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.

Project Team Roles and Responsibilities at Atomic Object

At Atomic, we expect every member of a project team to be a consultant. That means everyone should: Understand the big picture and how their work fits in. Collaborate with the client to help them make smart decisions. Feel personally responsible for helping the client succeed. Our teams are structured to that end, with four […]

How to Get the Most from Your Delivery Lead at Atomic

You won’t see titles like Project Manager, Scrum Master, or Account Manager on an Atomic project team roster. Instead, you’ll see a Delivery Lead, a role we introduced to give our clients a streamlined experience as they work with our teams. Here’s a quick overview of what an Atomic Delivery Lead does and how to […]

Six Questions to Ask Your Software Consultant Team

As consultants, we work hard to anticipate our clients’ questions and needs. But sometimes we need a little nudge to share more detail. To show how these “nudges” can enhance outcomes, I’ve put together six questions you can ask to get more out of your software consultant team.

Want to Increase Your Custom Software ROI? Trust Your Team

To have a successful project, you need to trust your team, and they need to trust you. This is obvious on some levels. Your team must trust that they’re going to get paid, and you must trust that they’re not going to copy your whole database and sell it to your competitors. But trusting your […]

Six Traits of Outstanding (& Outstandingly Successful) Clients

In over 15 years of consulting, I’ve had the privilege of working with hundreds of clients and stakeholders. While many of them were memorable for different reasons, some clients have been truly outstanding in terms of our working relationship and what we were able to accomplish together. These clients came from diverse roles, backgrounds, and […]

Six Leadership Roles that Can Make or Break Your Software Project

When you hire a software team, you probably have a pretty good understanding of the technical roles they need to fill: development, design, devops, testing, etc. But don’t gloss over the leadership roles—especially the ones that your team may be responsible for.

Six Pitfalls on the Road to Valuable Custom Software

If you’re about to invest in custom software, you have high hopes for what it can do for your business. As my colleague Mike wrote recently: Building custom software is like sculpting with clay—you can create just about anything you can imagine.

The Atomic Agile Process

The best process is owned by its team, but everyone has to start somewhere. That’s why I drafted this, a template for Atomic Object’s Agile process. It’s designed to be a starting point for our maker teams as they come together to tackle a new project.

Transparent Project Management with Burn Up Charts

Uncertainty is inherent to software development — it’s impossible to precisely predict how long individual tasks will take. And that makes it very difficult to manage software projects using traditional project management tools. Bottom-up estimates and Gantt timelines created before a project starts are helpful for setting initial milestones and budgets. But once development is […]

Atomic Spin

Atomic Object’s blog on everything we find fascinating.

Managing Your Team