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Presentation from Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference 2013
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My Adventure Building a Quality Software Shop
Stephen [email protected]@bendycode @bendyworks
http://bendyworks.com
Why Quality?
• Quality isn’t the point
• I pursue tenfold improvements in effectiveness
• Pursuing speed vs. pursuing quality
Why a Company?• I made my wife cry
• the solution was entrepreneurship
• I left my comfort zone
• expanding that comfort zone
• Bendyworks is the eventual result of combining passion with these entrepreneurial experiences
Bendyworks• How we started Bendyworks
Bendyworks• Ruby on Rails
• Front end development
• Design
• iOS
• Clojure
Bendyworks
• An experiment in doing software “right”
Extreme Programming & Agile
• Risk Mitigation
• Process over Product
• Feedback Loops
• Pair Programming
Bendyworks
• Growing the best development team we can
3 Values
• Embrace the customers’ goals
• Trust the individual’s judgement
• Provide an environment for success
Growth Days
Slack
• Systems with slack are:
• more predictable
• longer lasting
• higher quality
Slack
• People with slack in their workload:
• are more energetic
• don’t burn out
• have more fun
• do higher quality work
It’s not about me• as the business grows, it ceases to be about the
founders
• it’s about the team
• let go of roles and responsibilities over time
• this makes your team and your business more robust
• upside: you get to choose roles
Negotiation Mistakes
• letting a small project on a handshake turn large with no contract
• under-estimating
• allowing a time and materials project turn into fixed bid
• repeating the last mistake multiple times
Client Communication Mistakes
• insufficient client communication
• continuing work in the face of insufficient client communication
• continuing with a client who argues against quality and our practices
Most valuable word:
“no”
Financial Strategies• Quality before finances
• yes, this is a catch-22
• Have options and always being able to say "no"
• cash reserves
• charge a bit less than maximum
• Company finances before Owner finances
Don’t Grow for Growth’s Sake
Growing a Business
• series of sticker shocks
• series of calculated risks
Growing Your Business• A business is a financial engine
• This is very different from earning a salary
• I’d sooner grow my business 30% than my take home pay
• Let your business grow exponentially
• Your take home pay will grow as an echo
Serendipity
• co-working
Serendipity
• concerts
Q&A
(please provide feedback as well)
Stephen Andersonhttp://speakerrate.com/speakers/2657
[email protected]@bendycode @bendyworks
http://bendyworks.com