When a Fixed Price is a Reasonable Option
I still run into a lot of companies that have the expectation that software development can be done on a fixed-price basis. They’re either still used to waterfall management style, or dealing with goods vendors, or, maybe a few are still running into software...
Rebuilding SXSW
Now, just hold on a minute. I’m not trying to say that SXSW is broken or somehow inefficient. Stop yelling at me. Look: SXSW has been around for about 30 years at this point. And it’s grown exponentially in that time. I started going to peripheral music events around...
I’m Sorry: Your Software Project Will Never Be Finished.
No, really. In fact, when you go live, your software shouldn’t be “done.” If it is, you’ve done something wrong. You see, in the history of software, there’s never been such a thing as a piece of software that launched without bugs. Think of your favorite, most used platforms. Gmail. Facebook. Salesforce. All are brimming with bugs. Every day a user writes into their contact forms about a bug they discovered, and while a lot of them are PEBKAC errors, a lot of them are legitimate bugs. And the ticket tracker logs them, someone triages them, and, eventually, most of them will be corrected.
Understanding: the Difference Maker
In the world of software consulting, it can be virtually impossible to determine what the fair market value for software development is. Nobody estimates work according to the same parameters: some firms have differing rates for differing services, some have offshore development services, some won’t provide a meaningful estimate at all (and for good reason).