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Failing forward – thoughts on learning and wastage
Learning from failures We have all heard the startup success stories – The ones where people had a turnover of R 100 million within one year with a minimal amount of effort. With this in mind, I am reminded of a friend who decided to start a coffee shop. He was going to make a…
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How to validate your idea or feature before you code
Validate your learning I recently received an email from a potential customer who has an idea for a business and required funding. Though the money was not a large amount, I decided to take a leaner approach to the situation to try and understand how we can cut away wastage and provide a cheaper, more…
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Lessons learnt from managing developers
Software developers and management Being a software developer myself, it is always interesting what I discover managing other developers. It gives you perspective into behaviours which you have seen in yourself, your team, product owners and businesses. Software developers are seen as the mushrooms of a company – they get fed pizza and coffee in…
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Getting your software solution to market faster
When you have no time to spare Startups and small businesses often don’t have the budget, resources and expertise of large corporate businesses. This limitation can become the greatest strength by applying lean software development principles – eliminating waste and delivering only what the customer needs. Even though many developers love giving customers more than…
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Writing code and doing dev-ops for stability
When stability is everything When you write code, make it future-proof. In many industries, the stability and consistency of a system are critical to business success. Yet, we require changes to be made without affecting stability. As a software developer, one is able to make strategic choices to optimise a solution for stability. Versioning and…
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Writing code for maintainability
Someone will need to maintain your code Most of the effort in the software business goes into the maintenance of code that already exists Wietse Venema Most developers are generally not satisfied with being stuck in a job where they need to handle only support. The idea of a fresh new solution that needs to…
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Writing code for performance optimisation
Slow systems and systems slowing down We all know the call from a client telling you that the software has become so slow, it’s unusable. Yesterday it was fine, but today it is a disaster. It’s not that the code has a life of its own, but reaches a tipping point where performance degradation has…
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Writing code so that your software can be dynamically configured
Choosing to optimise for dynamic configuration In the last few years, dynamic configuration has become more important in software development architectural decisions. The reason for this is the need for business and product owners to be able to change the behaviour of a system without delay or deployment. In many scenarios, it is not economically…
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The Effectify Way – Planning your software development project
Effectivity through good processes Every day many employees and businesses use complexity as a way to hide issues and unprofitability. . One should never be dazzled by complexity. The Effectify way is, as the name suggests taken from the Toyota way. It’s about optimising the process and simplifying what we have to have better performance…
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Small business: pricing and costing services and products
The price needs to be right Facebook decided early on that they will be giving away their product for free. They will gain momentum by leveraging economies of scale to grow fast. Once they reached a sizable user base, they started to monetise the platform. An early decision of charging a fee might’ve dealt a…