Weekly List Archive

Well if you already have one, it's certainly not going to hurt you. But that's not the position a lot of founders are in. The answer is, it depends. Most startups are about packaging up some useful domain knowledge that you have, making some process more efficient,...

If you are about to embark on a new software project then I have some tips for you to keep your fixed costs low and to save some money. First this model is not for everyone, depending on what stage of maturity your company is at or what you’re developing. But for...

Here's a story from a customer: They built a customer engagement SaaS product. It was built by one guy who then decided to move overseas. Things started out well and for the most part they were happy with the technical output and results. This is a common story I...

Because developers know code. They do not know your business or your customers. They don't know how your customers use your product or what problems they use it to solve. They don't have the empathy or skills to understand what it's really like on the ground talking...

Founders/CEOs: Got a remote team? or offshore? You have to get good at deliberate communication and providing the context, "the why". Humans are really bad at this, we think things that are obvious to us are obvious to everyone. You run into big trouble here with a...

Know how to triage customer issues, explain customer issues, talk with customers, reproduce bugs - both simple and ones that require specific user data from the production environment. Know how to talk with sales, marketing and product about what they need. You can go...

The person who can enable a distributed team. Let me explain. The # 1 reason why any project of yours failed in the past with an outsourced or remote team is because of a lack of context or understanding of your business domain knowledge... On one side you've got...

As a founder it sounds like a smart move to know what it's going to cost you. The problem is it ignores the reality of software development, which is one of constant discovery and unknown unknowns. It may "never" be done. It creates a misalignment of objectives. The...

A big concern for both you and your investors. You want to save money, build for cheaper and maintain more of your equity, but there are risks to consider going this route. Here's some ways to reduce the risk: 1. Separate your code from your production data Often your...

Seeing a lot of CEOs struggle with this They're using offshore dev teams, external companies or lots of contractors. And even though they're happy with the output, they struggle to tie everything together for calls and meetings about new partnerships, integrations or...

I think engineering leadership today is all about having enough technical credibility that the team respects you. And an extension of that is the ability to have empathy for what they are going through. You don't need to be the super technical genius on the team. No...

Let's use Brisbane, QLD, Australia as an example. Beer fridges, ping pong tables and pizza is a culture. Trust, autonomy and results-based work is also a culture. Truly valuing employee time, health and family balance is a culture. I get it, there is a lot of risk in...

I think the "contract to hire" will be front and center in this new flexible/remote working world. In the past these were a bad deal for developers. Nobody wants to move across the country without some certainty. And I get it - employers want to avoid costly hiring...

I'm going to say yes* with a huge asterisk. Companies like Gitlab aren't right about this. Not without making a further distinction at least. It's all about value. And software engineers need to be careful about this. Your value must also be perceived by the right...

Here's a way to filter through proposals quickly, save yourself a lot of time and find someone easy to work with: Place a sentence at the end of your project description that you expect the work proposal will answer. Then disregard any proposal that does not answer it...

It's a common problem in development and endlessly frustrating. There is a 100% foul-proof way to estimate though: 1 - Do all of the work first 2 - See how long it took to do the work 3 - Make that the estimate This is not very useful of course, it provides no...

Misalignment of objectives. You want cost assurance, quality and reliable estimations. They just want to get paid. Fixed-fee projects seem like the safest bet but they work against you. All you’re really doing is pushing the risk onto the development company. This...