On May 1, 2010, Avantica acquired Open Mountain. The Open Mountain blog officially became the Avantica blog.  You can read more about the acquisition here.

In the coming months, you will see a new blog emerge with more content and contributors.  Maybe you’ll even appreciate some new opinions having read mine the last few years.  In honor of the change over, let me finish off the Open Mountain blog with this final post.

Why did we do it?  Why sell the company to our top development partner Avantica?

First, let me dispel any concerns.  We didn’t need to sell to survive this economy.  We created a profitable and growing business in one of the toughest economic climates in recent history.  Our friends and family are happy we survived as well.  Take a look at this post about different ways to start a company and you’ll get a sense for how we managed our bottom line.

Earlier this year we began to consider how we could achieve our next set of goals for the company.  Not just financial goals but goals for expansion, for enhancing our services and really for becoming a leading company that start-ups call the second they need a team.  On our own, we knew we could get there.  As part of Avantica, we decided we could get there sooner.

That’s it.  No smoking gun.  No definitive reason that forced our hand.  Really, not a bad set of choices.  Stay the current course and have nice stable growth. Join Avantica and engage with a larger base of customers and a broader set of opportunities.  Joining Avantica was really about what we could do together by sharing our knowledge and resources.

Of course, we had our fair share of sleepless nights wondering if we were doing the right thing.  Letting go of the first company you created is a bit like sending your kids away to college.  There is some pride at what you have done and remorse at watching it go.

You wonder about the terms.  Is the valuation fair and the employment agreement reasonable?  What if we don’t like it? This is just the kind of thought to wake you up at night.  Multiple nights actually.  But if we we didn’t have any trepidations, odds are we wouldn’t have created something of any value in the first place.

The decision was grounded in one simple objective that we feel we can continue to meet as part of Avantica.  We started Open Mountain because we truly wanted to help start-ups and companies bring new products to market.  The energy of new projects is exhilarating.  The creativity from figuring what to do and how to do it, often starting from scratch, represents the most fun you can have on a project perhaps except for astronomical success.  That’s the way we see it and our experiences at start-ups like Ariba, Arbor Software and others represents some of the most fun and rewarding work we have done in our careers.

Over the last few years, we created a lot of products and technologies.  Open Mountain worked with clients to do interesting projects like the community we created for students preparing for college or the community we did for cancer survivors to share their experiences and connect with others.  We built a site that provides education around corporate benefits.  We worked on technology to support small business payroll and technology to provide up-to-date information to doctors. We worked on a site for CEOs to discuss the challenges they face with their peers.  We even did our own project to help consumers manage their home inventory and worked on a site to help consumers buy comfortable organic cotton products at a reasonable price.

Do you now see why we like this type of work over working on the same product for several years?  Man, this is a great job!  We definitely look forward to doing the same type of work on a larger scale as part of Avantica.

Thanks for supporting Open Mountain all these years,

Bob & Tom

You’d be surprised how many issues you can resolve over a good bottle of wine!

We were seeing a new wave of companies ramping up to release in the fall as with previous years.  This was just one of many signs that we felt the US economy was turning around.  Money was flowing, new projects were getting some funding, and development teams were being staffed.

As usual, most companies targeted October listing a window of opportunity as the driving factor.  I first referred to this phenomenon in my post about the 2-month launch.

We have had many customers successfully hit October.  One company launched and closed an impressive round of funding shortly thereafter.  Another signed up a Fortune 500 company before the end of the year.  We are very proud of what these budding enterprises achieved.  What’s the one thing that has not happened?

Not a single one has seen any validation that a window of opportunity really existed.

Opportunity?  Yes, definitely.  A window?  One that might close soon?  In my opinion, absolutely not.  The opportunity available to these companies is no better or worse before or after their launch.  The proverbial window remains open for everyone even to this day.

