Publish a High Level Product Roadmap

I’ve read entirely different. It doesn’t have any benefits unless you have vision impairments or disorders.

Anyway, if people want it then that’s cool - just not mega important for me :slight_smile:

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@simonb any updates to share on this or was this a no go?

Or even an update on the community relations manager post i heard which was joining the company? this no longer the case?

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No updates I’m afraid :pensive:

A few months back we did have a job ad up for “Community Lead” and unfortunately my understanding is that we decided not to progress with the existence of the role for now so the listing was removed.

As we close up 2019, there will be some organisation / strategical movements, and I personally believe that there are hanging questions around things like the forum, roadmaps, etc that can hopefully get tied up or aligned in some form. But at this stage, I don’t know anything more than that I’m afraid. I do believe it’s being discussed though, so I’ll be sure to let you know when I know more.

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Thanks for the update @simonb !

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Simon, I appreciate the update, but I am starting to feel as Monzo gets larger the little things like this are being left behind. Time was (i.e. WAY back when) you could just tag Tom and he’d maybe respond and you’d have an answer, even a year ago we had better communication.

Now we have no updates and possible “alignment” and “strategic movements” which frankly means diddly to me (I thought you were supposed to be all about using language that folk will understand?). Additionally, quarterly updates have seemingly been abandoned, and even the investor “Loop” fell off the face of the earth. You could have just said nowt and I’d be just as well informed.

What is going on?

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Hey Tony. I agree, and I’m sorry. I’m doing my best to give as many updates as I can, but… it’s true to some degree that some things are getting left behind. As it stands, those of us who work on community things are operating on a very thin shoestring. Simply because there’s not many of us and we’re very, very stretched. We’ve even had to slow down Open Offices so we aren’t having them monthly any more because we simply don’t have capacity.

I could have used better language, and for that I’m sorry. Let me try and put it another way - there are proposals and ideas that are sitting with people much higher up in this company than myself that have to be signed off on before there is any movement on any of these fronts and part of that involves how much budget any given team have to work with to hire people and to pay for new hires or for anyone’s time.

When I said strategic movements and alignment - what I meant was that folks at the top of the company need to agree with me / us - that these kind of issues are important to the company and to sign off on an actual plan on how to fix it. It’s not that they don’t understand or don’t care - they do. But things have to follow a certain process - and that just takes time.

Which quarterly updates were you referring to - the newsletter? I believe there is a Loop email coming before the end of the year.

I personally want to see movement here, and I have ideas. I’m not - on my own - in much of a position to see those changes made, I’m afraid :pensive:

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Whilst you may have come in a little hot there at our poor @simonb I have to agree with you :laughing:

Its bad that I know more about flux’s goals for december than i do monzo’s… and all it took was one comment.

Can i ask do you think this is because of all the negative press thats literally taken comments out of context? @simonb

Is there now a fear from staff to post teasers etc on here? @nexusmaniac being on the inside i thought would have been good to push that side of things but is the red tape all a bit too much now to get this sort of stuff passed?

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RIP forum :cry:

:-1:

Yeah, apologies to @simonb if my post was a little :fire: – it was my immediate reaction to an update that had no update, and I know he doesn’t deserve my ire.

I’m just happy we’ve had more detail, even if the detail is essentially “it’s all subject to approval” (i.e. red tape as you say) which feels incredibly backwards for a Fintech. I feel like we’ve become used to a certain level of engagement and access that is now … absent.

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Steady on, cowboy :wink:

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Hmm, no, I don’t think so. I think if anything that’s helping nail down the point that we need to put in some more resources and a proper plan moving forward.

I’m not sure there’s any more or less fear than there used to be. But engaging is a discipline, and a habit, and requires co-ordination if it’s not something that comes naturally to many folks. And as it stands, we don’t have many people constantly able to chase those things right now.

I’d say it’s more that we don’t have the structures or capacity in place right now to be able to engage as much as we really should in the face of now being a much bigger company, and that’s the issue.

