Articles on Process

Product Management-Team Exercises-Carbon Five
Emily Mi Cai

Emily Mi Cai

Three Team Exercises to Start Your Next Project Right

At Carbon Five, we are always kicking off new projects with different teams, and we have a set of activities that we’ve found to be pretty critical in helping ensure our teams are aligned from the beginning. Here are three activities we’ve found to be particularly meaningful (and check out their templates here). Visions, Challenges,

Carbon Five-Emojis-Pull Request
Eric Fung

Eric Fung

How to Use Actionable Emojis in Your Pull Request Reviews

Carbon Five has embraced emoji in daily written communication. They carry a lot of meaning in a small package, they inject personality and culture into our writing, and they visually stand out on the page as you scan a document. Pull requests are no exception. Love them or hate them, emojis ensure our pull request

Suzanna Smith Carbon Five
Nicole Thayer

Nicole Thayer

Building for Intersectionality in Tech: An Introduction

By Nicole Thayer & Tiffany Wong Conversations around the impact of technology, the specific products that are built, and the companies that build them are not new to Carbon Five. As consultants who work across various industries, every new project we take on comes with its unique set of challenges. Typically, these challenges are related

Wil Wade

Wil Wade

What Are These $%^&* Chores Doing in My Backlog!

Beyond Just Features and Bugs Projects tend to have three types of “tasks” for developers to do: features, bugs, and chores. Features and bugs are mostly self-explanatory. Features deliver direct customer value. Bugs are features that are not working as intended. These two tasks focus on direct connections to the users. Chores provide indirect customer

Brandy Davis-Balsamo

Brandy Davis-Balsamo

Working with Guests: Seven Tips for Getting your Company Ready to Leverage External Firepower

Companies have been successfully partnering with consultants since the dawn of time. Think IDEO’s work with Apple to create the mouse or Microsoft’s work with IBM to create MS-DOS. Our nation’s competitive strength comes, in large part, from this openness to collaborate, to learn from each other, to move quicker, and to leverage outside strengths,

Jen Skene

Jen Skene

How to Make Your Daily Stand-up Outstanding

Where else can you learn what your coworkers are doing, get your work unblocked, and get energized, all in 10 action-packed minutes?

Treyce Meredith

Treyce Meredith

Map vs. Path: What’s the Difference?

It’s a simple idea that can help your digital product take shape; when a user enters your system, do you hand them a map or a path? What’s the difference? Great question, and in this case, the metaphor is pretty literal.

Tamara Adebanjo

Tamara Adebanjo

Why Do You Need a Product Manager?

Carbon Five began as a development shop almost nineteen years ago and added the Product Management discipline fourteen years into our journey. We have realized the importance of involving a Product Manager, who is dedicated to gathering requirements and can easily handle the business and technical aspects required to build successful products. There are many

Nicole Thayer

Nicole Thayer

How to Present a Design Review

Arguably the most difficult skill you’ll learn in your design career is how to communicate that you did what you set out to do in a way that gets people to support and continue the work you did. Presenting design successfully is about knowing what you want out of the meeting and structuring it to

Zoe Madden-Wood

Zoe Madden-Wood

Finding the Right Company Fit

One month ago I was on a panel at Grace Hopper, “Startups, Big Companies, Silicon Valley, Government Contractor — What’s the right career path for you?”. I was speaking mostly to software engineers who were just entering their career post-college or transitioning from their first job. I was on the panel with four other talented