Defining a market window is like trying to predict when the recession you are in began.  Was the Internet search market opened by the invention of the Web or the rise of Yahoo?  If Google closed that window, how do you explain bing? The iPod entered a crowded MP3 market.  facebook is clobbering myspace who left friendster in the dust.  The list goes on and on.

I was reading an essay by William Gates Sr. about his son Bill.  He said Bill left Harvard before graduating to create software for the Altair 8088 because, and I quote, “to take advantage of a window of opportunity he believed would be long gone by the time he graduated”.  This is like seeing a Model T and thinking if you don’t get into the car business soon you’ll miss out.  Laughable now, but I am sure those early companies felt this way just as Gates did and most start-ups do.

I am not saying that windows of opportunity are a complete myth.  Did everyone think Twitter would become this huge or that there was a market for really short messages?  One of our start-ups truly has a unique opportunity.  They can point to market factors, new legislation and a host of other factors converging on what truly looks like a new opportunity.

Hitting a specific window of opportunity is not the dominant factor that determines who survives in my opinion.  New opportunities open up all the time.  Eventually markets become crowded and finding success becomes more difficult.  Companies need to focus more on obtaining an impenetrable position instead of nailing the start or end of a window.

What do I conclude from all of this?

1) Running a start-up successfully is a marathon not a sprint.  Having the early lead in a marathon doesn’t matter that much. Just ask Yahoo or friendster.  You still could easily lose to runners managing their race better if you don’t do the same.

2) Windows of opportunity are very real, yet they don’t exist just because you want to launch in October.  Base your launch time on smart planning and not only on hoping to capture the big spending months before the holidays.

3) If the TechCrunch post about you lists competitors already up and running, then your product is probably not going to create a new window.  Your first mover advantage is already gone.  Learn as much as you can from your competitors.  Most importantly, don’t assume they are standing still.

Here are some different launch goals to consider along with the date of your launch:

Considering launching off-season.  This allows you to fine tune your offering and your infrastructure.  When you expect your most explosive growth, would you rather have a new product that you are still vetting or a proven solution supported by well-trained people?  Maybe ask potential customers this question?

Consider launching based on milestones instead of dates.  For example, launch after you have 500 active beta customers on the system for 2 months or more. Do you think potential investors will care about October if you can show your product is “sticky” for users?  Maybe ask potential investors this question?

Consider launching based on your financial goals.  Your product must be in the market generating revenue at a certain rate to hit your break even target.  Managing to cash flow positive is something many companies may have to do in this changed economy if you believe our predictions back in 2009. Maybe ask your executive staff this question?

I realize that windows of opportunity are one of the many motivators that drive teams to achieve the insane.  Gates may have been wrong about the market for Altair software, but his drive on that opportunity and all the ones that followed ultimately lead to his success.   Believe me, whatever the reason, you must have this drive.  Just remember that while October may seem important, surviving long beyond October is definitely important.

The problem with adding features late is that there never is a guarantee the feature will work out.  A last minute change could make the release and get you on TechCrunch.  Or you could put in something that doesn’t matter only to find you broke something that does.  Release management is a guessing game simply because companies never have enough time and resources to test everything a user might do.

Repeat after me.  It’s always a judgment call.  It’s always a judgment call.

We use software development processes to manage decisions like this.  Two of the most dominant development philosophies in use today are Agile Development and SCRUM though some people incorrectly think they are one in the same.  In fact, there is even a book called “Agile Development with SCRUM”.  However, there is one interesting difference in the foundation of these two approaches that illustrates my point:

SCRUM by definition:

During a sprint, no one is allowed to change the sprint backlog, which means that the requirements are frozen for that sprint. (a sprint is typically a 30 day period)

From the principles behind the Agile Manifesto:

Welcome changing requirements, even late in development.  Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

SCRUM manages the risk by locking things down at some point and avoiding the conversation.  After all, the next release opportunity is only 30 days away.  Yet Agile foundations encourage a certain amount of flexibility and consideration. Being customer focused means sometimes taking the risk.

Make sure you check at the Agile Manifesto.  I would have given anything to be a fly on the wall during that discussion!

