A Good Developer is a Better Project Manager

Consider this. Why on earth would you have someone managing a project who can’t control when the work gets done? And, why on earth would you have a team of people doing the work who don’t communicate directly with the client? Developers are, in most…

Transactional Accountability: How to Give a #$%! at Work

Can you name 3–4 things you do at your job which you’d be held accountable for if you failed at them? If the answer is no and you just giggled a little bit, well, damn, that’s no good.

Accountability is a…

A Few Thoughts on DoneDone’s Customer Service

We released a new version of DoneDone back on October 1st. A couple of months prior to that, we began a campaign of emails and communications with our existing customer base to help everyone prepare for the transition. To be certain, there were…

Developer’s Fatigue and the Art of Not Finishing Strong

One of the worst things a project owner can do is push out a launch date and expect the development team to hang tight. Your crew has busted rocks to hit an ambitious deadline only to be told “we thought you’d be happy to have a bit…

Thank goodness I usually don’t have a strong opinion

As web development and business goes, I do not have a strong opinion about most things. I’m also not good at most things.

It might be surprising, coming from someone who’s been involved in this industry for…

Why you should (and shouldn’t) track time

It’s pretty much industry standard that, when we estimate the cost of a web project, we do so based on the amount of time it takes. If you’re a contractor you’ve got an hourly rate or a day rate. If you work in a shop, your company has one too. Is this the…

Don’t launch, release.

There are two terms I hate in our industry.

Launch Date

The first is the dreaded “launch date”. Every time I see it on a calendar I think of a monkey in a helmet, strapped to some 60's-style missile blasting into orbit, and…

More software isn’t the answer

When a user can’t accomplish his goal quickly and efficiently, the most natural reaction is surely “I wish this would just …” or “They really should add a ….”. And rightly so, as a good application should be clear in it’s form and utility. The same goes with clients…

Complexity under the surface != Complexity at the surface

“An extraordinarily complex mess.”

That’s what Nina Olson, the national Taxpayer Advocate for the U.S. Internal Revenue Service calls the American tax system. The official book weighs in at about 6,500…