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Why Regular Demos are Part of Our Development Process

Posted by Brian Luft on May 15, 2012. Filed under business

Our team functions in different capacities for each business engagement, but we typically have a project or few where we’re exclusively building a large site for a client. In those scenarios we tend to use a loosely defined two-week development cycle anchored by a demo presentation at the end. Seeing this tweet reminded me of why the demos are so important:

In the early-mid phases of a project, code and features can change significantly over the course of a couple weeks. Later in the project, or after launch, features deserve more scrutiny to ensure they provide value and don’t conflict with the direction of the product or site. Regular team reviews via demo meetings help all parties come together and identify bigger picture decisions that don’t surface in project management tools or ticket queues.

What a developer thinks is code-complete, what the user experiences, and what the ...

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Down with 9 to 5

Posted by Peter Baumgartner on January 23, 2012. Filed under business

Development is a creative endeavor. Often developers are creating something where there was once nothing. For most us, the thought of being productive for 8 consecutive hours 5 days a week is laughable. 2–3 hours on a single problem is enough to turn most people’s brains to mush.

As a company, we understand this and have abolished the 9 to 5 work week. People work where and when they feel they’ll be at their best. We don’t require people to be working during business hours. In case of urgent issues, we can call people on the phone, but in practice, that rarely happens. To many traditional companies, this sounds like anarchy. Surprisingly, it isn’t. We still collaborate (usually some combination of IRC, Skype, and Ginger), we still discuss problems as a team, and we can still pair program.

If you’re wondering how we make ...

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