How late is too late?

We can certainly agree that if the software is going live tomorrow, responsibly we should only fix critical issues that render the product not releasable or worse yet that might corrupt customer data, right?  Other than that, there isn’t enough time to re-test everything and even the best guys make simple mistakes.  But what about embarrassing spelling errors or showing a login name with a poster’s comment?  The team can fix something as easy as that, can’t they?

Assuming the feature truly is important enough to consider, here’s what you should ask yourself:

1. Is there enough time to do the change and test the change?
2. Do we have someone we can free that we trust?
3. Is the impact of not having it worse than the impact a mistake could have?

If you can get a yes to all 3 of these, then the risk is worth it.  If not, then you are pitting customer satisfaction against customer confidence if you make the wrong call.  Technical leaders in general would not proceed.  Individual changes are rarely that important in their eyes.  Product managers and execs almost always say go for it under the guise of “we can’t afford to wait.”

Breaking this problem down might not be as hard as you think. Put your late feature decisions into one of these buckets:

No brainer in – Yes, yes, yes to all three questions above.  We can get it done and tested and we have a guy we can free up.  It’s safe so let’s go for it.

No brainer out – The answer to most questions above is no.  There isn’t enough time, no one is available or the risk of mistake is far greater than the benefit to the business.  Don’t forget that customers often don’t miss what they don’t know about.

Hard calls – The answer to at least one of the 3 questions above is no.

The only bucket to keep you up at night is the hard call.  For me, the decision almost always comes down to the code base and the team.  Is the code base solid enough where I can take risks?  Is the team good enough where I can trust them with this risk?  I have been at companies where the leadership doesn’t understand why we don’t go for it.  The blocker is often that we are managing some level of legacy code that can’t be rushed.

I think that’s the hardest part.  Leadership and investors want companies that can release every two weeks.  Even with our own product hinventory.com we are following a release frequently strategy and it is working well. But if the product or team is not set up for quick releases, then I am sorry the answer is probably no…

…for the hard calls anyways…

…we can put the change into the very next sprint…

…are you crazy…

…do you really think that feature matters that much to risk the release…

…we’ll keep the change isolated and release it a few days after…

…maybe we can go for it but if we see any adverse effects we are reversing the change…

…it’s in the product but we’re going to keep testing after release and stay ready with a hot fix…

…see you all Saturday, at least the company is buying dinner…

I did say it would be an honest discussion.

Outsourcing removed the interview process from setting up your team.  For many start-ups, that change normalized the resource pool as many outsource providers simply assign a team to the project.  In reality, there is a big difference between a developer who knows how to build an online Web store versus someone who can make Twitter scale or conceive of Ruby on Rails.

Let us help explain the difference between these types of resources.  First, we need a pyramid!

Companies have different levels or terms for engineers.  Here’s how I define them:

Web developer — A Web developer is good at creating sophisticated Web sites that have limited back end functionality.  His tools of choice are HTML/CSS/Javascript or Flash.  He loves walks in the park and open source CMS’s.

Software engineer — Software engineers are comfortable building more complex functionality that includes objects and business logic.  Ruby on Rails is the language Du jour for the hip and trendy alternative scene.  PHP is the blue collar worker’s hammer.  Java is the choice of old school guys who think the country has gone to the dogs.

Software developer — We don’t use objects, we are objects.  Pearl Jam is the new Grateful Dead.  If you haven’t modified a Unix kernal or developed in native C, then you are a poser!

Software architect — The architect is smarter than most of us, and you should avoid the ones who know it.  He spends his weekends looking for quasars or trying to eliminate a contradictory systemic anomaly from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision.

For most of your projects, your team will likely be a collection of software engineers and web developers.  The more complex the project, the more you will need developers or possibly a seasoned architect.  The pay scale rises with qualifications obviously so we tend to look for one or two smart senior guys and then back fill with a cost effective pool of highly motivated individuals.

