Our New Development Process

Posted by: Dave Goerlich in Agile.

In Agile Development for Tiny Teams, I presented an overview of our original development and project management process. I highlighted a number of challenges we encountered by using it. Thanks to Jon Stahl, Josh and I were exposed to the application of Kanban to the software development process. I was convinced that Kanban was the right tool for us. However, the question of exactly how to implement it as part of a new overall development process remained.

We determined that our new process needed to be:

• Simple – Being a tiny team, the impact of time used managing the process rather than used generating billable work product is magnified.
• Able to handle concurrent projects – We needed to be able to support ongoing development needs of current clients while continuing to develop new clients and projects.
• Scalable – We will add subcontractors to our team as needs arise. Our new process must work regardless of the team size. It also needed to be easy to teach to new team members.
• Flexible – In addition to client work, Josh and I are partners in Prfessor.com which includes a significant amount of development efforts. The process needed to be flexible enough to manage these obligations too.
• Waste Reducing – We needed to address the four top areas of waste that I identified in our original process (see Eliminating Waste from Your Agile Process)
  • Work In Process (more than the bare minimum necessary)
  • Rework
  • Over-engineering the code
  • Repetitive tasks

From Jon’s presentation I realized that we really had two separate workflows, one nested inside the other. We never formalized that distinction, but when we began to view things in terms of MMFs (Minimally Marketable Features) the nested process jumped right out. Understanding this nesting was critical to the success of our new process.

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Codemash Presentations That You Won’t Want To Miss

Posted by: Josh Walsh in Events.

The Codemash Conference is coming up again this year in just a few weeks.  It is always my favorite conference of the year, bringing together a diverse crowd of developers to learn practices from each others industries.

I have compiled a list of talks that I know you’ll enjoy.  Some of these I’ve heard previously, and others are presented by people that are always interesting/entertaining.

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Happy Holidays

Posted by: Josh Walsh in Company.

Thank you for making 2009 an awesome and prosperous year for us.

Can I make a living as an Entrepreneur?

Posted by: Josh Walsh in Entrepreneurship.

I have a difficult time explaining what I do to my grandfather.  He bears his skeptical face when I tell him that I’m an entrepreneur on the internet.

“Trying to strike it rich, eh?”

Truthfully, I don’t think he understands how I feed my family, but that’s ok.   But, this story does bring up a question that’s raised all the time among prospective entrepreneurs.

Can I strike it rich if I go on my own?

My response is always “yes and no.”  Chad Moutray, the Chief Economist of the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration, published some of his research on the income likelihood of entrepreneurs.  His research backs up my response nicely.

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Eliminating Waste from your Agile Process

Posted by: Dave Goerlich in Agile.

A central pillar of a lean software development process is elimination of waste. So what is “waste” in a software development process? In a manufacturing process, any amount of work in process above the bare minimum to meet production levels is waste. Keith Swenson recently wrote an an excellent article “Taiichi Ohno Reinterpreted”  where he observed:

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Agile Development for Tiny Teams

Posted by: Dave Goerlich in Agile.

D-I is proud to be a tiny firm. We have always been a tiny firm, but we haven’t always been able to get big projects accomplished. While we do use subcontractors quite often, the firm is still just Josh and myself.

We believe that software should be high quality. It should be efficient, tested and intuitively designed. When it comes to features, enough is enough. We believe you should build what you need, and nothing else. We also believe that the process of developing the product is as important as the product itself.

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10 Tips to Better Google Wave Conversations

Posted by: Josh Walsh in Company.

Jonathan Penn and I have had a number of enlightening conversations about Google Wave which have had a significant impact on the way we converse. After reading an entry on his blog, Hardware Limits of the Human Mind and conversing with him some more, I’ve invited him to share some tips we have come up with.

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Blades and Razors / Razors and Blades

Posted by: Josh Walsh in Entrepreneurship.

Back in the 1890′s the Gillete Safety Razor Company, now a part of Proctor and Gamble, created a new business model commonly known as a Blades and Razors model.  They invented a razor with a replaceable blade, so that the expensive shaver  would not need replacing as often as it had.  The main shaver would last a long time, and the smaller razor blades would be replaced rather than sharpened.

The pricing model was new.  They began selling the shavers at low prices, actually losing money on each one they sold.  The blades were sold with high profit margins.  In the long run, they were highly profitable.

The video game business has used this same model for years.  Microsoft sold Xbox 360′s at a loss knowing that they would sell millions of games at huge profits.

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Is Blue Still The Best Color For Links?

Posted by: Josh Walsh in Design.

I set out to write a post which proves that blue links are not more user friendly than links of other colors. It is a topic all web designers have wrestled with at some point. Many of us, including myself, believe that links of any color can be equally usable as long as they:

• Are of contrasting color from the body text;
• Are underlined;
• Change color when visited;

However, when I began researching this article it became clear that the scientific evidence was against me. Articles, old and new, clearly prove that users find links significantly faster when they are blue, underlined and change purple after being visited.

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