So, you have a business.  Like any business, you need answers from every system in your business.  The funny part? Every business wants the same answer from their data.

Every system in every business constantly looks to answer one question.

WHERE IS EVERYTHING AT!?

That’s all anyone cares to know. On demand.  Get good at it and there’s a future for you.

When we systemize, we just want to get an answer. On Demand. Automatically.

Systemization hides the complexity of getting that answer under the covers, where a lot more goes on.

Automatically presenting this answer by systemizing is what I do as a Systems Integrator.  I first make it simple to use what you click and read.  Then under the covers, the complexity of what you do is busy working away for you 24/7.

If you’re looking for for meaty, applicable experience, here’s the first post in hopefully many.  If more software was built like this, or better, we wouldn’t have so much bad, time consuming, hard to use software.

MY LAW: WHY BEFORE HOW.

- If you don’t understand the data, you don’t understand the business. Find and learn the dots and how they connect.
- Be Datacentric. The data is actually the system. Software simply presents it.  No meaningful data, no meaningful system. Understand the data in each of it’s states and how it interacts, or find someone who can.
- People manage the system. The system manages the details. People should never be the tools or the system.  Use Virtual Assistants where software can’t do it until you find a way.
- Avoid premature systemization. If you don’t know your data and process inside out, you’ll rebuild and bypass incomplete systemization with manual processes anyways.

DISCUSS. DESIGN. DEVELOP. DELIVER. – How I systemize any business with a web-based tool:

- Listen before talking. Learn the customer’s business from their staff, and why they do things the way they do.
- Make checklists. All requests, responses. All the steps.  Have anyone do them.  Find the leaks and document.
- Map the checklists on a flowchart. Find what’s missing.
- Prioritize. Systemize most complex, time-consuming, profit eating checklists first.
- Timeline. Turn your prioritized list sideways and you have a timeline of what gets done first.  Apply dates.
- Build. Build the software to fit customer’s competitive advantage.  Don’t be an SAP dampener.
- Review, Improve, Repeat. See if it helped you get more done with less effort.  Build what you see based on new perspectives.

FOR ANYONE WHO THINKS SYSTEMIZING IS A WASTE - Why you must systemize:

- Get more done with less effort. Don’t push work onto someone else’s plate.  Systemization makes it easier for everyone.
- Monitor, notify and act. Get the computer to monitor, notify and take action as you find and define scenarios.  Bake it into the bread.
- People cost more than systems. The #1 cost in any business is time, of staff and customers. Let staff deal with people and solve problems, not computers.
- As your data increase, so do requests and needs of dataset. Manual can’t keep up.
- Maintain & Enhance your competitive advantage. Do it your way, not SAP’s (no offence). SAP just requires customization instead of doing it the SAP way.

Me: I’m a systems integrator. I systemized my customer’s businesses (SMB to enterprise) for 15 years before getting into products. Manufacturing, Legal, Shipping, Logistics, Retail, “eServices” and more.  Workflow management, Reporting, labelling, mobile, web, custom hardware, monitoring.

There’s a lot of great material out there on how to pick a startup idea that stands a chance of succeeding after you’ve found and made a list.  Do your best to not get lost in a sea of reading.  There will be no perfect decision, only a more informed one.  (A great habit I have picked up is never, ever read anything that doesn’t have something to do with the exact current thing you’re working on in your project.  Just bookmark it.)

A noble first goal is to validate that your idea is something customers are willing to pay for.  Seth Godin summed it up beautifully in a blog post the other day about the two step process to find and pick an idea.  Seth highlights how founders often don’t wander wide enough to examine a lot of ideas, and once they begin with an idea that might not be very good, become far too open and attached to it.

It’s better to pick an idea that has a chance of flying, validate it as such, and then get off to the races, instead of picking and praying it takes off (or delaying the launch forever).

I’m aware of validating an idea through two approaches:

1. Unknown problem with unknown/no market — Lean Startup “Customer Development” cycle. This process verifies that someone out there has a need and is willing to pay for it.  There may not be an existing demand for this product online, though, which might need to be built.  There is a lot of great information out there about this by Eric Ries, Ash Maurya, Steve Blank, etc.  This process is called “finding a business model” by Steve Blank and I think it’s a great way to put it.  This type of idea requires validating the demand and product fit.
2. A known problem that customers are searching for online. Imagine customers are searching for a solution to their problem.. but nothing really exists.  These types of niches often have search engine traffic tied to them which you can tap into and see if it can convert to paying customers.  This type of idea often has a demand validated, but not a market or product in specific.

