Cultural Onboarding via Welcome Weekend

This year, Atomic introduced Welcome Weekend to our calendar of internal events. Welcome Weekend is an overnight, off-site experience, organized and run by office managing partners and held annually for new employees who join one of our offices each year. It’s an evolution of the Founder’s Retreat.

How Atomic Goes About Setting a Project Budget

If you’ve worked with other custom software companies, you’ll notice that Atomic’s approach to budgeting is unique. It’s a lot more time-intensive and comprehensive. In fact, when I deliver a budget model to a customer who is comparison shopping, they often tell me something like, “This is the most comprehensive analysis I have seen from […]

Five of My Favorite Resources for Women Growing Their Careers

Although women are a bigger part of the workforce and enjoy more options and more respect now than perhaps ever before in history, it can sometimes still feel like an uphill climb to be a woman in the workplace.

Why Milestone-Based Payments Are Never a Good Idea for Custom Software

During two separate meetings with potential new accounts this week, milestone-based payments (sometimes also called fixed-bid payments) came up in conversation. One potential customer was interested in working this way; the other one had just been burned by it. These conversations reminded me of the reasons milestone-based payments are a bad idea when you’re building […]

How I’m Getting a Business Education Without Going to B-School

For several years now, I have wanted to further my professional development in business administration and management. I researched MBA programs and other related certificate programs, but the timing never felt right for me in terms of the time and financial commitments that business school would require, and the other life goals and activities I […]

How to Avoid Stakeholder Gridlock on Your Software Project

Have you ever been to a meeting that involved a dozen or more people, that constantly went too far into the weeds, that couldn’t come to a consensus, and that left you feeling like nothing was accomplished? It was horrible, right? You probably never want to have that experience again.

2 Design Techniques that Can Make You a Better Influencer

In the decade I spent as a designer, the most important skills I learned weren’t about user interfaces or color theory. They were about working with people—juggling different ideas, priorities, and personalities. Finding a way forward that everyone can agree on. Here are two people-wrangling techniques I still use nearly every day, in my career […]

Seven Quick Strategies for Effective Scrum Stand-Up Meetings

The daily stand-up meeting is an important component of the SCRUM process. It helps the whole team stay in-sync and up-to-date on what’s happening with the project, and it alerts everyone to blockers as soon as they become an issue. However, if you do a stand-up meeting wrong, it can become a real drag—and a […]

Unpacking the Confidence Code, Part 4 – Instilling Confidence in Others

One of the key messages in Katty Kay and Claire Shipman’s book The Confidence Code is that, while each of us may begin with higher or lower levels of confidence due to gender, genetics, and nurture, the concept of neuroplasticity means that anyone’s confidence levels can increase.

Unpacking The Confidence Code, Part 2 – Exploring the Confidence Gap

Katty Kay & Claire Shipman, authors of The Confidence Code, were inspired to tackle the topic of women and confidence because women everywhere seem to have less confidence than men.

Atomic Spin

Atomic Object’s blog on everything we find fascinating.

By: Brittany Hunter

Author: Brittany Hunter