Although we have employees in 7 countries — not bad for 20 people! — madewithlove is not a remote-first company. Yes, we work remotely, but there are 6 traits that allow us to be a successful remote company. We are a knowledge-first company. What is a knowledge-first company? A knowledge-first company is...
Just like any other agile team, we meet each day to discuss blockers and what we planned to work on. The goal of the meeting is to get everyone on the same page and make it clear when there is friction. We even tried async written standups. Then we cancelled...
Would you trust Ferris Bueller to work on your project? Probably not. But how could he earn your trust? When joining a new project, there are a couple of actions you can take in order to build up that trust. Here are some tips. 1. Commit and Disagree We’ve...
Every year, team madewithlove goes on a secret mission. We spend a week together in a cool location during our company retreat. This year was no different. We’ve recently returned from our company retreat in Montaione, Italy, a small town nestled in the Tuscany region. We stayed in a...
Still scared to ship to production on Friday afternoon? Even after reading our previous post on maturing your release process? Here’s some practical advice on evolving your releases — from a fearful event to a trivial byproduct of building software. Building a release and go-to-market strategy is only possible when...
Some time ago I came across this article on Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge blog about when founding CEOs need to go. It’s from 2005, but it is still just as relevant now. The main takeaway is that you need differently skilled people at the helm in different...
If you spend most of your day working in front of a desk you need to pay attention to your environment to prevent illnesses and injuries. It goes hand in hand with a healthy lifestyle and good habits. How is your work well-being? The purpose of this article is to...
I’m new to pair programming. While the concept of pair programming is certainly not new to me (see among many, “The Clean Coder” by Robert C. Martin), I admit I previously did not have many opportunities to actually pair. It was either foreign to others or they just “didn’...
Some weeks ago, I was doing a talk about how you can make pair programming effective and enjoyable. Everything went well until I got a question which I couldn’t directly answer. The questioner had some experience with pair programming and asked me how you can avoid getting frustrated when...