Right now, I have two ideas, one that falls under each category.

Idea #1 falls under the “Unknown Market” side that I’ll be announcing soon. I didn’t think there was much of a market for this idea beyond scratching my own itch, mostly because I built it for myself.  The idea is a god-send for folks who live in apartments/condos.  It’s a utility that I built  for myself, received some “wow, that’s neat”, and has ended up with some seriously humbling offers of support and promotion from a startup friendly company in the US.  Can’t say no when I’m building it anyways.. it’ll be fun to document it here.

Knowing my habits I’ll probably develop both at the same time to compare the experience because I’ve never been known to do anything the straight way when it comes to myself and like learning a lot at once.

We’ve all heard it: The ability to learn and apply how to communicate with skill is priceless, no matter what we do. At the top of most fields we will often find the best communicators.  The jury might be out on other things, but they do know how to share their message.

Being limited to 140 characters per message in Twitter, I’ve had to get very good at expressing my thoughts and ideas simply and clearly for maximum impact.  It doesn’t have to be bold, or brash, just clear. In this way, Twitter has become one pencil sharpener of expressing my thoughts and ideas.  How does it do that?

The long and short of it is this: When working on a project, product, business, or startups, we’re in the boat of having to communicate a lot, clearly and quickly.  Twitter helps us to develop the habit of communicating with less distracting noise, and more punchy signal.

Like the web, we all need to define what Twitter will do for us based on how we use it. For me, Twitter participates in introducing and sharing ideas that better help us define and navigate the world around us.

Twitter promotes quitting the brain dump to communicate. As a developer of projects and products, be it someone’s startup idea, or my own, I have to learn to cut through the tendency to take the easy way out and “write everything” to “cover it all”.  This is known as the brain dump.  Whether an email, on a website, or in your product, brain dumping as a way of communicating only increases complexity. It reduces focus. It makes people work to find the nuggets they are looking for.  (They won’t and they’l leave) Worse, brain dumps to communicate leave more questions than it answers, and a greater sense of confusion than it began with.

More signal, less noise. Less is definitely more. With all projects, products and startups, we often wear an extra hat of copywriters.  Write less, cut in half, and half again, right?  We often know the most about the product, how it works, and the market fit, and being able to find and speak to it with a lot of impact is a huge thing that the lean startup approach has emphasized.   Learning to find the essence and knowing what message to amplify is critically invaluable.

Training ourselves to speak about benefits instead of features. Since we’re focused on building features, we can have a tendency on communicating the features at length, and not always the benefit.  On Twitter, answering “How does this relate to me” is how information travels quickly.  “What it does” doesn’t seem as interesting.  Always developing our skill to communicate benefits is invaluable in all projects and products.

If we examine “How does this relate to me” about the relevancy of Twitter itself, we can notice some interesting things.

First there were opinions about what twitter was about.

“Twitter just IRC on the web.”
“Twitter is the wall chat of BBS (bulletin board systems) in the 1990’s”

There were the opinions where everyone wondered how is this useful to me.

“Twitter makes it hard to interact in so few characters.”
“Twitter seems like a popularity contest.”
“Who cares about typing everything you’re thinking or doing every second of the day.”

From this, a few things have become apparent about Twitter to me.

Twitter shares something with the web of the 1990’s.  It’s anything, and everything, to anyone and everyone. Tweeting about every moment, thought and whatever, is the equivalent of having flashing text on your website in the 90’s.  Cool to some at first, painful for everyone.  When we were new to Twitter, we were feeling things out.  What’s too much? what’s too little?  How do I participate in sharing?  How do I find what’s important to me?

We had Geocities in the 90’s.  Sites weren’t the greatest, but everyone was involved in consuming, expressing and sharing information with each other.  Blinking text lost out on the web, just like sharing your every thought at every second has (hopefully) on Twitter.  Search engines became a relevant way to link strangers with information that they wouldn’t know about.

Twitter has become a live, searchable stream of benefits to me. How we learned and evolved in expressing and sharing information has lead to a huge impact in the last 10 years.  Everything and everyone is becoming more, and more connected, and we’re having to deal with too much information.

Twitter helps us deal with massive information overload. Those who learn to share and communicate in 140 characters become more and more relevant as information overload and bombardment increases every year.  Conveniently, being able to write good copy for your projects or product is also very, very, powerful.

