.png)
Structured growth: Scaling Carbo’s teams and processes with Cycle
Introduction
Carbo is a fast-growing climate tech start-up. They expanded from having a single PM to three product teams within a year, necessitating the creation of structured product processes and professional user feedback management. Cycle became the cornerstone of all their product operations to enhance efficiency. This article reveals what Carbo implemented and the benefits they gained - here's the structure:
- About Carbo
- Initial challenge
- Setup
- Complete feature development lifecycle with Cycle
- Impact of Cycle
- Favorite feature
1 - About Carbo
Carbo’s mission is to accelerate ecological awareness and reduce carbon footprints by providing reliable and educational carbon calculation data, enabling informed decisions for the planet.
Anthony Guennegou, Lead Product Manager at Carbo, joined in 2023 with 15 years of experience in technology, startups, and entrepreneurship.
- Sector: Biodiversity and Climate
- Year Founded: 2019
- Number of Employees: 54
2 - Initial challenges
Carbo faced several challenges in their product management processes:
Product team
Managing run/build tickets in HubSpot was complicated, and important details were often filtered out to avoid overwhelming the PM, creating information silos. This led to a perception of unresponsiveness from other teams and difficulty revisiting user feedback, resulting in a loss of valuable knowledge. Additionally, the lack of a direct link with GitHub and Notion complicated feedback integration.
Customer Success Managers
They experienced uncertainty about whether client issues were being addressed, distrust in the product team's ability to understand and prioritize customer issues, and a tendency to withhold information, believing the product team didn't adequately understand customer concerns.
Clients & customers
The lack of information on bug resolution or production deployment affected their satisfaction and trust.
Transversely
There was a need for synchronization between Revenue and Product teams, requiring regular exchanges to track progress.
3 - Setup
Carbo's main flow is to process feedback and link it to either an Opportunity (Problem), to an Initiative (Feature), to an Iteration (Improvement) or to a Bug. They also have some Big Bets (Moonshots) with ideas not directly related to their strategy but that could still have big impact. Finally, they have Initiative Ops for technical/ops improvements that are not directly visible to their users.
.png)
4 - Complete feature development lifecycle with Cycle
Carbo's working process follows a triple diamond model, with three key phases: two discovery phases (Problem and Solution) and a Development/Deployment phase.
.png)
Problem Space
1- Problem backlog
Stage: Identify and add problems to the backlog with their description.
Cycle's Role: Cycle helps associate insights with problems early on. The platform automatically suggests insights for issues, which is particularly useful (though not always pertinent).
2- Discovery
Stage: Examine problems to add context and confirm their inclusion in the backlog.
Cycle's Role: Cycle allows Carbo to gather all the knowledge collected on a subject. The ticket is enriched throughout the problem definition phase, answering questions like: What problem do we want to solve? Why is it important to address this issue now? What are the targets and objectives? What are the success conditions? This also allows associating all the knowledge obtained from various stakeholders (insights).
Solution Space
3- Ideation
Stage: Identify and test possible solutions to choose the best option.
Cycle's Role: Cycle allows specifying different solutions via the "Initiatives" doctype linked to "needs" and centralizing user interview feedback. This also allows Carbo to break down solution paths into initiatives (major evolution) and iterations (minor evolution).
4- Conception
Stage: Define complete specifications for the development of the solution.
Cycle's Role: Cycle facilitates progress tracking between PMs, maintains the link with GitHub, and notifies internal stakeholders who reported the issue that it is progressing.
Development
5- Development
Stage: Develop and test the solution to ensure its proper functioning and compliance.
Cycle's Role: Cycle ensures progress tracking between PMs.
6- Deployment
Stage: Put the solution into production and communicate the release details internally.
Cycle's Role: Cycle notifies internal parties who shared feedback that the issue is done, communicates to the entire company the topics delivered in the month via the internal release note, and provides the number of insights shipped in the month. All internal product marketing is written in the Release section and grouped by monthly release.
.png)
7- Perf Review
Stage: Monitor the impact of the deployed solution and decide on necessary iterations.
Cycle's Role: Cycle facilitates progress tracking between PMs.
.png)
5 - Impact of Cycle
Direct influence on product decisions
Carbo conducts "Problem Checkpoint" sessions at the end of problem discovery to shortlist the problems they will solve. In these sessions, they compare the success criteria of each problem to make objectives tangible and assess the coherence of opportunities with their strategy.
Carbo has now added Cycle insights as a key Product KPI that influences decisions. These insights help better understand user needs by articulating specific issues. They also measure the significance of problems based on customer impact and frequency of mentions.
Tracking the number of insights integrated into delivered features provides an indication of the quality of their work.
Improved feedback loop
Before Cycle, closing the feedback loop was impersonal and lacked context, relying on Slack communications, sync points between Product and Success teams, and monthly meetings. Cycle has transformed this process:
- Better understanding: The product team now has a deeper understanding of user feedback.
- Reduced information retention: Minimal information retention between client-facing and product teams.
- Proactive notifications: Stakeholders are notified as soon as issues progress.
- Dynamic roadmaps: Now/Next/Later roadmaps are dynamic and accessible in Cycle and Notion.
- Increased transparency: All information is available to the entire company, enhancing transparency.
- Structured release notes: Release notes are clearer and better structured.
Boosted productivity with AI
Some tasks are now automated thanks to AI:
- Insight Identification: Provides a good first pass, saving time.
- Interview Transcriptions: Transcribes and summarizes video interviews, though used sparingly.
- Insight Suggestions: Proposes insights to attach to doctypes, streamlining the feedback process.
Streamlined workflow and organizational impact
Cycle aids in prioritizing topics, improving decision-making efficiency, and enhancing work process quality by integrating user voices at every development stage. This has also improved team collaboration, reduced silos, and increased internal trust and perceived team velocity.
Cycle has become central to Carbo’s team and organizational structure, impacting several key functions:
- Centralized Feedback: Consolidates feedback from various sources (HubSpot, Slack, in-app forms, interviews), providing a coherent overview of needs and priorities.
- Transparent Roadmaps: Allows the creation and sharing of transparent and accessible roadmaps, facilitating strategic alignment.
- Unified Progress Tracking: Offers a unified platform to track and coordinate progress across our three product teams, promoting effective synchronization and collaboration.
- Company-Wide Release Sharing: Disseminates release information to the entire Carbo team, ensuring clear and comprehensive communication about product developments.
Success Stories
- 100% of Carbo employees are registered on Cycle.
- At least 80% have provided feedback.
By integrating Cycle, Carbo has transformed their product management processes, driving better outcomes for users and our organization.
6 - Favorite feature
Cycle’s "dogmatic but adaptable" approach allows us to create and interconnect doctypes to match our needs. Integrating our Opportunity Solution Tree (OST) into Cycle provides efficient navigation from detailed aspects to global views, maintaining our OST more effectively than Figma.
