Seema is a Product Expert at Revv, a leading document management software and eSignature company that provides business document templates that help run your business. She believes in the power of words and storytelling and loves spending her time creating exciting and knowledgeable content of the SaaS world, which is why she’s the best person to write about business plan vs. business proposal. When not working, you can often find her watching adorable pups videos, or experimenting with recipes!

“Ok, so you sell things.”

Well, honestly, I wasn’t surprised or peeved at the half-baked knowledge of my friend’s father when he made a snap judgment and conveniently labeled my marketing profession as sales.

After all, this wasn’t my first time when someone tagged me as a salesperson. So, I took a deep breath and explained to him how sales are different from marketing.

We, humans, dwell in a herd mentality and hone our word skills from our surroundings. Sometimes, we are simply careless, sometimes oblivious, but most of the time, we actually don’t know that the word has a different meaning.

This can be ignored in a casual conversation, but using the wrong words in a business space can change the implied meaning and lead to miscommunication. For example, cost vs. price, digitization vs. digitalization, warranty vs. guarantee, machine learning vs. artificial intelligence, etc.

“Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.” – C. S. Lewis

This Process Street guest post untangles the confusion between two crucial terms – business plan and business proposal. These are used interchangeably in the business world, but their meaning and application are pretty different.

Words are the building blocks of communication. There is a French phrase for using the right word – le mot juste.

Let us strive for le mot juste!

Hop on and be a part of this fantabulous journey.

• What is a business plan?
• What is a business proposal?
• Business plan vs. Business proposal: What are the differences?
• Bonus: How to make ‘wow’ business plans and business proposals?
• Winding-up: Key takeaways

Here we go!

Bored of Scrum and Kanban? Thinking about making the move to Shape Up?

This post is here to get you clued up on what the development methodology Shape Up looks like in practice. I’ll be giving you a sneak-peak into what we do here at Process Street as our EPD team shares their secrets. Learn how Shape Up facilitates the smooth running of a cross-functional team.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Shape Up, or if you’re interested in the Design part of the E-P- “D = design” team,or maybe, you’d like to get your hands on 3 Shape Up workflows to plug straight into your team, check out the following posts:

• Shape Up vs Scrum: 6 Months to 6 Weeks – How We Cut Our Dev Cycle 75%
• An Interview with Ivy: Shape Up From a Product Designer’s Perspective
• Ditch Scrum! 3 Shape Up Processes & Checklists to 5x Your Dev Cycle

In this post I speak to Process Street’s Product Lead, Michael, and our Full Stack Engineer Herbie. We talk about all things Shape Up and discuss how the methodology facilitates the success of a cross-functional team.

• Q1: Summarize what the EPD team is, and your role within the team.
• Q2: As a Product Lead what would you say are the key differences between Shape Up and say something like Scrum or Kanban?
• Q3: How do you find working in small highly focused cycles as opposed to Sprints
• Q4: Does the Shape Up method allow for more asynchronous communication (and less meetings)?
• Q5: As a Product Lead/Engineer am I right to think you work on a parallel track with other members of the EPD team. Could you talk me through this process?
• Q6: What does Shape Up empower you to do?
• Q7: This is your area of expertise, what are your key takeaways when it comes to Shape Up, how it works alongside the EPD team, and so on.

Let’s get started!
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Today, we’re excited to announce Automations, a new set of direct integrations helping you create and run custom processes using built-in functionality from some of the world’s most popular software tools.

Anyone who’s ever updated an opportunity in Salesforce or created an issue in Jira knows the power of those applications. It can feel like a world of endless possibilities right at your fingertips. It’s what we love about these tools, and why teams like us use them every day.

But sometimes, instead of endless possibilities, you need a specific set of tasks done quickly and correctly. You need a process. That’s what we’ve helped thousands of companies with, and that’s why we’re so excited to announce our newest feature, Automations.