For now, the best signal to noise adjuster is people.  Computer’s can’t exactly put together the information stream we are trying to piece together ourselves as we go. We need to be able to tune things in, or out, as easily as changing an order at a restaurant. So, we pay attention to those who have a clear, consistent stream of knowledge so it can become a part of ours. Rinse, repeat with others to create our own meal from the buffet of information overload.

While it might be foolish to say there won’t be anything like it again, Twitter has, increasingly found it’s way into our lives as a communication format like email, fax, or phone. Consume it in many different ways.  Participate in just as many. Except, Twitter is a community like Facebook at the same time.  That’s unique.  And I’ll keep working to make the most of it.

So, if you made it this far, take the one benefit from the ideas above, or your own, and share how you’ll apply it.

Every business needs cashflow (and profit) to survive like the body needs oxygen, food, and air.  Just because a business has cashflow, doesn’t mean it’s a success, much like we aren’t a success in life just because we sat around and survived.

If you have to mislead to make a dollar, it’s like tricking a girl into liking you.  You might make some money/trick her for a while, but it won’t last.

The better the mutual fit, the better the relationship.  As is often the case it’s best to see if you can work well together.  The client, or the vendor, alone, can’t make the relationship work.  Both have to be present.

As for finding the right work..

Know your product.  Know the value you deliver.  Know the clients it will benefit.  Only sell to them and you’ll have a lasting business.

Always generate more value than which you are paid. Otherwise your client turnover rate after they feel “had” will be much higher than it needs to be.

It’s easy to try and be someone else in business.  The problem is it always comes back full circle.  If you like honesty, and integrity, and when people eat their own cooking before giving it to you as advice, do it yourself.

Not every customer values it, but not every customer is for you.  There’s a big difference between a good dollar and a bad dollar.  It’s tough in the start but it’s worth it.

Be a defender of keeping goodness and kindness fashionable.    Your startup is your declaration of your moral and professional independence.

For one of the original software development bloggers, at the center of the startup, micro-isv movement to make a decision like this, it seems a little strange at first..

Joel mentions a number of reasons that I think are interesting of what a startup may face, once a startup has.. started up.

1. Part of the reason he’s no longer writing is that he has so many customers that his blog posts seem to deeply offend one of his clients in one way or another.Plausible? Sure. But isn’t differentiation what a product is built on?  I think this could be the topic of a blog post on it’s own by Joel to see what kind of things others in startups have to look forward to when you get large(r).
2. Growth means there’s revenue for traditional advertising. I would think, though, that tools for developers are ultimately best directly connected to them instead of magazine ads?

Joel might be big enough and he doesn’t need to, or can’t benefit from blogging as he did prior…  With Stack Overflow taking on the answer / thought market and opening things up beyond him, maybe there’s room for a lot more voices, that can be found easily.

Maybe Joel was developing the best bug tracking software in the world, and attracting the best developers in the world, so that when FogBugz reached it’s sweet spot, he can go onto building the best software company in the world?

Who knows.

I do know that writing, and sharing doesn’t leave you once you start, and know the value of being shared with, especially after many years.

Joel’s posts have helped so many that I don’t think many will lose their value or relevance.  Whether it was the pay-scale matrix, or why the command and conquer or econ 101 management won’t work with software developers, it’s rare to have reasonably concise, applicable, exploratory rants that were sane as it’s readers most of the time, and willing to have it’s share of mind-stretching ideas like anyone being stretched by growth.

If this is the last of Joel blogging, thanks for doing it.  The fact that Joel replies to emails and shared what he learnt so others could join the movement to make the world a better place with better software.

Will it be the last we hear from him in books, conferences, articles elsewhere..?  Doubt it.  His recent introduction to mercurial at www.hginit.com is a prime example.

I hope Joel continues to create and write, and if not, we see his writing has inspired others to write and share.

Joel I know you read more than you ever let on, so if your eyes reach here, which I’ll do my best to ensure, remember that with our talents we have a responsibility to share what has been shared and taught to us by life and others.  No guilt trip intended, the world owes us nothing.

Let’s step back from this and see the general picture.

Does this decision by Joel mean blogging is ultimately useless for startups? I don’t think so. At all.

Most companies, indeed, do use their blogs for boring news releases is relevant.

Blogs are all about relevancy. Blogs, like products that provide relevancy thrive.

