Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. We can choose to continue paying the interest, or we can pay down the principal by refactoring the quick and dirty design into the better design.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

These specs are handed to a designer, who builds layouts and mockups of all the salient points. Then the designs are handed to a team of programmers with various specialties. The programmers keep asking for more say in the designs and direction that they work on. First, he writes it nice and clear.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process. I would add -- think of your development and running your business like a PM/Developer uses Agile or Scrum in software development. No more, no less.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

SVPG

MARCH 10, 2016

For many years, as teams move to Agile methods (they usually start with Scrum), many companies decide to contract with or hire an Agile Coach. These people are there to help the broader team – especially engineers, QA, product managers and product designers – to learn the methods and mindset involved in moving to Agile.

Agile 60

Agile SCRUM Lean Engineer 60

ConversionXL

JANUARY 14, 2020

In each case, an extension to the existing solution was shipped in a search engine–friendly way and now drives a lot of organic traffic, while also improving the product. First, they have to be publicly accessible for users and search engines. If you’ve never heard the term scrum or agile before, you’re behind. Quora Spaces.

SEO 159

SEO Framework SCRUM Search 159

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

At IMVU , we called this person a Producer (revealing our games background); in Scrum , they are called the Product Owner. Thus the power of the Chief Engineer is very large even though he (and they are all men so far) has no direct reports other than a secretary and a few assistants who are themselves being trained to be chief engineers.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

SVPG

AUGUST 20, 2012

In my last article I talked about one technique for applying Scrum concepts to product discovery – the opportunity backlog. Teams would plan a schedule with 2-4 weeks of time to do "requirements and design" and then development would proceed after that. This model of working is often referred to as dual-track Scrum.

SCRUM 62

SCRUM Product Design Engineer 62

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 15, 2011

It's challenging to build, design and deploy software. Almost every software engineer I've ever worked with is irrational in how fast they believe they can build software. At my last startup we eventually started using a process called "scrum," which is basically a framework for managing agile engineering projects.

Cofounder 121

Cofounder SCRUM Founder Widget 121

SVPG

JUNE 5, 2015

NOTE: This article is a narrative version of a talk I’ve given for developers at the Craft Conference and for product managers and designers at Mind The Product. Finally the requirements and design specs make it to engineers. Without knowing the actual solution, this is extremely hard for engineering to predict.

Product 60

Product Agile Engineer SCRUM 60

SVPG

SEPTEMBER 30, 2016

If you think the product manager job is what’s described in a Certified Scrum Product Owner class, you almost certainly fall into this category. They can call a meeting with all the stakeholders in the room and then just let them fight it out – this is design by committee and it rarely yields anything beyond mediocrity.

Product 60

Product Technical Review Software Review Engineer 60

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Design, development, and digital media shops, sometimes just a few years old, are doing bigger and bigger projects and come bearing cash flow and that scarcest resource, talent. We are a venture capital firm with deep design and development capability, not a design and development shop that sometimes takes equity as compensation.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

No engineering team. But where it makes sense, that team may also include engineers building new experiments or prototypes to try with customers. And instead of design, engineering, QA, and operations we have a solution team implementing a startup-centric version of agile development. This is my take on that idea.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Heres something I can relate to: We used assembla for subversion, scrums, milestones, wikis, and for general organizational purposes. Scrum reports would come in once a month, nobody was actually responsible for anything. And wait until you see a "non-technical" designer writing simple code to try and speed up a release.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 68

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 8, 2013

Jesper Richter-Reichhelm is Head of Engineering at social games company Wooga. There are departmental heads, such as the Head of Engineering of which we have two who take care of different parts of that field, and others that look after their respective departments. Here he gives an insight into the firm’s internal organization.

Software Review 146

Software Review Agile Analytics SCRUM 146

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

To begin with, see if you can get designers, programmers, and QA on the same team together. The advantages of cross-functional teams are well documented, and for a thorough treatment I recommend the theory in the second half of Agile Software Development with Scrum. At IMVU, we found 60 days was just about right.

San Francisco 74

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 74

adam.heroku.com

MAY 18, 2012

For example: full-fledged SCRUM, heavyweight tools like Jira, or hiring a project manager or engineering manager. Design adapted from Replenish. Some startups, on reaching this stage, declare “we’ve got to grow up and act like a real company now” and immediately try to switch to heavy-handed tactics.

Developer 92

Developer Database Architecture API 92

YoungUpstarts

MAY 30, 2019

In 2013, I left a CTO job overseeing a 50-person product engineering team for the same job at a four-person startup. Upon arrival, I incorporated a few elements from my previous stop into this new endeavor, including a battle-tested Agile Scrum process and the corresponding technology. Sound familiar? Maintain great release notes. .

Management 129

Management Product SCRUM Early Stage 129

sivers.org

JUNE 25, 2010

2010-06-19) # What about design mockups using eg. Nothing essential that I disagree with you in your post, but when read by other people with minimal software engineering experience, they can have too high expectations. Would love to hear your insights sometime into how to partner with engineers. mockingbird?

CTO Hire 84

CTO Hire Hiring Software Review Technical Review 84

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

AgileZen – project management visually see and interact with your work Kanbanery – Simple online team or personal kanban board LeanKit Kanban – Great for visualizing work of product development Kanban Pad – “Nice and lean” and free online Kanban tool Banana Scrum – A tool simple as Scrum itself.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Design/Front End: Twitter Bootstrap : Include this in your website, and you are half finished. LiveRoad : A Great IDE for design is very helpful. Firebase : Are all your developers front-end engineers? Google Custom Search Engine. Color Scheme Designer. Google App Engine. Customer service. Get Satisfaction.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53