We took a look at our some of our projects from last year and charted them against the pyramid.

Understanding the type of project you have will help when selecting your team*:

Website or application – A Web site project in this case is a project that is mostly user interface with either little or standard back end functionality.  The site might have e-commerce, user sign-ups and dynamic content.  Back end functionality is supported by existing open source tools or by integration with other sites.

Product – Product development generally includes sophisticated back end functionality along with more complex interfaces.  The project often is based on some “secret sauce” that is protected IP, under a patent or otherwise considered a market differentiator.

Framework or foundation – Framework or foundation projects are projects that create technology upon which other solutions are created.

We’re product developers and like to produce complete solutions for our clients.  Framework projects are fun and challenging though there are simply less of them.  Of course, we love a good Web site project as well.  It’s just that they tend to be shorter and require more customization work than software engineering.

Next time you start up your a new project, it might help to classify the effort within this pyramid.  You can use the classification to define what type of engineers you should be asking for.

* A complete discussion of resources should include specialists and other disciplines including designer, tester, project manager and so forth.  I am working on a follow up post to help that aspect of your resource planning.

1. Start from a creative brief
2. Use multiple visuals
3. Plan to start over at least once

At the end of the post, we showed a hint of a work in progress.  We now can say the mock-ups were from our new product hinventory.com.  You can learn more about our launch in the hinventory.com blog.  We thought we’d go through the design steps in more detail to help illustrate the tips presented above.

hinventory.com started from a real need in my own life.  I had previously gone through the painful process of cataloging everything I owned in excruciating detail. The process was time-consuming and I soon gave up maintaining the list as do most people.  Late last year, I was thinking about the simplest way to get this done when it hit me that all I really wanted was take photos and mark the significant items in the photo.

First, we wrote some specs and did a creative brief to better define the product.  I can honestly say I am addicted to the creative brief at this point.  There’s nothing like collecting your thoughts to focus what you are trying to do.  I may even start doing them for house projects or working in the garden!  The graphic below is our proof of concept piece that went with the creative brief to help define the product.

Once we understood the direction, we set about developing the product.  The first version was intended to be a working prototype or beta that we hoped to get some users testing.  The interface is presented below.  Feedback on the product confirmed the market opportunity. But…

… the interface faced some challenges.  When developing functionality you sometimes make design compromises in the name of productivity you later regret.  This interface looks like it belongs on the TV show Romper Room for those of you who remember that.  The logo and banner are straight from a 3 year old’s bedroom.  It doesn’t work, I know.

Lesson learned.  Start over.  Get some fresh eyes.  Maybe hire a graphic artist.  We did.  We used one of our favorite artists in Costa Rica and she didn’t disappoint us.

The above interface is the one we selected over the examples in our lessons learned post.  The interface is clean, intuitive and aesthetically pleasing.  Putting the content inside boxes though can lead to problems later on.  If I had to list a fourth lesson learned from last year, it would be to design for functional expansion and page growth.  We did another round of mock-ups using less restrictions on the actual page content.

We selected number 3 as the final design and then moved on to the logo.  Here are the samples we created before sending a few select ideas to our artist.  Using multiple visuals proved key for illustrating to our artist what we liked and what we did not.

We ran into one final design issue during the course of development.   Take a look at our iPhone application mock-up below and see if you notice the issue.  We created the mock-up ourselves.  We’re launching the app next month so keep your eyes and ears open.

Do you see the issue?  The problem was the markers.  They are barely visible.  The same issue existed in the Web version, but we hadn’t noticed it as much until we saw the photos on the iPhone.  Marking items is essential to both applications.  We moved to a red marker inspired by what you see on a map.  The final interface markers and all is displayed on our product page.

You can see the product yourself by signing up on hinventory.com and using the product.  We hope you do.

Cheers.

When we started Open Mountain a few years back, we recognized there were two lines of business interesting to us.  The first was the startup services business.  Founders, entrepreneurs, and companies uncover new ideas all the time.  They need cost-effective teams managed by experienced leaders to get those ideas to market.  We really like the energy of the startup and the challenge of bringing something new to fruition.

