Plot

Until this point, Plot's users were all internal to Bonfire. To bring Plot to a wider audience, the problem Plot solves, the way it solves it and the vision for it's future all had to be communicated clearly for the first time. Today, the home page of Plot changed from simply "Sign in" to the first attempt to share the bigger picture.

Adopted Plot for meeting with my team at Bonfire, where I was Director of Engineering. In this season, my calendar was over 70% full, in part because I had a very large number of direct reports. Plot initially grew from helpful patterns for meeting prep, execution and follow-through we were doing manually in Google Docs. By adding Plot's structure and tooling, we grew to follow our desired habits more consistently.

At Bonfire, we're always had a focus on effectiveness and productivity. Over time, we evolved a set of practices around meetings involving a Google Doc. We would prepend a new heading with the date of the next meeting, and collaboratively add topics for discussion. In meeting, we'd run through them adding notes, signalling actions and agreements. These simple practices -- collaborative prep, a shared screen during the meeting, and written agreements for follow-through -- increased our meeting effectiveness greatly.