Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective. They take things like unit testing, design documents and code reviews more seriously than any other company Ive even heard about. Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Of all the tactics I have advocated as part of the lean startup , none has provoked as many extreme reactions as continuous deployment , a process that allows companies to release software in minutes instead of days, weeks, or months. When a developer wants to check-in code, this is a very scary moment.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

My experience is in Enterprise Software - where we are forced to chunk features into formal releases. While it is still possible - and recommended to experiment with customers in order to determine the minimum that they need, the exercise is bit more complicated due to the formality of the release process. Thanks Eric, great blog!

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

But there is more to technical debt than just the interest payments that come due. In particular, try these three things: Invest in technical debts that may never come due. Yet there is one silver lining when it does happen: we wind up throwing out working code , debt-riddled and elegantly designed alike.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Due to an interaction effect between your hardware, solar flares, and quantum flux, this virus will crash your computer and erase your hard drive sometime soon. In the past, we invested in brilliant architecture, code reuse, refactoring, modular design, etc. I have detected a secret virus in your CPU. The curse of prevention Beware!

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

For example, a site outage may seem like it was caused by a bad piece of code, but: why was that code written? The net effect of all this was to make new engineers incredibly productive right away – in most cases, we’d have them deliver code to production on their very first day. They seem to be liking it. (oh,

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

Over time, such teams either explode due to irreconcilable differences or dramatically slow down. As I found out to my dismay, this is a dangerous game: in many cases, you’re asking trained professionals to violate their own code of best practices, for the good of the company. Any excesses are likely to be moderated by others.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

The right sort of person is so passionate about coding, they can’t be stopped from doing it. But every day spent in that kitchen is a day NOT spent in a real kitchen, learning how to cook real food, and write real code. I currently work in information security, and I help teach developers how to write better, more secure code.

Java 107

Java PHP Software Review Coder 107

crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 1, 2010

Yes, we’ll always want to encourage higher quality, but it won’t matter if we have crappy demand. 11:00 AM: The Yelp Effect: When Everyone’s A Restaurant Critic 19B – Nowadays, with restaurant blogs and sites like Yelp and Chowhound, everyone is a restaurant reviewer.

Omaha 79

Omaha Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Media 79

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

The other revels in the world as we all know it will be someday: limitless distribution enabled by new technologies, the importance of collaborative filters, and on-demand availability of all content for end-users. When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. Is that a lot?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

In other words, the minimum viable product is designed to answer the question: does the product generate enough demand and margin to support a growing ecosystem? For a consumer internet company in particular, this is often due to a lack of design thinking. Now consider a traditional media business. They get focused solely on growth.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

In fact, I am convinced that if you could find some of IMVU’s earliest adopters, they would say something like this: “sure, those guys at IMVU HQ were helpful in writing code and stuff, but in the end they were just the hired help. peer review is NOT working. It was really the community who built that product.&#

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158