As it stands I am hopeful this will change.

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This must suck for you personally too. :pensive:

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Don’t worry, the forum isn’t going anywhere.

But it’s true that we’re not around as much as we used to be (as you’ve noticed). And that’s partly because of how much we’ve grown.

Now that Monzo has almost 3.5m customers, we have to think about how we engage with them - as well as the hyper engaged folks here. That’s why we’ve been branching out with things like the Saving Squad Facebook group, focussing on engaging content on our social media channels, and moving away from small, regular Open Offices to bigger, impactful events like Investival and the Future of Monzo.

At scale, things that used to work simply don’t anymore. The journal newsletter is one of those things - if we’re messaging millions of people (as opposed to tens of thousands), how do we make sure we’re making the most of that opportunity? So the journal is on hold until next year.

The roadmap is another example. As we grew, we moved from the Trello board to a roadmap we could build and maintain ourselves. But there was never super high engagement with it, and there’s so much going on at Monzo that keeping it updated would be a full-time job. So we’ll likely retire that in favour of semi-regular updates on the MakingMonzo Twitter account. (This is still under discussion though, and all other suggestions welcome).

I wouldn’t say so, no. We’ll still share teases and updates as we can - there’s nobody in the background saying ‘you can’t post this’. But we also have to be responsible, now that we’re at a stage where innocuous forum posts can end up as tomorrow’s headlines. The biweekly Monzo Plus updates are a good model for how I think keeping you in the loop on product development can work ‘at scale’.

tl;dr we’re not a startup anymore, so how we engage our community doesn’t look like it used to, but that’s not a bad thing - and the forum isn’t going anywhere :slight_smile:

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To be honest i wouldnt call those successful personally… more a show and tell format than a community feel.

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And for those of us not on Twitter?

It definitely is though isn’t it? Even if we’re accepting that certain things aren’t possible anymore, things are worse than they used to be.

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Thanks for that @cookywook :slight_smile: My comment was a little tongue in cheek but still a concern after reading your prior comment.

The way I see it is that the forum is like your central hub. News/blog posts lead here, email newsletters, you ask for feedback and testers here, notifications in app point here, people come for help/support and so on…

Then when you express that you’re on a shoestring budget and can’t manage with the rising numbers, yet management aren’t signing anything off - that was my concern. From experience when the higher ups don’t see a value in something they drag their feet or just don’t do it at all. It’s all about what they can see as a return :moneybag: which the forum obviously doesn’t do.

I’m glad to hear that the forum is here to stay, I quite like it here :smiley: and hopefully they get round to signing some stuff off soon :crossed_fingers: Let us know if you want to rally the troops :wink:

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No fear :sunglasses:I can’t comment on everyone else but I’m just struggling to find the time :sweat_smile:

I don’t feel like we post any less teasers than normal :yum:I feel like there’s much more of an engineering presence (from the likes of @mycl & @Jami :tada:) - people who can share even more awesome technical details about credit card integrations & Pot hiding / sorting :muscle:

The awesome @simonb is always here and ready to post :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: He knew about Pixel 4’s biometric unlocking API before I did :eyes: (though, to be fair, I still have my Pixel 3XL so I wasn’t actively looking for it hehe :innocent:)

Nothing Monzo’s doing is stopping any of us from posting :relieved: I spent so much of my time in my old job with Monzo’s forum opened in another tab sharing sneak peaks from teardowns and helping people out with answers wherever I could :hot_coral_heart: now I’m an incredibly happy part of Monzo :heart_eyes: I get to spend all day helping people out in a far more direct way and get paid to do so :grin:

Teardowns were happily taken over by @mts :blush: and I’m still only a tag away :wink: it’s just nice for me to not spend all my downtime talking Monzo - as much as I truly love it :joy: I’ve gotta have a bit of separation :hot_coral_heart:

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Always a major bonus :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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