The other line of business was product development.  We’re product people.  We worked at product companies like Adobe, Ariba and Intuit before Open Mountain.  We understand the ins and outs of developing a product and working as part of a team to make that product successful.

The decision for which business to pursue first came down to practicality.  Services businesses generate revenue sooner than product companies.  Longer term, products have a better revenue growth potential, but they require capital or sweat equity to launch.  We looked at the landscape and decided that we prefer to bootstrap our company without taking money and that meant services first and products second.  If you are confronted with this same scenario, I highly suggest you read Guy Kawaski’s Art of the Start.

Fast forward to today, our services business was far more successful than we imagined.  Take a look at our client list and at just some of the companies that launched new products or technologies with us.  Working with startups and creative founders is rewarding.  Nearly all the companies we worked with are still alive and kicking today.

Now it’s time for the product side of the business.  We’re actually launching two products today.  hinventory.com is a Web site for creating a secure home inventory online.  You can read all about it on our hinventory blog.  Please check out the product and become a user.  Use the feedback form to tell us what you think.

The technology behind hinventory.com, called tagiphoto (pronounced tag.ee.photo), is a technology product that enables companies to add photo management and tagging to their integrated Web and mobile offering.  We’re doing a limited launch right now looking for early beta customers if you are interested.

This is a very exciting time for us and we hope you’ll help make our new product successful.  We’re as committed as ever to our services business and continue to sign up new clients each month.  At the end of the day, we’re all about bring new ideas to market whether they are your ideas or ours.

Enjoy!

Coyuchi sells organic cotton products including linens and clothing that are produced following the best practices for certified organic and fair trade products.  You can read more about them on their Web site here.

We have a set of Coyuchi organic sheets for our bedroom and we love them.  My wife is a serious linen shopper.  The bed is always covered with the softest cotton sheets and a warm down comforter in natural patterns.  We live in downtown Napa and our bedroom looks out at green hills and, right now, red and yellow colored maple trees. Every morning we share a cup of fresh ground brew in bed with our dog Huck at our feet.  Getting the picture that the quality of the sheets is a big deal?

Socially conscious living is important to us and to Open Mountain.  Here’s a post about company efforts to be more green.  Finding a company like Coyuchi is such a score because it allows us to be eco-friendly without necessarily sacrificing creature comforts.  Sure, we’ll make compromises to support the environment.  Give up our morning coffee experience?  That’s a tough call and I am glad I now don’t have to make it.

Coyuchi could make a small profit catering to locals and out-of-town guests visiting Pt Reyes on the Northern California coast.  The store is an hour or two drive from San Francisco and the town has an eco-friendly feel to it.  Two things happened that set Coyuchi on a different course.

First, people started to care about the planet.  They started to recognize that irresponsible consumption could have serious consequences in the not so distant future.  Second, the Internet provided a means to share information.  The availability of global information brought communities together and informed them about what was happening in the world.  We’re all much more connected now and I think we can agree this has been a positive change.

Coyuchi uses the Internet to expand their reach, sell to even more customers and increase their revenue.  They provide a nice solution for people looking for quality in their linen that also want to support the environment in a socially responsible way.  Best of all, I can tell my sister in New York or family in Los Angeles about the company just in time for Christmas (wink wink nudge nudge).  This is exactly what the Internet was supposed to be about among other things.

The new Web store looks great.  The design is clean and friendly.  We built the site on top of the open source product osCommerce for e-commerce.  Using open source tools fit with the spirit of the project while also providing a cost-effective way to launch an online store without re-inventing the wheel.  In truth, we prefer to use open source tools as much as possible so long as we can meet the needs of our customers.

