Anchor Post – Balance
Mike Liskow’s unique perspective as an artist and economic philosopher about modern approaches to building technology businesses
Anchor Post – Definitions
Anchor post for definitions of business phrases and nomenclature commonly used at D’Mention Systems
Projects vs. Products: An Essential Distinction to Optimize Product Team Productivity
This post highlights the spectrum that spans two of the 4 P’s: projects and products. It addresses organizations operating in the SaaS space looking to maximize delivery value, speed and quality of the output by their product teams. Understanding how to find balance across this spectrum will save time, reduce cost and increase morale for…
Three Ways to Eat the Elephant of Technical Debt
This article explores the challenges of trying to overcome technical debt that we have accrued after a period of being stuck in a SaaS MVP Black Hole. This article is intended for small SaaS companies who are not necessarily startups from a time-in-business perspective, and are in a mature market space where the optimal operating…
How Do Startups Escape the SaaS MVP Black Hole?
This post considers the challenges that can sneak up on us when taking a minimum viable product (MVP) approach in a market space where competitor products already offer a high level of maturity. Offering too minimal of an MVP and then building user dependence on it can create unmeetable expectations that can be detrimental to…
How Do We Help Agile Engineering Managers STAY AGILE?
How to maximize the productivity of engineering managers by allowing them to focus on their native role
The “Why”
The justification for embarking upon an organizational development effort (i.e. to work on the business), which determines the resources and priority allocated to the breadth (the “what“), depth (the “how“) and the urgency (the “when“) of delivering a solution. The “why” is often driven by a combination of stakeholders, including functional practitioners, visionary practitioners and…
The “When”
The timespan between the moment that a need has been defined for a human endeavor (the “what“) and the moment that technology has been fashioned (the “how“) to serve that endeavor. The “when” is most often executed by sequential practitioners.
The “What”
The concise description of a human endeavor, which captures user story(s), workflow(s), feature(s) or capability(s) required to satisfy said endeavor. The “what” is most often articulated by functional practitioners.
The “How”
The fashioning of technology using machine language, programming languages or infrastructural configurations to serve the utility of a human endeavor. The “how” is most often executed by technical practitioners.
Can Great Engineering Leads Negate the Need for Enterprise Architecture?
Balancing engineering roles and enterprise architecture roles among their focus on the past/present vs. the future
Can Product Managers also be Product Owners?
Article on the challenges of having a PM and PO be the same individual