The One Pizza Project

1. What is the One Pizza Project?  

First, some quick history. In the early days, Amazon's Jeff Bezos instituted a rule whereby every internal team was to be small enough that it could be fed with two pizzas. The philosophy: A smaller team spends less time handling schedules and managing people and more time getting done what needs to be done.

Witlingo's One Pizza Project is an initiative that brings together groups of three people, all passionately interested in professionally entering the Voice First World.  Why three people?  Because: it's the number of people that a large pizza (with toppings that none of the three members objects to) can feed.

2. Tell me more.

The idea is to help those who want to professionally work in the Voice First space to: (1) Learn and understand first-hand what it takes to launch great Voice First experiences, and (2) Develop the specific skills that they would need to either be employable by companies that are hiring, or launch and successfully build up their own Voice First startups.

3. What is the team composed of?

The three members of One Pizza teams would occupy the following roles, one member per role:

• A Product Manager
• A UX Designer
• A Software Developer

4. What would they do?

They would:

• Identify a specific problem or a specific opportunity where a well defined target user, or someone else who is also well defined, is willing to pay profitable money for a Voice First solution to that problem or for the fulfillment of that opportunity.
• Design an Amazon Alexa skill, a Google Assistant action, or a Samsung Bixby capsule that solves that problem.
• Build that skill/action/capsule.
• Test it.
• Market it and launch it.

5. What kind of things would the individual participants do?

• UX Research: The Product Manager.
• Functional requirements definition: The Product Manager.
• UX detailed design: The UX Designer.
• Development: The Software Developer.
• Testing: The Product Manager and the UX Designer.
• Certification: The Product Manager and the Software Developer.
• Marketing communications and branding: The Product Manager.

6. How much experience does one need to apply?

None.  What you do need is passion, being serious, and a commitment to working with two other people to launch something concrete.

7. Would there be supervision of the teams?

No.  The teams will be on their own.  It will be up to them to succeed or to fail. Witlingo may help them reach out to potential mentors, but the team should behave as if they were a real startup.

8. How much does it cost to join the One Pizza Project?

There are no costs.  It is free.

9. Who would own the resulting artifacts?

All artifacts (design documents, reports, software, the skills/actions/capsules, etc.) would be exclusively owned by the three members of the One Pizza team.

10. Why is Witlingo doing this?

Witlingo is doing this for two reasons: (1) A tactical one: this will enable us to be close to talent that we may want to hire as we grow, and (2) A strategic one: we want the quality of the Voice First experiences that are launched out there to be as great as possible. This is our own small way to promote excellence.

11.  Actually, I'm a professional in the Voice First space.  How can I be of help?

If you would like to mentor a One Pizza Project team, please fill out the form below and let's talk.

12. I want to be part of the One Pizza Project.  What should I do next?

If you are new to the Voice First space and wish to engage with two passionate fellow aspiring Voice First professionals, please fill out this form.