May 10, 2011
Podcast interview on Project Idealism: Managing Software Design
Andrew Wicklander interviewed me for his Project Idealism podcast and our 45-minute chat is now online. Andrew’s background in software project management led to a lot of questions about how we work at 37signals. I was glad to dig into a number of topics including:
- How we emulate our “cowboy days” with teams of three
- How a growing company is like a cocktail party
- Picking and choosing from XP and Agile, and why basic values are more important than methodologies
- Why methodologies lose their meaning over time
- Why features become bloated when they are made for cases you don’t understand
- The overlap between UI design and product design
- How programmers and designers should negotiate on cost
- Who should manage projects: a designer or a programmer?
- How to not get lost in a project and the central challenge of doing just one thing at a time
- The costs of unfinished work
- The power of working in small steps and being in a “known state” between steps
- How doing less is still the hardest standard to keep
- and why 37signals won’t be competing with Cisco anytime soon
Thanks a lot to Andrew for interviewing me and asking such thoughtful questions. The podcast is on his website and also available as episode #11 on iTunes.
