The Problem At scrappy startups and megalithic enterprise companies alike, deciding what to prioritize with available engineering resources is always a challenge. Everyone has an opinion aligned with their own agenda. Stakeholders clamor for initiatives that will increase their visibility or will simply make the lives of the members of their department easier. All of … Read more »
Blog
Case Study: Scaling Agile for Enterprises and Startups
The Problem Oracle’s social media marketing product suite was formed by the acquisition of several startups in the social media space. The overarching solution was cobbled together, re-packaged, then sold to enterprises as a comprehensive solution for social listening, engagement, analytics, and publishing. Team tribalism was rampant as there were contingents held over from the … Read more »
Case Study: Improving an Offshore Team’s Velocity
The Problem A SaaS startup had a South Asian outsourced offshore team as its primary application development team. The team had a project leader, who, while very capable and reliable, was a bottleneck for communication with the rest of the team. Stakeholders simply threw requirements over the fence to the project leader and were not … Read more »
Case Study: Building a Sustainable Platform for Long-Term Growth
The Problem A B2B SaaS startup (henceforth referred to as the Company) had built their platform 4 times in 6 years (that’s an average of a 1 version per 1.5 years). Each time a new version was built, new features and capabilities were baked in, but inevitably, some features and business logic were also lost. … Read more »
Scrum is Like Training Wheels for an Agile Mindset
In the last few years there has been a growing but steady backlash against Scrum and some its corollary concepts such as using story points to estimate work and make projections. As a proponent and practitioner of agile product development methodologies, this bothered me at first. But upon further reflection, I have come to welcome … Read more »
Rise of the CPTO (Chief Product & Technology Officer)
I thrive as a cross-functional digital product development leader, where I can see the big picture and how each discipline integrates to make cohesive, integrated products that delight customers. Asking me to choose between engineering, product, UX, and project management is like asking me to choose between my kids. The title of “Chief Product & … Read more »
Chrologony
Chrologony is an online historical trivia game where players sequence events into a timeline. I’ve been working on it as a side project since this past spring. The name “Chrologony” is an intentional misconfiguration of the letters in “chronology” … because the game is about sequencing things. I’ve always been a fan of trivia games, especially … Read more »
Intuition is Just Internalized Data
How good is your gut? We make decisions without complete information every waking minute of our lives. When you roll out of bed in the morning and plant your feet beside your bed to stand up, do you first look down at the floor to verify it’s still where you think it is, or that … Read more »
Know Thy [Work] Self
There are 3 types of roles that I think everyone should experience in order to learn more about themselves and how they work best: Working at a larger company or larger team where you are a ‘grunt,’ or have supervisors in your specialization. Working at a small company or small team where you are the domain expert. … Read more »
Jack of All Trades, Master of “Done”
I am an unabashed generalist. Sure, I’m more competent in some areas over others, and of course I enjoy some types of work over others — but I find that I am most comfortable in roles that allow me to bring my breadth of knowledge and experience to bear. Usually this works in my favor, … Read more »