Author: Michael Marsiglia

The Responsible Application Audit – A 7-Part Checklist

As developers, we commonly get asked to review codebases for existing software applications. The common thinking is that a skilled developer can simply: “give a look” to the existing codebase, provide an expert opinion on their ability to extend the application, and provide some level of certainty around the costs associated with new functionality. This […]

The Benefits of Ruthless Collaborative Critique

Communication is difficult. And we’ve all seen reports that needed better peer review, important yet confusing emails, presentations that could have been much, much better, etc. In my experience, many of these situations could have been avoided if the creator had gotten the honest feedback they were asking for. Unfortunately, many people are afraid to […]

Who is the Modal Atom?

Planet Money ran a podcast earlier this year on “The Modal American.” The concept focused on evaluating the mode of a population instead of the average. For their analysis, NPR grouped Americans together based on characteristics like age, sex, income, etc. After that, they identified the most common occurrence for their set of characteristics. The concept […]

Three Ways to Make Your Client’s Life Easier

Taking care of your clients is, as everyone knows, vital for a service-based organization. You were hired to do a job for one or both of these reasons: The client doesn’t have the expertise to do it. The client doesn’t have the time to do it. Reason 1 requires some targeted education and consulting from […]

Should You Build New Software or Buy It? – It Comes Down to Cost vs. Control

You need a serious piece of software to help run your business—an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Maybe you’re replacing what you’ve got, or maybe you’re outgrowing your paper processes. You’ve looked around, but you don’t see anything for sale that exactly meets your needs. And now you’re considering building your own.