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What is the purpose of an entrepreneur? To make money? To grow a business? I recently read a few comments from Jeff Atwood that I agree with: “Nobody should build things out of desire to be an ‘entrepreneur’. You should build things because they need to exist.” “Startups are like cancers, remember? They have to […]

How important is project management in the development process? It really depends on the project. If you have a simple project that can be finished in one week by one developer, then there isn’t much need for project management. But there are very few projects that really fall into this category. Most projects take multiple […]

Scrum seems to be a hot topic for software developers. Some say they can’t live without it; others argue that it is over-hyped and actually wastes time. For those that don’t know, Scrum is a process for software development that includes product owners, Scrum masters, daily meetings, sprint planning, retrospectives, stories, cards, etc.  The idea […]

Perhaps you have experienced this. You go to buy groceries and you see an item on sale for what seems to be a great price. You take it to the register, where they proceed to charge you full price for the item. You inquire about the sale price, only to be told that the same […]

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” – Author Douglas Adams As an expert in the creative industry, you are able to relate the basics and even the finer nuances of your chosen profession to others (or, you should be able to). You know what color harmony is, […]

Over the past several months, I’ve seen examples of both good and bad email communication and come to appreciate how detrimental poor communication can be. As a result, a few dos and don’ts for communicating effectively via email : Do not forward an email without comment unless you are absolutely certain that the recipient will […]

It wasn’t long ago that I was working for a company that employed over 400 people. I worked on the documentation team which, among other tasks, was primarily responsible for managing and updating Users’ Guides for each of the software products the company developed. Every day required nine hours from each employee—eight of those working, […]

Last Friday we had our occasional “Friendly Family Fun BBQ” and we had a lot of fun. Photos below. WARNING: Pictures of food may induce drooling. A little protein: Before: After: Enjoying the game: Enjoying the company: A good time was had by all. Were it not for the dangerous amounts of sodium and cholesterol, […]

One aspect of developing a web application that will be used across a large geographical area is handling dates and times such that they display correctly for users in different time zones. In an application we are currently working on, we adapted the following principles to help with this objective: The user’s time zone would […]

You know what the stereotypical bad boss is like: arrogant, nosy, dishonest, and may or may not have a bad case of B.O. Fortunately, I would guess that to find one individual with all of these despised traits does not happen often. The question, then, is what does the stereotypical good boss look like? A […]