There were some things that Paul Singh said last week that I can blog about. There were also a lot of jokes he made and insider advice that he gave which was quickly qualified with a "Don't tweet this please or I will kill you."...
Ford
6 Tips for Effective Stand-up Meetings in Distributed Agile
At AgilityFeat, we work by applying Agile methodologies in a distributed manner. Our clients are generally based in the US while our team members are located in Costa Rica, Nicaragua as well as the US (Charlottesville and Boston)....
6 ways your architecture can hurt agility
When I do agile coaching for our clients, I hear a lot of Yesbuts. That's when I say something that agile teams are supposed to do (like short iterations or frequent releases), and the client says "Yes, but..." There are always lots of...
Ruby development continues to grow in Latin America
Nearshore Americas quoted AgilityFeat in an article earlier this week on the growth of Ruby on Rails development teams in Latin America. While there's not hard data around it, the success of companies like AgilityFeat provides anecdotal...
3 UX Red Flags (Video Interview)
How do you know when you have a User Experience problem with your web application? I sat down with our UX lead Mariana Lopez and asked her to talk about some common Red Flags to watch out for. You can see the video of our skype chat or...
4 ways to keep your design skills fresh
Web design is a rapidly changing field, and it's not easy to keep up with all the changes. It's critical that you not only keep up to date on the latest technology changes and trends, but you also have to keep your designs fresh and...
3 sources of UX inspiration
Mariana Lopez is our UX lead and a key part of our most successful projects. Her ability to get inside the customers' head and quickly understand their processes and challenges is an important part of the UX and design assessment work...
Why Continuous Deployment is important for you
Last week I went to the Lean Start-up Meetup in Boston where Florian Motlik of Codeship lead a discussion with Amos Benninga from GrabCad, Dan Rowe from ETSY and Ken Eimer from InsightSquared on Continuous Deployment. The presentation was...
My Chores App
As our tagline for AgilityFeat says, we are entrepreneurs, it's in our dna. And for some of us, some of that DNA is shared. Andrea and Daniel Phillips are the sibling founders of the My Chores App. The are also AgilityFeat team members so...
Kenny Rogers and Customer Development
You got to know when to hold em.. We’re believers in Lean Startup here at AgilityFeat. In addition to our boutique UX/ Design and Software Development Services, we’re working on a few business ideas to scratch our collective...
Why Responsive Web Design is critical for you!
Yes, you need a responsive web design. Let me tell you why and what are considerations you have to keep in mind. A New Era Has Already Started In 2007 Steve Jobs talked about an upcoming “post-PC” era, an era of devices that “aren't as...
UX and Agile: How we do it
UX Magazine had an article last month by Michael Lai entitled "UX and Agile: Tying the knot", which used a great marriage analogy to discuss how UX and agile are and must be intertwined. At AgilityFeat we are very passionate about both UX...
Luxr to offer entrepreneurial training online
Luxr.co has been providing great content for accelerators on Lean Startup methods for a while, and now they are launching a monthly subscription model that we can all use to access their content. This looks like a very exciting offering...
Red stickies as an expedite lane in Scrum
When teams move to Scrum from a more chaotic development method, there is often a struggle with convincing the new Product Owner (or the business folks that they report to) that the team cannot be retargeted on a whim. A benefit of Scrum...
How specialization has been good for us and our customers
When AgilityFeat first started doing software development in Costa Rica, I would tell people that we could build anything. Mobile apps? You got it. Web applications? Sure, why not! .NET outsourcing? Sure, I've managed .NET teams before,...
8 things I learned at RailsConf 2013
Last week I was in Portland Oregon for RailsConf 2013. Portland is a great city with beautiful views of mountains that us East Coasters dream of, unusually good weather (last week anyways), and a very entertaining soccer team. But none...
Simple business lessons from Cinco de Mayo, mint juleps and chinese food
Simple business lessons from Cinco de Mayo, mint juleps and chinese food Eric Ries defines a startup as “a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty”. Here at AgilityFeat, we...
So you want to create a Google Glass application
If you are like me, you have a sixth sense that tells you that when a new market is about to appear, or a new way to interact with your customers is about to appear, you should be the first one to provide a solution in that new arena. You...
Lean Start-up, now what?
Back in November we sat down with Tony Cappeart, COO and Co-Founder at Contactually to talk about how they are applying Lean Startup methodologies to build their business. We talked about how Lean Startup had guided their product design,...
Free agile/startup advice using soHelpful.me
Do you have a question about agile, scrum, kanban, lean startups, or maybe just how the heck did I start a business in Costa Rica? I'm making myself available for some free consulting advice this week and next, and I'd be happy to give...
Google Glass Hackathon at San José, Costa Rica
Last week Google Glass Mirror API was released causing huge waves of blog posts and opinions about the much anticipated Google Glass hardware. Google Glass has a huge potential. Nobody still knows if it would bring the revolution it...
Setting up a cadence on your agile team
I'd like to share with you a common cadence that we are using on agile teams that I coach, and also on many of AgilityFeat's development teams with our clients. For an agile team to get into a solid rhythm of work, they need to have a set...
Building a portfolio of Lean Startups
For those watching technology trends, it's no surprise that people are talking about startups and their role in the new economy. Regardless of whether you believe startups help or hurt the economy, there's little argument that the future...
MyChoresApp launched by AgilityFeat commandos
Two of AgilityFeat's code commandos have launched a great new mobile app for managing chores with your children. My kids are going to try it out as part of the beta program, and if my kids can get excited about chores then yours can too!...
Three things I learned on a work-cation..
Last weekend, I traveled to San José, Costa Rica to meet with the Agility Feat team. As usual, the trip to Costa Rica was absolutely amazing even though there were no beaches nor rain forests on the itinerary. This time, we used the...