Automations brings your critical apps together to drive your team’s most important processes. Powering Automations is a new set of native integrations with:

• Salesforce
• Jira
• Slack
• DocuSign
• Google Sheets
• Plus powerful new functionality within Process Street itself

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“In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity.” – A. Einstein

I’ll refrain from attempting to mask something as devastating as the coronavirus with a silver lining. Nonetheless, there’s no denying that while the world goes bust there is one industry that continues to boom: Tech.

Since the first half of 2020, health and fitness app downloads have soared, growing by a whopping 46% worldwide.

What has been the pandemic’s influence on the femtech and wellness app industries? In this Process Street post, I feature an interview with Hélène Guillaume, founder of a femtech platform (Wild.AI), and Reeva Misra, the founder of a wellness app (Walking on Earth).

Wild.AI is a fitness platform that empowers female athletes by providing AI-powered personal trainers that adapt to the user’s needs. Walking on Earth is a wellness app and platform that offers every user access to personalized coaches and treatment plans.

• How it all comes together: The pandemic, wellness apps, & femtech
• Introducing the founders: Reeva Misra & Hélène Guillaume
• Developing a wellness app
• Developing a femtech platform
• Attracting investor attention as a wellness app
• Attracting investor attention as a femtech platform
• Finding product-market fit during a pandemic

Let’s get started.
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It’s 4 p.m. and you’ve got a welcome call with your newest team member. Ideally, you’d feel full of life, ready to welcome her with enthusiasm and get her excited about the weeks to come.

Problem is, this is your 6th video call of the day and you’re overrun with Zoom fatigue.

You’ve been turned “on” (not in a good way) for the last 7 hours and are severely lacking in enthusiasm, let alone excitement.

The worst thing is, the majority of those meetings were unnecessary, everything covered in them could’ve been communicated asynchronously.

Simply put, asynchronous communication involves communicating remotely without expecting an immediate response. This can be done via iMessage, pre-recorded video/audio, making suggestions to an existing project (think: Google Docs/Sheets, Github, Jira).

The challenge is knowing, when and how to use synchronous vs. asynchronous communication methods. Fortunately, this post is here to teach you just that so you can avoid Zoom fatigue and stop being real-time, all the time. Feel free to skip to a specific section of the post using the links below.

• What is Zoom fatigue?
• Avoid Zoom fatigue by making sure communication is always intentional
• Avoid Zoom fatigue: Synchronous vs. asynchronous communication
• Advantages and disadvantages of synchronous vs. asynchronous communication
• Synchronous vs. asynchronous communication tools at Process Street
• Synchronous vs. asynchronous communication: Wrapping up

Let’s get started!
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We’ve cut our development cycle by 70% since making the move to Shape Up.

This alternative development method is a breath of fresh air from all things Scrum, Agile, Kanban, Scrumban, Fake Agile, Bad Agile… you get my drift.

What started off as Basecamp‘s internal approach to developing and shipping software at lightning speed, has become a clearly written (and illustrated), freely contributed, and easily accessible e-book: “Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters“.

Although I sincerely recommend you read the book, this post is here to save you from studying the 143 pages of text by providing you with three nifty checklist templates. The checklists take you through the Shape Up process and its 3 key phases: Shaping, betting, and building.

In this post, I’ll briefly touch on the fundamental concepts of Shape Up’s approach. I’ll also introduce each of the phases and their corresponding checklist.

• Shape Up process: Key concepts
• Shape Up processes to help you get started
• Shape Up process: Shaping
• Shape Up process: Betting
• Shape Up process: Building
• Shape Up process: Summing up

Let’s get shaping!
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I wrote a post about Shape Up, a development methodology, and you the reader wanted me to dive deeper. So, I did just that and interviewed Process Street’s Product Designer, Ivy.

Ivy answers common questions concerning how Shape Up works in practice, and although I briefly touch on the core phases of Shape Up’s approach, this post should be seen as a follow up to my original post which provides a full low-down of what Shape Up is and how it differs from alternative development methods like Scrum and Kanban.

So, make sure to read my last post on Shape Up so you have all the context you need for this post.

