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10 things not to do at a Startup
John Coggeshall has 18 years of experience in web development and PHP. He discusses several projects that failed due to neglecting technical debt, overcomplicating projects, and ignoring expert advice. Some key lessons are to have expert skills as partners rather than employees, manage expectations, be flexible, have a development process, and keep things simple.
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10 things not to do at a Startup
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- 2. 18 yearsin web development, PHP Former Sr. Architect, ZendTechnologies Core PHP Contributor Startup CTO Business Owner
- 3. This isgoing to be an entertaining talk about failure I’m pretty good at failure I’ve watched a lot of people fail too I’ve also learned a lot in the process Names have been changed to protect me as necessary
- 4. ????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ?????
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- 6. New mintedconsultant at ZendTechnologies First big project is working on Signature Network’s biggest client, the band U2
- 7. The projectwas doomed from the start Technical Debt isn’t like a bank loan, it’s like the mob. Bono publically apologized for the failure (awesome)
- 8. Do notneglect technical debt ????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ?????
- 9. Hired byanother development shop to work on the Amp’d Mobile backend Severely over-architected CMS Wouldn’t scale, all hope is lost. “Amp'd Mobile takes the crown for money-burning with $360 million in losses.” – Quicken
- 10. Do notneglect technical debt. Do not overcomplicate. Do not ignore the advice you are paying for. ????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ????? ?????
- 11. Joe isa construction guy and he had an idea for a great new web site that was going to make all sorts of money Joe doesn’t know the first thing about programming web sites, but what problem could that be? He doesn’t need to know right? Let’s talk a bit about Joe.
- 12. It’s okayif you want to start a tech company but don’t know how to write code It is not okay to do so without having a quality partner who does It is not an acceptable substitution to just hire a programmer employee and rely on them for business decisions
- 13. Do notneglect technical debt. Do not overcomplicate. Do not ignore the advice you are paying for. You must have expert skills in your tech as partners not employees You get what you pay for, don’t be cheap. ????? ????? ????? ????? ?????
- 14. Despite whatyou might think from this talk, I am actually pretty good at my job. Hired on as CTO to a startup called Individual Digital Like many fledgling startups, we had plans to take over the world. …. And we failed.
- 15. We werewell funded. We had good ideas. We had good market opportunities. We had good tech and the staff to run it. We had it all, but one thing
- 16. We displeasedour masters (investors) by tying the success of our product to a single thing. As executives / founders we allowed ourselves to be boxed in to what amounted to acceptance criteria We were succeeding in building a business, just not the business our investors wanted.
- 17. Do notneglect technical debt. Do not overcomplicate. Do not ignore the advice you are paying for. You must have expert skills in your tech as partners not employees You get what you pay for, don’t be cheap. You must manage expectations You must be flexible ????? ????? ?????
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- 19. What follows happens almost every time I walk into a project Many of you have experienced this We can all commiserate together!
- 20. Any projectof any size needs a way of managing the tasks to get it done Word docs are great for first cuts into a new project, but break that down into discrete tickets Pick a philosophy for development, I really don’t care if it’s Agile or Waterfall – and stick to it.
- 21. Do notneglect technical debt. Do not overcomplicate. Do not ignore the advice you are paying for. You must have expert skills in your tech as partners not employees You get what you pay for, don’t be cheap. You must manage expectations You must be flexible You must have a development process ????? ?????
- 22. In life,in development, in anything. Never forget KISS Keep requirements clear but simple Keep features lean and useful Keep architecture clean and expandable Keep process structured and habitual
- 23. Do notneglect technical debt. Do not overcomplicate. Do not ignore the advice you are paying for. You must have expert skills in your tech as partners not employees You get what you pay for, don’t be cheap. You must manage expectations You must be flexible You must have a development process You must keep things simple ?????
- 24. Last but notleast…. Follow me on Twitter @coogle, Check out my code on Github (coogle)