Posts for "Software"

A couple weeks ago I attended a conference held by Pacific Crest, an investment banking firm that underwrites many of the tech IPOs in our market (e.g. Wayfair, Hubspot, Apigee). The keynote speaker was Bill Ruh, Chief Digital Officer of GE, who gave a very engaging talk about the

Before my company achieved product market fit, we had certain unspoken values within our software team. These included: move fast, take risks, minimize process / management overhead, empower individuals, prioritize features over infrastructure, find the MVF (Minimum Viable Feature), execute in the presence of customers, self-organize, obsess over customers, and deliver

One of the most common soft skill gaps with software engineers is the ability to influence others. This gap of course is a byproduct of the nature of our work. From the time we graduate college, our influence is directed more at the technology we use than the people with

I read a recent blog post by Adam Pisoni, CTO & co-founder of Yammer, titled I’m Sorry But Agile Won’t Fix Your Products. It’s a great read and drives home a truth that often gets overlooked in our industry: small, empowered and self-organizing teams almost always produce

A few years ago I had a project manager from my team in Scotland send me a copy of Eliyahu Goldratt’s The Goal after learning I’d never read the 1984 classic. At the time, the constraint this team was struggling with was an ability to get software specifications

Confession: I have a love hate relationship with product documentation. While I can appreciate the value of well written technical documentation, I can’t help but feel it has a poor ROI these days. So when I started my current company, I committed myself to investing in an intuitive user