In this post, we’ll be covering:

• What is Shape Up?
• The makings of a Process Street Product Designer
• Shape Up from a Product Designer’s perspective
• Shape Up’s design process: Key takeaways
• The day-to-day Shape Up experience as Process Street’s Product Designer

Let’s kick things off with a brief re-cap of Shape Up’s key phases .
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I’m writing a post about Airbnb, from an Airbnb.

Ironic yes, but not unlikely.

In 2019, Airbnb hosted 272 million bookings globally. And, in 2020, despite a global pandemic restricting travel, Airbnb suffered relatively minimal losses of only 22%.

2020 was also the year Airbnb decided to go IPO, despite the global pandemic, a significant drop in revenue, and global travel restrictions.

How did they manage it? A growth strategy like no other, that’s how.

This Process Street blog post takes a deep dive into Airbnb’s growth strategy, how they got where they are today, and where they could be going. To skip to a specific section of the post click the appropriate link below:

• The history of Airbnb: From Obama O’s to turning over $3.4B in revenue
• Airbnb’s growth startegy: Product breakdown
• Airbnb’s growth strategy: Overcoming “stranger equals danger”
• Airbnb’s growth strategy: The sharing economy
• Airbnb’s growth strategy: Promise & deliver on value for everyone
• The future of Airbnb

Let’s start with where it all began, with 3 air beds.
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If you’re moving fast and breaking things, at what point in time do you realize things are broken?

When there is public uproar against your product? Such as the Amazon case in 2019 involving job listings for the role of “union buster” (someone who reports on fellow employees seeking fair labor practices).

Or, when regulators come down on you like a ton of bricks? As was (and continues to be) experienced by Airbnb whose platform has been home to grotesque racial discrimination.

Allow me to introduce the topic of this blog post: The minimum virtuous product (MVP).

It seems the concept behind the traditional minimal viable product (MVP) which prioritizes quick launches and basic feature sets has been replaced by something a little more virtuous. The new MVP, minimum virtuous product, encourages companies to focus on diversity and transparency by building morally sound design principles, from the start.

This post will take a look at what this change in acronym has to do with the way companies grow and scale; along with an eight-question framework that will help start-ups assess the social impact of their products; and finally, it will cover what moving with virtue could mean for future startups.

To skip to a specific section of the post click on the appropriate link below:

• Minimum viable product vs minimum virtuous product
• Is your product virtuous? 8 questions to ask
• Why you need a minimum virtuous product: Real world examples
• What does moving with virtue mean for future startups?
• Minimum virtuous product: Conclusion

Alternatively, just keep scrolling to read the whole post.
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A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is the way in which a company brings a product or service to market.

No matter how good your idea is, you need a go-to-market strategy.

Why?

Because statistically speaking, your business is more likely to fail than succeed.

In fact, if you’re a startup, your chance of failure is a dreary 90%. That’s not to say that your idea isn’t a brilliant one, or that you haven’t got what it takes to bring it to market.

Startups fail for different reasons. Perhaps the market is already awash with companies offering the same solution as yours, or the market isn’t mature enough to welcome your product. Or, maybe the cost of developing and launching your product is so steep that it’s unprofitable.

If successful, a go-to-market strategy will be your salvation and prevent you from failure. The question is, how do you develop a winning strategy? Which factors should you consider?

I asked our VP of Marketing Bryan Sise these very questions. Through the course of his career at companies like Twilio, SendGrid, Twitter, Dynamic Signal, and now Process Street, Bryan has noticed what contributes to GTM success.

In this post I’ll share with you what he has to say. I’ll cover what a go-to-market strategy is, types of go-to-market strategies, the key steps to building a successful go-to-market strategy, and what GTM strategies we use here at Process Street.

• What is a go-to-market strategy?
• 6 factors to consider when building a go-to-market strategy
• Types of go-to-market strategies
• Key steps to building a successful go-to-market strategy
• Go-to-market strategies at Process Street

Let’s get strategizing.
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