The secrets of a system integrator. My Journey of Startup, Product + Project Development
Information technology is the art of managing an organization’s processes by establishing and maintaining computing frameworks.
I came across a great article titled:
Opinion: The unspoken truth about managing geeks
on ComputerWorld. It’s not a site that I frequent very often but this opinion peiece hasd some excellent points.
1. My currency is respect.
Anyone who knows me how often these words come out of my mouth. Whether it pertains to family, friends, or clients, the secret to getting me and keeping me on your side, quite happily going out of my way to help you succeed is respect.
Jason Fried of 37 Signals wrote an article titled “The way I work” a few days ago about his work schedule, balance, and prioritization.
In it he covers his typical day and mindset. What’s interesting is his focus on basing all of his decisions around eliminating one thing, that I’ve been a huge fan of.
Interruption is the enemy of productivity.
Here’s the deal. When creating anything, be it creative, abstract, or analytical..
I build a Web application when I don’t want to:
- be supporting a thousand environments each with their own quirks. Specifically, viruses, trojans, software interfering, and making it work the same everywhere.
- worry about applying upgrades and taking lots of calls
Crafting software is like.. building a house.
You can try building it without a blueprint or plans or an architect or qualified tradespeople and it will almost always cost you much more and you will have constant issues.
Second, just because you can..
Ideas are a dime a dozen. Building them is what actually creates success.
In real partnerships, if one of the partners is working as an employee, his time gets paid for at a fair wage. This is because the other partners are earning money elsewhere in that time that you would be earning nothing. Is months of your time is equal to a $1800 investment?
Someone asked what tools are usable for software development. Having juggled so many details for so many years, it’s interesting to take a look and see what tools we use and why.
There are many parts to a conceptual design. Depending on which part you focus on a variety of tools are out there.
As with most computer things, Capturing it is easy, filing it away so you can find it later is critical. You won’t use all of these tools 100% of the time, but they all need to flow to one central spot.
It’s simple. Building a product with less time developing the product, and more time building the business around the product (marketing, etc.,), the greater chance it will have of actually succeeding.
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.
After years of making do with absolutely any equipment and any furniture, and not noticing all that much, I started having a back pain. To the point that I’d have to lie on the carpet for 10 minutes, every hour.
Not good. What could it have been?
The more I looked to my surroundings, I realized what my Dad tried to drill into me once a year. I should respect my tools, take care of them, and get better ones when I am able. Granted, he’s a carpenter by trade and likely the inspiration for Mike Holmes, but his point seemed a little bit more truthful when I was lying on the ground taking a call from a client.
There is no decision that will impact your decision more in any software project than choosing the correct tool. The language, platform, framework and architecture you employ will decide whether you sink or swim. The right choices will help buoy you through great developers and average developers.
It is true that picking the right developers goes a long way, but if you handcuff them everything is going to be significantly slower, and tedious, leading to programmer burnout.
Anyone suggesting a language (including me) will only..