I’ve long viewed web development as a shifting balance of power between graphic designers and software developers. A rough timeline would go something like this Continue reading →
The civil war between designers and developers shifts to developers
27
Apr 10
Written By Steve French
The Kill Shot and Project Management
What is a preventable cause of scope creep? Anxiety. Anxiety attacks project managers at the end of projects, making some or all of the following happen:
- Project managers insist on new “essential” features
- Assistants demand detailed technical explanations for the most mundane of matters.
- Urgent, surprise meetings will be held
- People you’ve never heard of start talking about “revisiting” and “Ten Thousand Foot Views“.
- The main project manager will put the project on hold “just for a little while” until “this is all sorted out”
- The main project manager will decide that every manager in the company must sign off on the project.
The cause of the above is a difference in anxiety between you and the client. The web developer experiences the highest anxiety and least clarity at the beginning (least specific point in terms of development) of the project and the lowest anxiety and most clarity at the end of the project.
19
Apr 10
Written By Steve French
Free Jim Camp negotiation book – “Start With No”
I listened to an interview with negotiation coach Jim Camp on Mixergy and learned much from the experience. He evangelizes (for lack of a better word) a negotiation strategy based on rules rather than outcomes, which rules out “win-win” as a strategy. He also posted the audio copy of his book “Start With No” on his website, called (not surprisingly) StartWithNo.com. I’m listening to the audio version now and I’m learning useful things. So far, the economic basis for negotiation (consumer surplus, gains from trade, etc) is omitted and he affirms several obvious points that everyone needs to remember and explains several subtle points in detail.
Recommended reading and listening. I find it to be 10 out of 10 so far.
I imagine I will wind up buying his later book for highlighting and checklist purposes.
This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog
15
Apr 10
Written By Steve French
Lessons from Joseph Kennedy
I read the Wikipedia entry on Joseph Kennedy (JFK and Ted’s father) and his business life fascinated me. Particularly I was struck by the following passage (describing his time in the stock market in the Great Crash) as :
Kennedy survived the crash “because he possessed a passion for facts, a complete lack of sentiment and a marvelous sense of timing.”
The above tendencies are usually descibed as “shrewd”, but it is informative to see the tendencies listed out like that. Continue reading →
14
Apr 10
Written By Steve French
The Turner Rule in Marketing and Branding
Over the years I have met many alumni of the Turner Empire (CNN/Turner Broadcasting/Turner Enterprises/WCW/TBS/Braves/Hawks, etc) and most of them have told me some version of the following story.
[Setup – In the early days of CNN and Turner Broadcasting Ted Turner would prowl his office building and drop in unannounced into random meetings. One day he walked into a meeting where people were planning a cross-channel week-long special on dinosaurs] Continue reading →
12
Apr 10
Written By Steve French
Startup Atlanta – April Edition
Last night I attended the StartUp Atlanta April event (on the web at StartUpAtlanta.org, @StartupAtlanta on Twitter) where 40 or so members of the Startup community mixed, mingled, and listened to 6 presentations by Atlanta Startups. Mike Shinkel and Jenny Trautman (the organizers) focused this meetup on the Real Estate industry.
I did not see that many familiar faces and fewer people attended than than attended the March Meetup, but the specialization made the people who did attend more involved. Georgia Tech was nice enough to loan out the Georgia Tech Research Institute facility auditorium. I enjoyed meeting everyone and Mike Schinkel and his volunteers moved things along well. It is impossible to overstate how important it is to keep these events running on time. Daniel from Friendly Human recorded the event for video posterity.
And now, the contestants! We listened to the presentations, and voted via twitter for our favorites, here are mine, recorded here for posterity. I judge startups by the following criteria, on a scale of 1-10 (higher is better).
- Problem Solving – It can be a cool product, but does it make anyone’s life easier?
- Actual Customers – I am defining the customer as someone with both problems and money.
- Simplicity of Pricing – can the fees be described to anyone, do you need more information about the prospect before you can offer a quote?
- Chicken and Egg Problem – does the product require a lot of Customer A before Customer B becomes interested, and vice versa? This applies a good bit to middleman/broker type companies like E-Bay.
- Remarkability – that is to say, can someone who heard a quick presentation about it describe it to someone the next day, and have it be understood?
Note, I do not judge the passion of the founders, quality of marketing, execution etc. That’s too hard to judge based off of a short presentation. Continue reading →
08
Apr 10
Written By Steve French
New Business Adage: The Lemansky Rule
In the television show about corrupt cops The Shield, Curtis Lemansky, one of the main characters, once said “Why can’t we just do our jobs, and stop?“. That quote came back to me while reading Jason Friend’s book Rework.
Rework is A) about doing the bare minimum, B) starting now, and C) completing the work as fast as possible. On The Shield, the characters spend most of their time trying to cover up a few early crimes, which are the corrupt cop equivalent of cool, unrequested features.
Both of those notions seem relevant to me as I’ve spent two hours trying to fix a special “feature” on a website I built several years ago. The client did not ask for the feature in the original specification but it was easy enough build, and I thought the client would like it. She liked it, and she was happy with that I “Under-promised and over-delivered.” Now that feature conflicts with some new security feature(!) on the server and I’ve spent two hours getting it to work. Two unbillable hours gone fixing something the client never wanted enough to ask or pay for. Now that I think about it most of my “emergency” fixes have centered around unrequested features that people liked, but didn’t need.
06
Apr 10
Written By Steve French
Why you should never complain about anything – with anecdotal proof!
My new commandment: Never complain about anything. Ever. If you feel the need to complain to pressure someone else to make something happen, then be honest and call it manipulation.
I realized this while at a client meeting; we were talking about problems with a botched sales program and the staff had a litany of complaints about the program (ed. note: it was created by a separate vendor years ago, and the fault lies with the now-departed project manager who designed something inappropriate. It does a masterful job of integrating legacy systems from different vendors, languages, platforms, a mainframe and Europeans are involved somehow, but the user interface is wanting. But I digress…). Then I remembered hearing the same litany of complaints a year ago. Unlike last year, I offered suggestions on how to make small improvements to the program. Everyone proceeded to ignore me and continued complaining. At the end of the meeting everyone felt a lot better once they had talked about their problems. No one made any plans to actually fix the problems. Continue reading →
01
Apr 10
Written By Steve French
Ten great books for American business
After writing yesterday’s post on lessons learned from eight years in business, I thought I would come up with my listing of great books that have helped me starting out.
I follow Tyler Cowen’s notion that if you you finish every book you start you’re wasting time on crap. On average I finish less than half of the books I start. Since I’ve gotten a Kindle I’ve upped my selectivity considerably. Before anyone asks, I have yet to finish Getting Things Done by David Allen.
With no further ado – here are the books I recommend to start out. Continue reading →
30
Mar 10
Written By Steve French
Lessons learned from eight years in business
Yesterday a friend of mine told me he was considering starting his own small business/consultancy which led me to thinking about my eight years in the solo operator field, and now in the web startup field. Here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned over the years. Continue reading →
29
Mar 10
Written By Steve French
