hard to show a lot of value and to deliver really impactful changes in just a day. I think hackathons are a lot of fun. And I think there's some cool stuff that comes out of them. But it is very rare that I see a hackathon turned into something that then goes into production the next week, I think you're going to need some more time. I think if you're if the work you're doing the improvements you're doing, if it's front end items, configuration items, things like that, I think you could probably do that in two or three days. But I think if you're talking about real, like if you have systems integration challenges you're trying to face if you have some data that you need to clean up or move around. When you start getting into things like that, you're probably going to want a week, whereas you don't just because we're saying throughout your backlog, we're not saying throughout your QA or throughout your testing, right. Very important safety tip, do not throw those out.

Darin Newbold  11:52  
Well, yeah. And that, and that starts to make sense. And that's what that's what we saw with the in the in the buffer article, where they were so successful, really came up with 10 Different ideas out of all of that, and we're able to deploy what, three, three or so is that right? There was about about that, I believe, yeah, but they still had seven that were queued up and ready to go. Great idea. So Well, fantastic. Well, I'd say is there anything else on the backlog? Otherwise, we can call this one a wrap?

Joshua Warren  12:22  
No, I just would encourage you if you do try this to let us know how it goes. I think it's it's one of those things that companies are just now starting to experiment with. So there's definitely a lot of a lot of innovation and a lot of room to just collaborate and, and really just chat about how it goes.

Darin Newbold  12:38  
Well. Excellent. And we definitely want to hear from you. So please feel free to to comment and let us know and as always, definitely follow us and provide a rating for our podcast. We're excited and very much appreciate you being a part of Commerce today. Take care

Transcribed by https://otter.ai