Strategy – Don’t Forget Your Business
There is a lot of confusion over some rather simple concepts in business. They stem from the following:
- Working on the business,
- Working in the business,
- Focusing on your business strategy, and
- Keeping your customers happy and finding new ones.
This all stems from one major problem with how many entrepreneurs think about business.
Your goal as an entrepreneur is to build a business (first and foremost) that can then build and deliver great products and services to your customers, thereby making more money than you are spending (profit).
What many entrepreneurs do is build the product or service as the main focus and deal with the […]
User Experience Design – Ahead of the Developers
Lately we've been using an interactive wire framing tool to design and define the user experience across multiple pages of the application for our product development. It is working well for us as we can make changes faster than building HTML or code by an order of magnitude; it is even quicker than paper when you consider how much redrawing you do to explore ideas. We still use paper to get the rough idea sorted out first.
The lessons I have learned so far are:
- This isn't a waterfall process, you don't need to design the entire product up front though it […]
Corporate Disclaimers – Have Fun Instead
Have you seen the amount of disclaimers that coming out of well known companies these days. You go to their website and it basically says:
- "We are a great company, do business with us because we stand by what we do."
- "If anything you learn from this website is not right or doesn't work for you, it is your problem, not ours".
This contradiction is insane. It is not how you build trust.
Here is the version I am working on for our outbound e-mails:
Disclaimer: In the event any of the information contained in this e-mail is wrong or doesn't work for […]
Great Visions Tell A Compelling Story
In my last post, I covered what I think a good mission statement is. Short, serves humanity and when you fulfill it, you are fulfilled.
If a great mission is a tweet, a great vision is a blog post. A short compelling story about what you are specifically going to do to over the next 3-10 years to deliver on the mission.
Unlike the mission, you get to include your product or service here. A mission is timeless but a vision is a picture of a point in the future. It is a moving window about where you are heading […]
Mission – Not So Impossible
Coincidentally this is my 300th blog post. Somehow I am subconsciously compelled to impart something remarkable. So I thought I would share some wisdom that I find compelling… I’ll leave it to you to determine what it is worth to you.
Mission Statements
This is a topic that generates a lot of confusion about the difference between mission, vision, values, goals, etc.
There are a lot of really bad ones out there too. Blah, blah, blah, value to shareholders, blah blah, customers are important, blah, blah, employees, blah, and ethics… blah.
Why This Is Important
I know a number of people who started businesses to […]
Rapid Prototyping
Building a product from scratch is a creative and exciting endeavour. This is not a custom software application designed for a single customer; but a product that hopefully millions will find useful and easy to use.
I've been around the development world long enough to see the Waterfall process in action. Spending months to years writing detailed specifications, then attempting to build software according to those specifications, even if they are dated or wrong. Then the stress of in scope of and out of scope change requests to make some attempt at getting the customer what they really want.
Then there is […]
What Is Your Real Intent?
People say they intend to do things all of the time.
More often than not it never happens. New Year's resolutions are point in case.
I want to get in shape. I want to lose weight. I want to take my business in a new direction. Etc.
You get what you intend!
That was the driving premise of Anurag (Gupta) during a 2 day seminar put on by ProCoach that I recently attended.
So if you aren't actually accomplishing your goal, then you never really had the intent to do so.
Another point to be aware of is that you have a default intent that drives you […]
Sunwapta Solutions is Growing
In the next couple of weeks I will be adding a careers/jobs section to our website and fleshing out the specific requirements.
We are growing and looking to make some strategic hires over the next month to year. We are expanding both our consulting practices and our products divisions.
We are going to be looking at cultural fit and aptitude ahead of technical skills (which can be learned).
So far I see the following positions required in no particular order:
- Product Manager
- Infrastructure Support
- User Interface Designer/Developer
- Developers
- Sales and Marketing
Product Manager – A person who can own the product, get input from all stakeholders and plan out […]
Make Decisions for Your Customers
Three things stuck out in my mind today from reading the two books by 37signals a while back:
- Scratch your own itch,
- Decide what you won't do,
- Make decisions for your users.
Scratch your own itch – Essentially, if you solve a problem you have you will know something about it and you will have passion about the solution.
Decide what you won't do – There is tendency to watch competitors and listen to customers to chase the feature list. 80% of non-core features rarely get used and they just make the tool more complex for everyone esle. Stick to your core and decide what […]
Butting Heads In Rutting Season
Recently we went out into our yard to discover a bunch of our trees and shrubs had been hacked and slashed to bits and the bark shredded off. There were branchs strewn all over the ground and several fairly large trunks were snapped off at the base.
We had just planted them in the last year and it was a lot of work; so this was very disappointing
Upon looking closer, we determined the culprits were deer. We were thinking venison might be an option.
Apparently, male deer get their antlers in the fall and fueled by testosterone, they attack small trees and […]