Firstly, like everything else in your startup, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty. That doesn’t mean you have to learn to code, the same as you didn’t need to get a law degree, but you will need to know and understand all the key terms and concepts.
For example, your website and/or your mobile app are your shop and your products. In the physical world you would normally understand your lease agreements, your supply chain plus the specs of your products. The technical stuff in your startup is the same.
Get to know it. It’s your business. Not just your tech guys day job.
So let’s get started with the basics. Document storage and collaboration. It all comes back to this. You need a reliable, backed up(more on this later),
- Domain and hosting details.
- Email provider details
- Web platform specs and details
- Code and version control details
- Development and production details. DNS, names, versions, tech stack etc.
- Monitoring system details
- Analytics details.
- Payment gateway details.
- All logins to social media, websites, apps, tools, vendors etc
Then onto mini work instructions. All the major tasks your tech does needs to be outlined at least in bullet point. For example.
- backups, how, when, where, restore process.
- web unavailable page. Get one. And plan for how you will do roll outs to your site, test them and then make your site available to customers again. This is important to your brand. Don’t let the techy say “I’ll just copy it to the live site.”
- rollout instructions, and rollback instructions.
- mailing lists and newsletter mailouts.
