And while Zheng focuses on manufacturing environments, much the same holds true for tech companies of all sizes, especially high-growth startups. As companies grow, they usually become more inefficient having a more complex organizational structure and administrative overhead.
This is a good basis for companies without a business intelligence component to adopt one – or integrate BI into their roles and processes.
- The Agile methodology encourages cross-functional teams
- DevOps works to improve cross-functionality in teams and processes
- DataOps improves cross-functionality through the sharing of data with all stakeholders
- AI can accelerate training and cross-functionality
With each successive funding stage (Series A, B, C, etc.), startups usually expand their teams. Hiring new in-house or augmented teams (managers and developers) from scratch with the required skills typically means 3-4 months of delays or elevated inefficiency. This owes to the hiring process and the time for them to come up to speed with the existing codebase.
Mitigating this has been one of the reasons why companies promote from within. Your first developers can become team leads, a team lead may move up to engineering manager or to a more specialized role. Aside from whether they want the promotion, they may have little experience or training in their new role.
An AI-powered Digital Assistant can dramatically ease their landing into new roles and pick up new skills to make it easier for companies to grow. Otherwise… finding a Swift developer with experience in BA, DevOps, and DataOps… locally, is going to be like trying to find a very specific needle in a stack of needles.