Blogs will always have their place to share information, and for us, resources for startups looking to reach their market through the public seeking their content.  If you don’t have the marketing money, a blog is a key way to demonstrate and share expertise and knowledge.

I can say that the last year of writing this blog has showed me that I need to write more, and often.

I have often wondered how a relationship between specialist (Web, designer, programmer, etc.,) can sometimes turn into the customer believing they understand everything better than the specialist, and how to do it.

This is when phrases like:

“Couldn’t you just..”

“All you have to do..”

“It should be pretty simple..”

“Can’t we make it really simple on the screen?  Why would that be more work to do it all behind the scenes?”

become more, and more common.

Problem? I don’t know. If you ignored everything clients say in this case, and only look at what they were doing, the client is basically saying they know better than you.  One could argue there’s something missing in the requirements phase.  Even when clients are the ones  that hired you to help them meet that impossible deadline that they didn’t know was a ton more work than they ever imagined?

Still, I’m not sure if it’s entirely the client’s fault for being this way.  I think it might be a mix of both client and specialist.  Clients tend to oversimplify and over-trivialize anything to make it something they can feel confident about so they don’t get taken advantage of.

What is true is this.

It is hard to make the complex simple, and easy to make the simple into something more complex.

Would we second guess or suggest doctors do something differently, or that engineers build a bridge differently (and without a plan) because we feel it shouldn’t be complicated?  I don’t know.

This leads back to the oft-referred issue of what color to paint the bike shed.

Why? Well, the less you involve and empower your clients, the more they will feel your craft is a magical dark science.  Of course, I’m the first guy to say I want to build systems and tools for people, not BE the system and tool through which they maintain their systems.  So, I’m forever doomed to try and involve clients as much as they would like to be and educate them.  It is already a luxury to feel understood by anyone, and it’s nice when you clients are able to join you if they so wish.

With that being said, I have a responsibility to first learn, and then demonstrate that I understand the needs of my client and how to best solve them in the way that best serves the client.  Maintaining or enhancing the clients competitive advantage is critical. It’s not about making my life easier, it’s about making life easier for my clients, and their clients.  This rings very true even when working on a startup.

I get it.  I’m pretty good at what I do and can reasonably be thrown down a well and come out okay.  Do I make it look easy?  I don’t know.  I have 15 years of experience and 4 vacations to show for it.  I read 2-3 hours a day on technologies and problem solving approaches.  I keep the saw sharp and keep busy sawing.  All to keep my value high to myself and the projects I work on, and to ensure my clients receive the best possible outcome.

Still, I hear, “well, can’t you just do this”.  I have accepted that this on some levels will always be the case.  I think helping clients understand that what I can do in 1 hour is only possible after 15 years of experience doing what I do, and that 1 hour of their time, while likely very valuable in the needs requirement of it, likely would not compare, must like I would be lost in their business.

I think I am going to explore the idea of “highest and best use” and incorporating that in to my working philosophy on all projects.  When we focus on everyone’s highest and best use and simply keep our nose out (or in) no more or less than it’s needed, it’s where 1 + 1 = 11 in terms of gains in productivity.

I recently read that a product is 80% marketing and 20% actual product.  That probably would explain why garbage can succeed and great software can fail.

The truth is as developers, startup entrepreneurs, it’s critical to know how to sell and market.  Without learning the ability to have the conversation to sell, there may not be much of a reason to start building anything.

Often, as is the case, we put off the unfamiliar and get working on the familiar, “to make some good progress”.

This often means programming.  Start building.  Get out the measuring tape.  That carpenter’s pencil, the wood glue.  Get to it.

Here’s the thing:

Just because I can build a shed without a blueprint, doesn’t mean I should build a house without a blueprint.  Especially if I don’t know how to sell the house, or build a sellable house.

Building without the plan is in essence hurting your hard work even more, and delaying your potential success.  The sooner you start your conversation, start your story, and get potential customers engaged and involved in a beta, the greater you have increased your risk.

Instead, learn to start the conversation first. Learn to spread the news first.  Learn to attract the traffic and input you need, first.

We know you can build anything, at the speed of light.  But those 6-12 months will still mean you did no marketing at that time.  There’s little more helpful than having a mailing list already built up of potential customers as well as some google ranking love for your product already.

If you’re still not sold on it, try this law:

Less code = fewer bugs = quicker release = quicker iteration = quicker profitability