Doug Wagner, Author at Sunwapta Solutions

21 Jun 2010

10 Things I’ve Learned About Business

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:53:47-06:00June 21st, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

In honour of our 10 year anniversary (22 June) I have decided to write a few lists about 10. This one is about 10 things I've learned about business.

Running a business is harder than it looks (the lows can be really stressful).
Defining a core segment and sticking to it is hard (you could be doing so many things).
When you are getting going and even after, you need to develop skills you were unaware of when you started (even if you delegate or outsource functions, ultimately you still need to make informed decisions).
Reading, interpreting and negotiating legal documents is […]

18 Jun 2010

More from the Great Game of Business

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:53:53-06:00June 18th, 2010|Categories: Books and Courses, Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Software Development|

I've included a few more quotes and my thoughts on the book, "The Great Game of Business" and how it applies to what we do.

Cost/Value

"… to stay in business you have to be the least cost producer or have something nobody else has."

Being the least cost producer would give you some advantages, but I think being in the same range is probably strong enough for most companies in the commodity world. Of course having a unique or perceived value proposition is always better. But don't forget those costs, you don't want to be throwing money away; chances are, […]

17 Jun 2010

When the S–t Hits the Fan

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:53:59-06:00June 17th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development|

in software development things often don't go according to plan. Sometimes the fault lies with a third party vendor, sometimes you have to re-factor a design that no longer works and sometimes you get a bug that doesn't show up right away.

Whatever the case, you are way off estimate.

Developers will sometimes question if it even possible to estimate time on a development project.

You know what though. In reality few things of any complexity actually go according to plan.

So why plan at all?

Well for starters you need to commit to shipping a product. In business, saying we will build something someday […]

14 Jun 2010

Entrepreneurs, Stories and Selling

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:54:05-06:00June 14th, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

Entrepreneurs who build software products really know their product inside and out and have a lot of a passion for it. This is great and bad. Bad because sales often become dumps of technology, facts and features instead of truly listening to the customer.

As well, technology companies tend to focus on the product first and sales afterward.

Telling a story right from the get go is a way to bridge the gap between building and selling.

Paul Kenny gives a good presentation on how this works (posted on Joel on Software). If you are in technical sales […]

11 Jun 2010

Agile Project Management Tools

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:54:13-06:00June 11th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development, Technology|

We have a distributed workforce, lots of projects, remote clients, developers working on more than project at a time, and a large number of applications in support mode.

Whiteboards and sticky notes work well for a few projects and a local team. Excel and Google docs allow some remote sharing. Bug tracking software only is really useful for task and bug tracking.

So we are looking at finding one software package that can do product and release planning (stories or features), project management, Scrum/sprint management, bug tracking and also allows our clients to participate. It needs to integrate with our development environment (Visual Studio) and […]

4 Jun 2010

QA Should Find Nothing!

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:54:19-06:00June 4th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development|

Developers should produce code that is so good, the quality assurance team should find nothing. If they do it should be a big thing. How did that get through all the tests?

If continuous integration builds fail, it should be a big deal (think sirens going off). Failing tests should never be removed just so the build can be green… doing so is a slippery slope to crappy code.

Writing crappy code is never faster than writing good code.

It is all about putting the craftsmanship back into development.

These topics and many more contained in a recent presentation by Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob). […]

4 Jun 2010

The Great Game of Business

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:54:26-06:00June 4th, 2010|Categories: Books and Courses, Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Leadership|

As I have mentioned numerous times, I have been spending a lot of time studying what make some businesses succeed and what makes some people great. Our company builds a lot of tools that measure, forecast and analyze personal and business information to make better decisions.

So far if anyone has a magic formula for wealth, I haven't found it. Lots of great ideas for increasing your chances though.

Every once in a while it is good to go back and read some of the classics instead of just the "new" ideas found in more recent publications.

The Great Game of […]

27 May 2010

Google Shoots at the Microsoft Tree

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:54:34-06:00May 27th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog|

Using metaphors can be dangerous when you don't really understand how they came about. I came across the following in an e-newsletter today.

"Google fired another shot across Microsoft's bough in the battle for cloud dominance with the release of a tool that eases the migration from Outlook to Google Apps."

I now have vision in my head of a Redmond tree like the one in Avatar, but bigger.

Interestingly, the linked article starts off with yet another war based metaphor in the title; […]

19 May 2010

Getting the Results You Want in Business

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:54:40-06:00May 19th, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

Most people think they deserve something big for working hard. But is this just desire or is it really an entitlement?

More and more people are being judged by the results of what they produce; not the effort they put into it.

Sure there are still jobs where you put in your time and you get paid. You put in extra effort and you get paid more. The relationship is pretty linear… and finite.

When you are an entrepreneur or business owner the relationship is not linear.

The market doesn't owe you anything for hard work. There are no labor laws to hide behind. […]

17 May 2010

A Chameleon – An Adaptable Salary Administration Tool

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-06T12:50:43-06:00May 17th, 2010|Categories: Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Leadership|

Back in 2001 we built a web-based data merging tool for human resource and pension data. There were about 7 sources of data and every time the data didn’t match for an employee, someone had to go in and make a decision as to which version (if any) was correct. This was happening across a dispersed team so a web front-end and shared database back-end made sense.

Recently we built a salary administration tool in Excel. The technology choice was made before we entered the picture and it turned out to be totally the wrong architecture. Excel is great, but not for this […]

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