Over the past 6 months, I’ve been working with a customer who develops hardware appliances. They were facing a challenge with complaints from users about one of their products, which appeared a few months in. Needless to say, the cause of such bugs requires long and thorough investigation. Context The hardware appliance runs a real-time OS, which... Read more
You and your team are preparing to deploy in production a set of features. Unfortunately, some of these have the status”almost done” and it’s not clear how much longer will take until done. Straight to the point – this shouldn’t happen. To avoid the failure of the deployment, one way is to reconsider how your team... Read more
Doing your job as a software developer is not limited to writing code and attending meetings. It should also include keeping in sync with your company’s technical strategy. It may not be that obvious, but a developer should know what the technical strategy of the product is, why it needs a plan at all and... Read more
This is the last blog post in the series about technical strategy in practice. The first post, I’ve detailed what is technical strategy and why is important. In the second one, I’ve described how a technical strategy should look for a specific product. In this article, I am going to share more about who creates... Read more
Let’s continue the series about technical strategy. In the first blog post, I’ve detailed what technical strategy is and why it is important. In this article, you will find more about what the technical strategy should contain for a particular product. A few things need to be well defined, clearly communicated and constantly repeated. Before... Read more
In my first years of working as a developer, I dreaded a few words like “marketing”, “exciting”, and “strategy”. And for good reasons: most times they were void of meaning. A few years later, as a technical lead, and later as a technical coach, I learned that the lack of meaning in the words “technical... Read more
Whether you’re extending a big project or you’re on your way refining your startup’s MVP, it’s always a challenge to prioritise the features truly worth the investment. How do you create a viable product strategy? Can you keep things relevant, yet simple enough to understand and adapt along the way? At MozaicLabs, we find that Impact... Read more
I’m a developer. We’re not well known for our communication skills; at least I know I had my problems. Most of them came from the fact that my natural tendency is to ignore emotional cues and stay on facts. In many cases, that works fine. Sometimes, though, it creates unnecessary friction and can upset people.... Read more
Throughout my software-development years, giving and receiving feedback has proven to be an important tool. It helped me drive the projects forward and improved my skills as a developer. In this article, you can find out why it’s important to give feedback to your colleagues, and, more importantly, what are the proper means to provide... Read more
You can’t just give someone a creativity injection. You have to create an environment for curiosity and a way to encourage people and get the best out of them. Ken Robinson The ability to create something new, to get new business started, break boundaries with bold ideas or redefine the existing standards are among the... Read more
Guest post by Ralph van Roosmalen Imagine this: You are working as a manager at a company, you work there already for years and things are not going bad but you know there is room for improvement. You heard about Scrum, Agile, the Agile Manifesto… and you decide to learn more about it. You visit a few conferences, attend... Read more
The question of How to keep your team motivated pops up in various discussions with managers. The reasons vary, but with the increasing generation gap (think Millenials are coming), learning this is a process that requires adjustment. Feedback helps us adjust the work behaviour and keeps the motivation level high. Gathering knowledge across a couple of years,... Read more
Challenge the way you work. Stay happy & productive! The journey to mastery is never done. It takes practice, constant improvement and always honing your craft to achieve your fullest potential. After sharing useful methods for the Scrum Master and the Product Owner | Business Analyst | Product Manager roles, let’s explore together the Software Developer | Software Crafter role. This time we’ll focus on technical and... Read more
While a lot of the design principles that we use in software can be found in other design disciplines, there is one very present in UX and graphical design that is very rarely discussed in software circles: consistency. It’s not because we weren’t trying. The system metaphor idea from XP and the conceptual integrity idea... Read more
This article was published first in Today Software Magazine, no 16. Below it’s the full version. The authors are Alexandru Bolboaca and Adrian Bolboaca. In 2001, a group of people unpleased about the state of software development gathered in a mountain ski resort from Utah. One thing leading to another, they started discussing about the industrial methods applied at the... Read more
Challenge the way you work. Stay happy & productive! Let’s continue to explore together how you can challenge the status quo and the way you work. After seeing 2 useful methods for the Product Owner | Business Analyst | Product Manager role, you will find in this article techniques you can apply if you are a Scrum... Read more
Making a new developer productive as quickly as possible is most of the times challenging for the product team. I’ve heard stories about new on-boarding team members needing up to several weeks, or even months, until they feel comfortable or knowledgeable enough about the project and the code. This shouldn’t be the norm. Situations like these are... Read more
As our team at MozaicLabs is growing, we felt the need to improve the way we define and communicate features entering the development phase. As new developers joined the team, it was clear that we needed a better process. The Product Owner had more analysis and testing work on her hands. The new developers needed a... Read more
This article was first published in Today Software Magazine, no 12. Below it’s the full version. The authors are: Alexandru Bolboaca and Adrian Bolboaca. The Problem Imagine the following situation: a team has developed for 6 months a great product that immediately sells. Users show their passion for the product by asking new features. If the team does not deliver the new features... Read more
Challenge the way you work. Stay happy & productive! My colleagues, advising or coaching teams to be happy and productive, listen and learn constantly about the challenges they have during the day-to-day activity. In the next series of articles, we share with you practical solutions to common challenges encountered when developing software products, as well as new techniques to help... Read more
