Why You Should Embrace Ontological Humility at Work

Our leadership group in Ann Arbor has been reading Conscious Business, a fascinating book by Fred Kofman. I’ve found it to be part traditional business fare, part self-help, and part meditation on the nature of truth. One chapter in the book — Ontological Humility — stood out to me as particularly helpful in its framing […]

Three Crucial Times To Gather Client Feedback on a Project

The relentless push to improve is core to our culture at Atomic Object. We spend a lot of time focused on professional development and introspecting about how we can better develop software products. Over the last few years, we’ve also been sharpening our approach to gathering client feedback — we believe it’s essential to our […]

Recognizing Great Work at Atomic— Small Moments with Big Impact

Employee recognition is very important. Gallup says, “Workplace recognition motivates, provides a sense of accomplishment, and makes employees feel valued for their work. Recognition not only boosts individual employee engagement, but it also has been found to increase productivity and loyalty to the company, leading to higher retention.” I think this is especially true at […]

Cross-Platform Mobile Frameworks – Benefits & Tradeoffs

When clients first contact us about building a mobile app, they often wonder if they should build separate native mobile apps for both Android and iOS platforms, or if they should use a cross-platform framework. In the past, cross-platform frameworks have gotten a bad rap, and for good reason. They were slow, they didn’t look […]

Surf With Your Knees Bent – Four Ways to Expect the Unexpected

Software makers, like surfers, need to be ready for unexpected problems. We need to “surf with our knees bent,” using a stance that takes the unexpected into account. Here are four ways you should adjust your stance to avoid being thrown into the water… metaphorically.

Control Repository Size with SVN Sparse Checkout

Atomic Object was founded by a computer science professor, and during the company’s earlier stages, it only employed developers. That legacy is still felt today in the tooling we use to run the business. Case in point: We use a code repository tool—Subversion (SVN)—to securely store, manage revisions, and control access to some business documents. […]

How Note Taking Makes Me a Better Developer

I suspect almost everyone reading this blog has taken notes before, especially in a classroom setting. As my career has progressed from college student to professional developer and finally to a managing partner, I’ve also found that note taking is useful while developing software. In fact, note taking is a transferable skill—one of those abilities […]

Get More Value from “Hopes and Fears” with a Quadrant Map

The “Hopes and Fears” Design Thinking exercise is a great way to foster discussion around our client’s worries and hopes about the project, especially early on in the process. For a recent project, I was researching ways to get more actionable output from the exercise. I found a fantastic blog post from Innovator Ltd on […]

How to Set a Budget for Your Custom Software Project

Software is never done—there are always more features and functions you could add. So how much should you budget for a custom software project? Some companies keep throwing money at the project without any budget at all. But they can miss out on early client feedback and end up wasting money on the wrong things.

Conferences with Colleagues – 6 Ways to Do it Right

Conferences are for learning. But if you go with colleagues, they can also be a great way to build relationships and learn from each other. I’d call this a “group conference”—when three people who know each other attend a conference and plan to spend time together while they’re there. I was thinking about this a […]

Atomic Spin

Atomic Object’s blog on everything we find fascinating.

By: John Fisher

Author: John Fisher