Tag Archives: Software Development

Find Joy and Success in Business

Posted on April 21, 2008 by John Hunter

David Heinemeier Hansson Talk [the broken link has been removed] at Startup School 2008 (Paul Graham‘s Y-combinator school). It is helpful to appreciate the importance of some simple ideas. Working on web focused businesses people often get carried away with … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Fun, Innovation, IT, Management, Psychology, Respect, Software Development | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

The Defect Black Market

Posted on April 18, 2008 by John Hunter

The Defect Black Market It all started a week before, when the CTO of Damon’s midsize warehousing and transportation company in Northern California announced an innovative program to motivate employees and boost the quality of their logistics software. For every … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, IT, Management, quote, Respect, Software Development | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

A Programmers Take on Agile Software Development

Posted on April 6, 2008 by John Hunter

A Case for Agile: Benefits for a Programmer’s Career by Theodore Nguyen-Cao Through agile development, I’ve been able to deliver working software time and time again. I’ve been exposed to all different aspects of the business. I’ve learn what I … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Lean thinking, Management, Process improvement, Software Development | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Deming’s 14 Points (for software development)

Posted on March 28, 2008 by John Hunter

Deming’s 14 points (for software development) by Jamie Dinkelacker (Geo/Maps Engineering Program Manager at Google Inc. Focus on lean principles and agile practices for software development): W. Edwards Deming’s work on quality, while widely misinterpreted and misapplied in the USA, … Continue reading →

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How Downsizing is Handled When Management Respects People

Posted on March 27, 2008 by John Hunter

Three Amazing PHP/MySQL/Perl Developers Now Available [broken link removed] – Posting on Craigslist. The url will expire so I included everything but the contact info below (follow the link for contact info). Yesterday I had to do one of the … Continue reading →

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Pleasing Customers

Posted on March 10, 2008 by John Hunter

Why is 37signals so arrogant? by Don Norman The Brash Boys at 37signals Will Tell You: Keep it Simple, Stupid. Brash is an understatement. I was quoted in the article because of my article arguing that simplicity is highly overrated: … Continue reading →

Posted in Competition, Creativity, Customer focus, Management, Psychology, quote, Software Development, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Systemic Workplace Experiments

Posted on March 6, 2008 by John Hunter

Workplace Experiments At our company-wide get together last December we decided that 2008 was going to be a year of workplace experiments. Among other things, we discussed how we could make 37signals one of the best places in the world … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Deming, Management, Psychology, Respect, Software Development, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Lean, Toyota and Deming for Software Development

Posted on December 2, 2007 by John Hunter

Mary Poppendieck on The Role of Leadership in Software Development, very nice 90 minute webcast: In this 90-minute talk from the Agile2007 conference, Lean software thought leader Mary Poppendieck reviewed 20th century management theories, including Toyota and Deming, and went … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, IT, Lean thinking, Management, Software Development, Toyota Production System (TPS), webcast | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Joy in Work – Software Development

Posted on November 25, 2007 by John Hunter

The wonderful cartoon in this link illustrates the all too common despair in work. Software programmers are more likely to really enjoy what they do. There are many reasons for this not the least of which is that they have … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, IT, Management, Psychology, Software Development | Tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments

IT Operations as a Competitive Advantage

Posted on October 26, 2007 by John Hunter

Operations is a competitive advantage… (Secret Sauce for Startups!) The example above is the tale of two Web 2.0 startups scaling to 20 systems during their first three months. The first team starts writing software and installing systems as they … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Management, Software Development | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment