03.14.13 |
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The development agency Monterail wrote a cool post recently talking about how great Trello and a Kanban methodology works for project management. I’m not a PM at my current day job, but I’ve found for both my work and personal workflow that Trello is pretty awesome. My usage is so simplistic it’s pretty hard to argue that in my case it’s only a step or two above glorified to-do list, but for me the big difference is the visuals. I can easily see if I’m getting slammed with priorities or what’s left at a glance; I’m never losing context and sight of the big picture.
01.30.13 |
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As I’ve noted previously here, a great design and development working relationship is essential. Developer Derrick Ko writes a great post on how to make that possible:
Plan your sprints with both engineering and design present. Give both sides a chance to be heard when deciding the priority of upcoming feature work. There’s a lot less friction when the team understands the tradeoffs at play.
Once things are prioritized, stick to it.
01.02.13 |
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App creator Andrew Dumont, talking about his daily schedule that he shifted two hours earlier:
You’re probably thinking, “I’m not a morning person.” Well, I wasn’t either. But I trained myself to become one. As is true with anything, you get used to it. The first two weeks are the hardest. After that, it’s smooth sailing.
I’m not a New Years resolution kind of guy, but there’s something about an earlier schedule that I’m finding increasingly appealing long before I read Andrew’s post. As I head back to work I’m moving everything a good hour earlier. Hopefully results are positive.
12.27.12 |
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Venture capitalist Tom Tunguz, discussing the ratio of meetings you asked for vs. meetings asked of you:
What is your ratio? And what should it be? Presuming meetings I request are more productive than meetings I’m invited to (because I’m driving the agenda and accomplishing my goals), if I could shift that ratio by just one minute to 7 to 3, I would improve my productivity by 17%.
10.17.12 |
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Excellent long read over at Fast Company on the rise and fall of the iPhone photo filter app Hipstamatic. It’s focused almost entirely on the startup’s work culture and changing focus over time. There’s a lot of issues noted here that I’ve seen or heard about at other companies, most notably:
But despite the external success of the product, internally, tension had reached a boiling point, and demonstrated Buick’s growing disconnect with Hipstamatic’s developers, in terms of both product development and company direction. The tension spoke to a larger divide between the company’s designers and engineers, an obstacle that most startups face at some point. As [Hipstamatic CEO] Buick tells me, his founding team, which was composed mostly of designers, “never operated [Hipstamatic] as a software company. As we started building that type of company, we ended up with really talented engineers who were not used to our creative process. There was tension. There was separation on the teams.”
Tech companies are increasingly defined by their designer/developer relations. A lack of solid, tight collaboration between the two groups can easily kill company momentum.
10.16.12 |
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Developer Myles Recny:
My workflow is something like this.
write some code
run the code
get an error message
find the error and back to step 1
Hour by hour, day after day, I do this. Always searching for what’s wrong with what I’m creating, rarely thinking about what’s good about it. It’s a negative reinforcement feedback loop.
Insightful.
10.09.12 |
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Nathan Ryan, writing for The Industry:
If you’re working from the start date on an open-ended project, it’s much easier for the client to dictate terms which almost always means you end up doing more work than you signed up for when the project started.
Focusing you and your client on an agreed-upon ship date for their project means you can more clearly dictate what can and cannot happen in that timeframe because you’re working against the clock and you can only get so much quality work done in any given amount of time.
I can’t say I fully embrace Nathan’s stance; something about basing things off a hard deadline (which often changes) does feel very “waterfall methodology” to me. Yet he makes some reasonable points, especially the one quoted above.
10.08.12 |
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Jason is one of the designers I respect most from both his writings and tweets, and this extended interview helps illustrate why. I especially liked his advice to designers starting out:
Creativity is like a muscle and you need to exercise it constantly. You need to draw; you need to sketch; you need to constantly be recording and taking in the world around you. A lot of writers say they need to write in order to understand how they think; I believe designers need to draw to understand how they think. Keeping a sketchbook is something that every designer I know takes for granted. Because it’s something they can do, it’s something they don’t do.
08.22.12 |
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VC firm founder Vinod Khosla, writing for The New York Times:
There are of course mercenaries and people setting up for “acqui-hires” in the valley as well, but that is not what Silicon Valley’s special sauce is about.
In my view, it’s irreverence, foolish confidence and naivety combined with persistence, open mindedness and a continual ability to learn that created Facebook, Google, Yahoo, eBay, Microsoft, Apple, Juniper, AOL, Sun Microsystems and others.
Having a vision does not prevent you from being acquired, but starting a company to “do a deal” is not what Silicon Valley culture is about even if most companies that have a successful exit are acquired. An acquisition may be a safety net, a way to free yourself or learn to pursue another bigger or more interesting vision, but those are tools rather than goals of the true Silicon Valley entrepreneurs I have seen.
08.16.12 |
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Tech manager/writer Michael Lopp:
it’s 10:35am and the fact you’re reading at 10:35 am means you’re not really that busy…There are many forms to not being busy. You might just be getting your day started with a cup of coffee, you might be on your lunch hour, or you might have seven precious minutes to take a deep breath amongst your crushing responsibilities, but here’s my question: is the lack of busy more fun than your job?
That’s deep Lopp, deep. Yet it’s a good question to consider in today’s rapidly changing workplace.