Design Thinking and Atomic Project Leadership

IDEO sees design thinking as three lenses through which we can view design: desirability (human), viability (business), and feasibility (technical). Atomic’s project leadership roles (Design, Delivery, Development) share a significant alignment with these dimensions. That alignment strengthens our long-held belief that everyone on the team has a place in the design conversation.

How to Create an Effective Project Charter

Micah Alles and I recently attended a Certified Scrum Product Owner training course with Mike Cohn. In addition to the excellent Scrum-process-focused learning, this course was a reminder of how important it is to maintain a fresh, relevant project goal that aligns and motivates the team.

Introduce Human-Centered Design: Start Small and Start Today

Introducing Human-Centered Design doesn’t have to be complicated. It isn’t a monolithic process that has to be applied across an entire organization before it works. Human-Centered Design is a discipline, a way of thinking and framing context, that provides value incrementally throughout the lifecycle of product design, development, support, and beyond. You can start simple, […]

Four Lessons Learned while Troubleshooting CAN Bus Communication with my Subaru

I recently started a fun personal project involving two of my favorite things: cars and software. Modern cars come with plenty of software on board, controlling everything from engine behavior and stability to door locks and entertainment. The software already running on my Subaru does plenty of interesting things, but I’d really like to see […]

Six Ways to Tame Your IoT Project

IoT projects can be complicated. Compared to a mobile or web application, connected physical products frequently involve a wider breadth of software, hardware, and people. The complexity of building an IoT product can quickly become overwhelming if not properly managed. Here are a few things that can help tame the chaos of an IoT project.

More Robust Browser-Side Networking

What happens to your web application when used over a flaky network connection? Does it swallow errors and stop responding? Does it bounce users immediately to the browser’s built-in “no connection” page? Does it give you a way to continue using the application when network connectivity is restored? It used to be acceptable to simply […]

The Many Uses of Pairing: Replacing Post-Work Review with Collaboration

One big thing that Extreme Programming got right is pair programming. Rather than waiting until work is complete to review code with another developer, the authors of XP figured that if having two pairs of eyes on code was important, why not do it continuously?

Book Review – Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change

I appreciate books that provide an easy-to-remember, visual framework for the key points. Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, Second Edition is one of those books. The framework is a six-quadrant grid meant to help identify ways to influence key behaviors in ourselves and others.

Utilize Your Software Consultants to Frame Product Management Decisions

As software product consultants, we’re typically not in a position to take responsibility for significant product management decisions. However, we care a lot about the decisions that are made and want to know that our customers have the best information and context to make their decisions. At every stage in a project, from sale to […]

Your Database is Underutilized

Relational databases are pretty good at storing and retrieving data. But if that’s all you’re using your relational database management system (RDBMS) for, you’re missing out.

Atomic Spin

Atomic Object’s blog on everything we find fascinating.

By: Jason Porritt

Author: Jason Porritt