The fault in our software devs
If you’re a business owner looking to solve a nagging technical issue related to productivity and you think that some better/newer/awesome-r software may...
The ruthless elimination of scope
When planning software you want to alternate between Context & Clarity. Alternating between dreaming about the big picture and the next immediately...
YAGNI (You ain't gonna need it)
The acronym YAGNI stands for “You ain’t gonna need it” and is perhaps one of the most commonly repeated phrases in software development, and with good...
Software Strategy: Betting on things that don't change
In business, as in warfare, he who completes the most OODA loops wins the fight. Optimizing for faster cycles is always a winning tactic. One surefire way to...
Business value first, tooling second
Many software developers will list their exceptionally written code as a feature or benefit of their practice. They fawn over their functions, as a poet does...
Like concrete, software is expensive to change later
By now, you’ve heard me preach about Being the Program. It’s a critical concept to ingrain as a scrappy business owner who can’t afford long deadlines and...
Value is not dependent on the medium
I just spent the last hour writing a newsletter where I tried to articulate the difference between value and the medium that delivers the value. People often...
You can't deliver anything without ruthless prioritization
Imagine planning a trip from Tennessee to New York. You want to make the entire trip in a day, you hate flying, and you refuse to be crammed into a train....
Points of failure in small business software systems
A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is an oft-forgotten, but critical piece of software planning. Ensuring your business doesn’t go under when disaster strikes...
Wolves in sleek clothing: Part 2
Let’s continue our series about understanding how to vet the quality of the developers and agencies you’re investigating for your next big project. (Check...
What are software maintenance costs?
We often think software is a “set and forget” investment. You build it, it does the job, and you profit—right? Sometimes, yes. But often, no. Software...
Context & Clarity
When I do a software discovery call, my goal is to get both the 30,000-foot view of the project and the very next actionable step to take; the “context &...
Wolves in sleek clothing: Part 1
An unfortunate side-effect of the inherent complexity of software is that it takes a bit of “know-how” to discern the good, the bad, and the downright...
Dollars in hand
If you build your own software instead of using something “off the shelf”, things can get expensive very quickly. How can you mitigate this cost and iterate...
A real-life example of checklist-driven development
For a non-technical business owner who wants to build the right software without wasting time and money, the best approach is to use Checklist-Driven...
Checklist-driven Development
The best way to guarantee your budget and deadline aren’t blown away is to utilize a checklist to guide your development. The alternative is to merely talk...
Be the Program
Premature optimization is the root of all evil. Many prospects I talk with begin their conversations by telling me they need custom software to solve a...
A "small bet" in real life
After reading so much about "small bets", you may wonder what exactly a small bet looks like. Today we'll explore a recent, concrete example I worked on....
It's all bets, all the way down
A useful paradigm in software is to imagine it as a series of bets. The more you understand the software being written and the underlying business, the...
There are other ways to build software
So you just learned that you aren't ready to build custom software, so... what then? Are you stuck until you get someone to pay for your idea? Nope! There’s...