Scaling Your Technology with Your Business
I have been advising a local entrepreneur who is building a really interesting new web play. A great guy, but doesn’t have a deep background in technology. He is starting to see some traction with his service, and is beginning to run into those early scalability hurdles that so many young startups eventually run into.
Our informal discussions around scalability inspired me to jot down some of my thoughts on this issue, and how early-stage entrepreneurs can scale their technology platform from 5 users to millions. Read more »
As promised in my previous article on JAD Facilitation Basics, this article will focus on the steps needed to create a viable functionality matrix, which will serve to summarize and prioritize the functionality for a proposed software system. Thanks to the recent reader who reminded me that this post was long overdue!
Kudos to Tino Mantella, Laura Heinlein, and the rest of the gang at the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG). They recently announced a new initiative, the TAG Leadership Academy. Through this new program, TAG members can participate in a variety of continuing education courses in topics ranging from marketing to human resources to technology.
Sadly, today’s post is going to be comprised of “YARS”, or Yet Another Recruiting Story. The one really good thing about being “in transition”, is that I am never at a loss for recruiting stories! Today we are going to explore how NOT to go about hiring a CIO, CTO, or other types of technology executives.
If you ran a convenience store, and needed to call someone in to unclog the drains in the bathrooms, would you call a good plumber, with a variety of experiences under his belt, or would you leave the drains clogged up until you could find a plumber that has deep vertical experience (no pun intended) working within the convenience store industry? Of course not! Sadly, this is the lame cloud under which many CIOs are hired. Call me crazy, but I’d just want a good plumber. Someone who was a problem solver.
The truth be known, I entered the information technology industry to be a computer programmer, not a business person. Back in those days, computer programmers, operators, and other such technicians were the “doers”. We were expected to stay in our world, while the “business guys” sorted out what needed to be done next. When that miraculous decision was reached, it was “thrown over the wall” to the engineers. It was then that we got busy trying to live up to the expectations of whatever was actually sold to the customer. Techies and business folks didn’t co-mingle. That would have been the equivalent of the Hatfields and the McCoys having a lovely Thanksgiving dinner together. My how the times have changed.
As promised in my post on 
