My Adventure Building a Quality Software Shop

Stephen Andersonstephen@bendyworks.com@bendycode @bendyworks

http://bendyworks.com

Why Quality?

• Quality isn’t the point

• I pursue tenfold improvements in effectiveness

• Pursuing speed vs. pursuing quality

Why a Company?• I made my wife cry

• the solution was entrepreneurship

• I left my comfort zone

• expanding that comfort zone

• Bendyworks is the eventual result of combining passion with these entrepreneurial experiences

Bendyworks• How we started Bendyworks

Bendyworks• Ruby on Rails

• Front end development

• Design

• iOS

• Clojure

Bendyworks

• An experiment in doing software “right”

Extreme Programming & Agile

• Risk Mitigation

• Process over Product

• Feedback Loops

• Pair Programming

Bendyworks

• Growing the best development team we can

3 Values

• Embrace the customers’ goals

• Trust the individual’s judgement

• Provide an environment for success

Growth Days

Slack

• Systems with slack are:

• more predictable

• longer lasting

• higher quality

Slack

• People with slack in their workload:

• are more energetic

• don’t burn out

• have more fun

• do higher quality work

It’s not about me• as the business grows, it ceases to be about the

founders

• it’s about the team

• let go of roles and responsibilities over time

• this makes your team and your business more robust

• upside: you get to choose roles

Negotiation Mistakes

• letting a small project on a handshake turn large with no contract

• under-estimating

• allowing a time and materials project turn into fixed bid

• repeating the last mistake multiple times

Client Communication Mistakes

• insufficient client communication

• continuing work in the face of insufficient client communication

• continuing with a client who argues against quality and our practices

Most valuable word:

“no”

Financial Strategies• Quality before finances

• yes, this is a catch-22

• Have options and always being able to say "no"

• cash reserves

• charge a bit less than maximum

• Company finances before Owner finances

Don’t Grow for Growth’s Sake

Growing a Business

• series of sticker shocks

• series of calculated risks

Growing Your Business• A business is a financial engine

• This is very different from earning a salary

• I’d sooner grow my business 30% than my take home pay

• Let your business grow exponentially

• Your take home pay will grow as an echo

Serendipity

• co-working

Serendipity

• concerts

Q&A

(please provide feedback as well)

Stephen Andersonhttp://speakerrate.com/speakers/2657

stephen@bendyworks.com@bendycode @bendyworks

http://bendyworks.com