Blog

May 20, 2016

Greg Thomas

The Optimal Size for a Team

I’ve batted this idea back and forth many times in my head, what is the best size for a team?  At what size does the team remain too small to not accomplish enough and at what size does a team become too large that more time is spent on administration, overhead and the team eventually starts to slow.  Whether it’s a startup or an established company, team cohesion and leadership is critical to success. What is the magic number? For me, it’s 7. For you, it may be 3, 5, 10, 12, 17, 25. At 7 (not including yourself), you have

May 19, 2016

Greg Thomas

Return on Investment Cost

This isn’t a new term, it’s nothing you have not heard from. When selling products or services to customers there is an exchange that happens between the buyer and seller for the receipt of the product and/or service. To the seller it is what they need to earn in order to keep doing what they do, to the buyer, it is what they need to pay to attain the product and/or service (ps). The buyer will typically associate this with the cost of that ps when really it could not be further from the truth.  The buyer has no idea what the

May 18, 2016

Greg Thomas

The Perfect Software Architecture

The Perfect Software Architecture has the following characteristics; It starts backup when the server goes down. When an internal component fails, it restarts it, releases the instance and starts again. It can run for hours, days, weeks, months and years with no maintenance. If a connection to another system fails, it lets you know but never stops. It doesn’t fault. It doesn’t require a secondary service to “watch it”. It just works. Note: There is nothing in there about design patterns, about the perfection of the code and memory management, about logs rolling over, etc, etc. It just works. Good running code

May 17, 2016

Greg Thomas

It’s not all about the Logo

First thing to do when you start a company – get a logo. Why? Do you have a product to sell? Do you have business cards to put it on? Where is your letter head? Is there a sign over the door that you can put it on? Are the t-shirts coming next week and you need it now? Are you about to tatoo it onto your back? Do you have an invoice that needs your logo on it? No, none of that is happening, even if you have a website up and running, it doesn’t need your logo on it.

May 16, 2016

Greg Thomas

The Villians of a Great Team

Almost a year ago, I did a Slideshare presentation on How to Build a Great Team.  This is the follow-up to that presentation with The Villains of a Great Team which includes the familiar comic book slant as included in How to Build a Great Team but focussed around what character traits you need to watch for so they don’t take over and dominate your team as well as how to eliminate from your team dynamic. https://www.slideshare.net/GregThomas3/the-villains-of-a-great-team