Project & Team Management

Three Ways to Maintain Excellent Customer Experience During a Support Phase

During active projects, we rarely go more than a day or two without talking to our client via Basecamp, a phone call, or in person. Clients appreciate that amount of engagement, and at the end of the project, the relationship is very strong.

Then the project enters a support phase, and communication goes dark. The strong relationship you’ve built starts to fade.

Fast forward a year. That same client is ready for another round of development, but instead of reaching out to you, they shop around and find a new partner. Read more on Three Ways to Maintain Excellent Customer Experience During a Support Phase…

Project Team Roles at Atomic – The Tech Lead

Successful product delivery requires us to navigate overlapping, competing concerns across a broad spectrum of execution dimensions, all tied together via our tech lead role. This role is complex and multifaceted, requiring the people who hold it to balance a variety of needs and interests. Read more on Project Team Roles at Atomic – The Tech Lead…

Identifying Design & Development Implementation Potholes

The marriage of design and software implementation has been a positive thing for the user. At Atomic, we receive a lot of good feedback about the use of Human Centered Design, but the design process is really just the start. What brings designs to life is the way our poly-skilled teams work hard to avoid road bumps during implementation, ensuring a quality outcome for our clients. Read more on Identifying Design & Development Implementation Potholes…

Three Ways to Build Trust & Safety as a Team Leader

More and more studies have shown that the most effective teams are the ones whose members trust each other and feel “psychologically safe.” Psychological safety is when a person feels he/she is safe to take a risk and does not need to worry that the team will punish him/her for asking questions, admitting a mistake, or any offering a new idea. Read more on Three Ways to Build Trust & Safety as a Team Leader…

If You Build It, Will They Use It? Assessing Your Client’s Change Management Readiness

A software project can’t be called “successful” unless it’s implemented successfully. And believe it or not, there’s a lot that software consultants can do to help with successful implementation. It starts back in the initial planning stages, with an effort to understand as many facets of the unknown as you can. Read more on If You Build It, Will They Use It? Assessing Your Client’s Change Management Readiness…

Software Exposes People Problems that You Can’t Ignore

Image credit : Alan D Cirker (CC BY 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons

Software, and computers in general, are excellent at enforcing process. But process is often in direct conflict with people. So what happens when a new software system is thrust upon people? Frustration, revolt, and other negative consequences—a net loss for all involved.

Read more on Software Exposes People Problems that You Can’t Ignore…

Problems Happen; How Do You Deliver the Bad News to Clients?

We’d like it if things always went smoothly, but in life, they seldom do. This truth holds for custom software projects as well—we struggle with unforeseen bugs, scope creep, a third-party integration that doesn’t work, team velocity lower than expected, projects more complex than originally thought, etc. In these situations, it’s helpful to remember how to deliver bad news effectively, in a way that moves the project forward. Read more on Problems Happen; How Do You Deliver the Bad News to Clients?…

Finding the Right Balance Between Planning & Building on Agile Projects

Finding and maintaining balance is a major theme of life—between work and leisure, time alone and time with others, eating healthy food and enjoying a treat.

Software projects also involve a lot of balancing. One big facet (highlighted by conversations around Agile vs. Waterfall) is the balance between spending time to build precise plans in advance vs. starting to build real software as soon as possible and leaning on feedback to work toward the best result. Read more on Finding the Right Balance Between Planning & Building on Agile Projects…

Three Strategies For Implementing Large Stories

While working in an agile environment, you may be assigned a user story that requires a very large amount of time and effort to implement. Typically, any user story estimated above a certain number of points should be broken down into multiple smaller, actionable user stories. Unfortunately, this does not always happen. Read more on Three Strategies For Implementing Large Stories…