You’ll have to see for yourself what you think of the result.  The store is live now at Coyuchi.com.  As for the sheets, I can only tell you that we are very satisfied customers and we look forward to more and more products coming online.  Until then, I’m off to my post-morning, pre-lunch nap on my comfy organic sheets.  Huck, hey Huck, time for a nap…

1) Start from a creative brief

A creative brief synthesizes the desired results or impacts of your project.  I recommend a single page brief that has 3-5 words that describe the emotion you wish to evoke, a sentence describing the impression you are trying to create or message you are trying to communicate, and then 5-10 bullet points listing everything that should also be considered.  We skipped this step a couple of times only to find out later that our lack of alignment was driving the design in different directions.  Resist the temptation to dive right in creating images before you collect your thoughts.

2) Use multiple visuals where ever you can

This one seems obvious.  Of course you are going to create visuals of your design.  We recommend using more than one as much as possible and use existing work for inspiration.  We started our logo project by creating a page of logos we liked from other sites and a page of logos we didn’t like.  Our Web site went through many prototypes before we started working in HTML.  Our design partners deliver 3 to 5 design choices per deliverable and that gives us plenty to discuss as we strive for something creative, intuitive and unique.

3) Plan to reset or start over at least once

All our best design projects hit the inevitable “we’re stuck” moment at some point in the project.  The current trajectory has run its course.  Where do we go from here?  Starting over allows you to dump the bad parts of everything you did while retaining the best of your brainstorming and thinking.  For our logo project, we liked the two-tone nature of the images but couldn’t converge on colors.  We realized that using brown to represent the strength of mountains was putting a damper on our brand.  Hills in California offer other choices such as green for spring or gold in fall.  The logo design direction was good but we dumped our color palette and started over.  You’ll see that progression below.  We recommend you embrace the set back as a healthy part of a creative process.  Try not to resist just because you are under deadline.  It may take you longer to make a bad design better than create a new design that works.

Here now is a trip down some of the design projects from our year and how we came to learn these valuable lessons.

Open Mountain Gets a New Brand

Our first project of the year was a new logo and Web site.  As I mentioned above, we did the logo ourselves starting from a creative brief.  Open has strong connotations for approachable and transparent but also open in the open source sense implying community and knowledge.  Mountains are strong, substantial and impressive.  The image below shows our progression from earthy colors toward what we have today.  This project benefited from all 3 tips listed above.  We used a brief.  We created mountains of visuals to consider different options, pun fully intended of course.  Our earth tones palette was replaced by something green, open and fresh.

We tackled the Web site next.  Below is our first attempt starting from our existing creative brief.  Do you see any major issues with this perhaps after reading our previous post about design?  You see a guy in a kayak against a mountain range exactly where the eye looks first on the page.  How informative is that?  We had hoped that the serenity of the lake we create a peacefulness when perusing the site.  One reviewer thought we were a travel Web site.  Furthermore, most people didn’t even look at the content at the bottom because it appears secondary to the overall page.  Time to start again.

Our new design started by utilizing our own advice and putting meaningful content in key positions.  We decide to use Flash animation to make the experience more engaging.  Below is our first shot at the flash panels for the animation.

Next we played with color and attributes to encourage the users toward different sections of a page.

In the end, we feel we created a site that is informative and engaging, and delivers the right message about our company.  Take a look and tell us what you think.

We Have Ads Now!

Our next project was creating advertisements for our business.  We procured several 250 by 250 spots on various Web sites through pay or partnership.  Due to timing constraints, we were forced to create something quick and dirty to meet a deadline.  This is what you get when you don’t follow good process or utilize any of the design tips we mentioned above.

Is there anything in this ad that is the least bit engaging?  What incentive do you have to explore this company?  What service do they really offer?  Right, you get the point.

We reset the entire project and thought hard about what were trying to do.  An expert gave us some advice on how to think beyond our current approach.  She talked to us about advertising and about how you create something like a “Got milk” or “Just do it”.

We have said from the beginning that we wanted to be different from what customers have come to expect with outsourcing.  We strive to overcome the separation between organizations and instead work to provide insight into what is really happening with the remote development team.  Working with Open Mountain should not feel like typical outsourcing.  It should feel like your own team.

