Tips for startups

 Good reminder about what needs to be done setting up shop: http://www.bytestart.co.uk/content/24/24_6/ten-top-tips-successful-startup.shtml

First tip is: write a business plan. I think a business plan is mostly for ourselves, just to figure things out in a systematic approach. Could be useful with banks, not for VC and certainly not as convincing as real customer, especially, real repeat customers. Anyway, a good pointer on the subject: http://www.bytestart.co.uk/content/businessplans/30_1/writing-your-business-plan.shtml

A Conversation with Fred Wilson and Carlota Perez

A great interview very well worth watching if you have any stakes in the web industry. As a background, have a look at this power point presentation

Pricing: irrational and rational mixing it up under the curve

I found this article title You're Pricing it Wrong: Software Princing Demystified

Being who I am, I never thought beyond the Demand Curve:

The sweet point is where the intersection forms the largest rectangle. This rectangle represents the calculation of sales × price, and the biggest rectangle represents the biggest revenue.

 The rest of the article allowed me to think a bit less rationally and find a bit of relevance for marketing.

5 new tech trends you can't afford to ignore

Hypebot has a short post on their take on the up and coming trend. Except for #5, I'm totally with them on this. Have a look at this post here.

InfoQ new posts

InfoQ is a great, great website. They just posted a couple of noteworthy articles:
- one article on a BE product called Apache Shindig
- one article on the role of the PMO
- one article on story points vs hours (which is curiously a continuous debate in every agile shops it would seem)

Lean

Forrester has just published a report on Lean in the enterprise called "Lean: The New Business Technology Imperative".
I'm a Certified Scrum Master and I manage using Scrum. It just fits who I am and what I think software development is: a team sport. My management philosophy is deeply rooted in Lean because this is what I do: I try to create value and despise wastes. Any waste.

Letter to the programmer

TestingReflections posted an article in the form of a letter. This should be required reading by anyone pretending to be a developer. As a matter of fact, I'm going to present it to my devs next Friday during our weekly developer meeting. Testing is a craft and  mastering it requires way more than techniques.

Salesforce Winter 2010

I attended a good webinard/sales pitch from Salesforce yesterday. They did not get in much technical details but they did show us very impressive new features coming soon. The following list is in no way exhaustive (for this, go here) but are rather the elements that caught my attention:

• It will now be possible to use batch code for long processes. Obviously, the execution will be asynchronous and will also be possible to manage under a new feature: the scheduler;
• The have enhanced the custom settings;
• They have worked on the data import;
• I beleive using Google doc, they now have content management API;
• Support for OAuth v. 1.0.a;
• email is greatly improved;
• sandbox to production management will be easier;
• integration to Google Analytics in Visualforce;
• https will be available for site;
• a pilot for a new type of user called "High volume portal user" will take place;
• analytics presentation will greatly be improved with:
• chart mixers;
• color picker;
• hover;
• IPhone and Blackberry are now well supported;
• Community-answer pilot will take place, leveraging Twitter and other web 2.0 API;

Managing geeks

This article from computerworld should be required reading from any executive. It is dead on.