It’s not uncommon for a successful software project to last many years. After all, successful software is never complete. There’s always a new feature to add or an existing component to freshen up.
But should the original team last just as long?
Read more on Team Rotations – Yes, You Should…
In my experience, people who truly excel in their careers are always self-managing. They accomplish more, they discover more opportunities for themselves, and (as Verne Harnish says in Scaling Up) they’re the sort of people that smart organizations hire and rely on.
Read more on Self-Managing People Are Smart about Asking for Help…
Building custom software is like sculpting with clay—you can create just about anything you can imagine. Whatever your unique business process is, custom software can be coded to handle it in a streamlined and elegant way. It enables you to differentiate your product offerings and create repeatable value for a large number of users. Read more on Should you build custom software? It depends on which kind of problem you have….
This time of year, I like to reflect on all of the amazing things that happened during the previous year. It’s enjoyable to spend some time putting together a list of fun facts. Read more on 2016 Atomic Fun Facts…
Good management at Atomic is putting people in the right context for success and getting out of their way. In other words, we hire trustworthy people, then trust them.
At lot goes into that simple statement. Read more on Short-Handed Management Model – Five Practices that Make it Work…
Fair pay matters a lot. It’s important to our business that we attract and retain top talent, and it’s important to me personally. I care about the Atoms at Atomic; they’re my friends. For them, and for my own personal integrity, I want a fair and consistent value exchange for everyone at Atomic.
We recently modified our compensation evaluation process to a more routine—and hopefully more fair—system (judged by consistency). Read more on Toward Fair Pay – Evolving how we Evaluate & Compensate Employees…
Managing project team schedules is one of the most challenging parts of running a consultancy. Optimizing for client release dates, assigning the right team to the job, creating good mentoring opportunities, connecting individual team members with a project that they’re personally passionate about, and minimizing schedule gaps to protect your own cash flow is an exponentially difficult problem that keeps getting more and more complex as the company grows. Read more on Best Practices for Scheduling Creative Teams…
People are complex and not always direct in their communication. This dynamic has the potential to create misunderstandings that can lead to a lot of anxiety when developing software. I’ve felt that anxiety myself from time to time, and it can be poisonous, leading to a lack of sleep, a lack of trust, and ultimately reduced productivity. But there’s a better way to handle confusing situations.
Read more on Don’t Suffer in Silence – A Template for Scary Conversations…
New user groups pop up all the time around new technologies and methodologies. Self organization around learning is amazing and powerful—having a community of smart people that self organize and improve the software community is vital for our long-term success.
The major roadblock that these groups commonly struggle with are the business aspects of running a group: Read more on The SoftwareGR Alliance – Supporting Local User Groups…
As developers, we all like to believe we’re more than just “code monkeys”—those interchangeable, expendable cogs in the software-making machine.
But to be more, we have to bring more. We must contribute more than code—even code that’s bug free, on time, and on budget. We must become consultants, helping our clients make smart decisions and getting the maximum value out of every hour we invest.
Read more on The Consultant’s Craft: Becoming More than a Programmer…