Outsourcing never felt like this!

That was it.  We knew right away this was our “Got milk”.  When you outsource with Open Mountain, it should not feel like any previous experience you might have had.  Below is our first concept piece with the new approach.

Happy smiling people.  People actually enjoying outsourcing.  Exuberance.  Feedback from our experts confirmed this had appeal and communicated the right message.  We created 4 ads.  Here are the two favorites and we also used the one in the upper left corner above.

If you outsource with us, you’ll be as happy as a kid sledding or a crazy guy eating a huge lollipop.

These ads still crack me up.  They are quirky and unique and communicate our core message.  Of course, we rejected some ads as well.  Here are the two most controversial.

Outsourcing should feel like you are about to eat a huge hamburger, right?  People said he looked constipated or nervous.

Reaction to the woman eating cake was truly mixed across woman and men.  At the time we rejected the ad, one woman reviewer was saying this degrades our business while another said this would get the attention of our target audience.  Let’s just say that the ad did not fit well with our corporate values.

Clients Restart Projects Too

Design tips were learned working with clients as well.  Our client ThriveOn.com launched their site based on the design below.  As we added features to the solution, we soon realized that the design was creating some challenges.  This design is more consistent with a Web portal such as iGoogle or my.yahoo.com, and didn’t fit well with upcoming product changes.

The client went back to the drawing board and created a design more suited to the long-term growth plans of the product.  Below is an interim step from when we experimented with different color schemes.

The final site is presented below.  You can read more about our work with ThriveOn in our case study on the OpenMountain.com.

A Look at a Work in Progress

The year isn’t over yet and we’re designing new products all the time.  We strive to follow good process and utilize the tips mentioned at the start of this post.  Here now are two final mock-ups from a product we are working on.  The project is in stealth mode and some content is redacted.  Overall, the design process has gone very well.  Our favorite approach is not displayed below however.  You’ll have to wait until launch to see where we ended up.

Our high-tech revolution has plunged us into a state of continuous partial attention.

iBrain by Gary Small, M.D. and Gigi Vorgan

- A typical Monday starts by pulling my canoe out into the various communication streams.  Logging on to Skype is the watershed event.

- Skype is running.  Firefox is open with tabs for email, calendar, several Google docs, WordPress for this post and YouTube for a side project I am working on.

- I check in with my lead on Skype.  I have the same guy across a few of my projects.  This certainly streamlines the communication.  He’s in Costa Rica.  When I worked at Adobe, we used IM all the time as people worked on different floors and at different locations.

- I am acting as the product owner for one project and I clarify something about a feature we are implementing.

- On another project, our client provides detailed specifications and we review the documents to make sure we are in sync.  We are, which is good.

The new promise of collaboration is that with peer production we will harness human skill, ingenuity, and intelligence more efficiently and effectively than anything we have witnessed previously.

WIKINOMICS by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

- Our newest client jumps on Skype to validate the release, our testing and the schedule.  There is a lot to discuss so we move to a Skype call. He does a good job managing his business to create an active and valuable community.

- Another issue comes in about how a feature should work that requires some thought.  I ignore chats and emails for the next 30 minutes and open specifications in Google docs and mock-ups in Preview.  We clarify the issue.

- By late morning, the major communications have been completed.  Projects are moving forward and our teams seem to understand what needs to happen this week.  I am responsible for a couple of releases that are in full swing.

No matter how clever the idea or great the implementation, an invention typically lives or dies depending on how well it can be integrated into a larger social or technological context.

Juice by Evan I. Schwartz

- The marketing text for our Web site update is long overdue.  Some tasks on the docket this week are for corporate business.  But I decide to focus on that side project and YouTube.

- I started a project called ReachGivers.org to help charities and non-profits get their message out over the Internet.  ReachGivers.org uses Ruby on Rails and has Twitter integration.  I added a poor man’s blog a while back as well.  This week I want to add video support.  Side projects help me stay connected with technology.

