This category covers various aspects of software development, including tips for success, key phases, and best practices for consulting, programming, and ongoing support.
The workflow that scaled you to $50M is quietly capping you at $100M. Here's how growing companies spot the bottlenecks hiding inside yesterday's processes before they show up in next quarter's margins.
"Bob died." Three decades in this business and that's still the call we get most often from companies whose entire operation runs on one developer's laptop. The single point of failure most CEOs never see coming.
Bugs caught in testing cost dollars. Bugs caught in production cost customers. Part four of our project-success series breaks down the testing discipline that catches the second category before it ever hits your users.
Programming is the phase everyone pictures - and the phase where the fewest projects actually go off the rails. Part three on what should and shouldn't surprise you once your developers start writing real code.
Skip the design phase and you're paying programmers to figure out your business in real time - at programmer rates. Part two on the deliverable that decides whether your build runs lean or hemorrhages hours.
Every dollar spent on requirements saves five on rework - and yet it's the phase companies most often shortchange. Part one of a five-part series on the proven sequence that turns software dreams into shipped systems.
Scope creep doesn't kill projects in one big lurch - it bleeds them slowly through a hundred small "can we just add" conversations. Keys 6 through 10 cover the discipline that keeps changes from torpedoing the timeline.
Most software projects are won or lost in the first two weeks - long before anyone writes code. Ten field-tested tips for getting requirements right so the rest of your project doesn't have to be heroic.
Hiring a consultant is easy. Getting your money's worth out of one is the hard part. Five concrete moves that turn a billable-hour line item into measurable business outcomes - without the suits-and-briefcases stereotype.
Most software vendors disappear at go-live. The good ones treat go-live as the start of the relationship, not the end. What to expect - and demand - from the final-changes, installation, and long-tail support phases of a custom build.
Beta isn't a victory lap - it's the last cheap chance to find what isn't working before your team has to live with it for years. How smart companies use beta installation, training, and site testing to surface problems while they're still inexpensive.