Economics is above all a science of measurement.  It comprises an extraordinarily powerful and flexible set of tools that can reliably assess a thicket of information to determine the effect of any one factor, or even the whole effect.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

- Off to Starbucks for a Mocha and a blueberry scone.  This happens so often that people know me by name there.  The Ethos water billboard reminds me I wanted to blog about that on ReachGivers.org after finishing the video work.

- My brain stumbles on some concepts for the marketing text and I jot down some ideas.

- I was working on a product a while back and was not that impressed with the end user documentation.  I sent a book proposal out to a technology book publisher, which turned into a series of titles, and I have been writing every since.  I love it, I really do.  I even enjoy working on marketing text and ads.

Execution is not a one-time event.  Nor is it a process where you check off goals as if your sixth-grade teacher were looking over your shoulder.

The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki.

- Shorty before noon we get a curve ball. Mid-cycle, our client needs to shift direction on a project to change the prioritization and the release date.  I’ll spend the next few days updating user stories and validating the new plan. Sometimes I feel like we’re actually better at hitting a curve ball.

- The Agile software process, which is intended for flexible development, actually advocates against this type of mid-cycle change.  Release cycles are purposely shorter so that a direction shift simply influences the next cycle.  For start-ups, next month can be years away.  We have to be more flexible.

- A site we monitor generates an alert right before I can escape for lunch.  I used to get a little rush on these mini-emergencies like working as an EMT. Now I am the ambulance driver who knows that most pick-ups are not at all like the show ER.  Still, up-time is important and so we resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

- It occurs to me that this post demonstrates why people Tweet.  Expressing myself effectively with 140 character didn’t work well for me.  I decide to try it again because I am enjoying creating this running dialog.

- We’re trying to send large Photoshop files with mock-ups.  Some days technology just seems to work against us.  We’re hitting proxy issues and time out issues.  Eventually we solve the problem and remind ourselves yet again we should standardize on an approach.  Problem is, email and Skype are so convenient and work well enough most of the time.  I guess this would be one of those warts.

Agile software development methods should be able to survive in an atmosphere of constant change and still emerge with success.

Agile Management for Software Engineering by David J. Anderson

- After 40 plus years of eating sandwiches, I still love a good sandwich.  The best sandwich in town is from the deli in Vallergus and the people at the cash register all know me by sight.

- I never get back to the post after lunch.  Clients and partners all eat at different times and issues were waiting for me when I got back.  That is definitely a typical Monday.

- I didn’t finish the marketing text either.  The text I came up with was not remarkable.  I made some small updates to our corporate site instead and also finished my changes on ReachGivers.org.  Perhaps I will think of something while winding down for the night.

- My iPhone sits by my bed.  With several releases in play, there is always a chance a developer is still working and will fire off a question.  Of course, I can’t just let the device sit there, now can I?  I pull my canoe back out into the stream and see what else I might have missed during dinner.

How do you know for sure we are as integrated as we say?  Have a look at the photos below from some recent trips with us going to Costa Rica and our partner coming here.  Open Mountain and Avantica work well together because we make the effort to become familiar with each other.  We know the teams in Costa Rica and nearly everyone in the Avantica has been on one or more of our projects.

The leadership of our partner Avantica at the Golden Gate Bridge.

The Avantica team at Rubicon in Napa.

Open Mountain showing Avantica engineers one of the oldest wineries in Napa.

One of our newest clients meeting with Bob and the team in Costa Rica.

Where Bob and Tom stayed over the weekend in Costa Rica.

Avantica and Open Mountain enjoyed wine over lunch with this view of the vineyards.

After you look these over, you’ll have to tell us who visits the better location.  I do like my Costa Rican beaches and Imperial beer.  But how about the Golden Gate Bridge and wineries of Napa?  It’s a tough call that I am glad that I don’t have to make.

Thanks to all the travelers who donated images for this post! – Cheers.