Day 48 - Top 7 Lessons Learned by the Cowboy This Week

Things have been very exciting here at MindLight over the last week or so.  I feel like the cowboy entrepreneur I had been "accused" of in the past.  While my mother just returned home yesterday, she is on the mend - so that has let me rebalance my time commitments.

Wow, lots of lessons learned this week.  I was either a backend developer or integration developer during my time in the coding trenches - so I am learning a lot about doing 'apps' and all the front end work required.  I learned a few lessons that might help the rest of you software development leaders.

1.  Fonts are a big deal.  Yes, really.  There are several types of font licenses and types.  There are fonts used mostly for print - and they are a bit less expensive than those for web and apps.  Fonts come in packages of Font Families - and usually you get a deal for purchasing them all.  Or you can try to figure out exactly which fonts you need and pay for those.  Apps and Web cost much more.  There is usually an upfront fee as well as a "per" user fee.  You can have fonts that are served up from a font distributors server or you can host the fonts and server them up for yourself.  Lesson Learned:  Everything costs money.  Nothing is as simple as it seems.  Research yourself and don't just assume anything related to licensing and licensing costs.

2.  User Interface and User Experience are two entirely different times.  Now, I know this theoretically.  However, actually being in a project that you must review the UI screens and you must then review the UX flow - is a different matter entirely.  We have had 67 screens generated in the last 9 days.  They literally deal with registration, logging in, and logging off.  Not much else.  The point is there are way more things to consider with UI than just the branding guide and the style guides.  (See item #1 on fonts).  Also, thinking through the experience of a user that does not yet exist is fun, but challenging.  Our target market is not "ME" - so putting myself in the shoes of the personna and trying to think of how they want to use something is certainly more effort than I imagined.  I recall once tell folks, just get some user input - what's the big deal.  Well, the big deal is we are in a brand new project and we don't have users yet and we don't have anything for them to look and and try to determine their feedback on.  Visuals go a long way!  Lesson Learned:  Nothing is a simple as it seems.  Always question your prior assumptions, they were most likely uninformed or new technologies and theories have replaced your prior decision making data set.

3.  Test cases are actually quite wonderful.  Yes, I said it.  I have learned more about my app, the one that I am the product owner for!, by reviewing the test cases in detail than I have ever imagined.  Here is an example.  The EPIC is "Create User".  Well, trust me that is not as simple as it seems.  There are many stories for "Create User" - one of them being the 'simple' process of clicking on a link that says create user and going through the process.  So Epic -> Stories (many) -> UI -> UX -> expected result.  As I reviewed the steps to perform the operation I was forced to review each screen, each button that was clicked, the flow of that process, whether or not an error case might exist, if all the required and optional items were accounted for, etc etc.  Lesson "RE"Learned - Every process in an agile development process has concrete value if you are using it correctly.  With Science there is always art.  The boring things sometimes elicit the most creative ideas.

4.  Best Practices and Standards are not just documents that are stored in your QMS file cabinet.  Reviewing ISO 9001:2015 and each of our current processes has reinforced the need for them.  (see item #3 above).  If we didn't have a solid strategy for what was in the EPIC and what system it was in, where the stories were, where the test cases are, where the UI is, where the UX is - well it is pretty hard for someone who is playing 800 roles like I am to jump in where I am needed and not have a ramp up each time to find out where everything went.  Lesson Learned:  Best Practices are "best" for a reason.  The upfront work done to work these out has already had unquantifiable, but seemingly limitless increases in efficiency.  Just do it.

5.  Discussions in Branding often lead to features that you didn't think of, demand generation techniques you never considered, and massive creative energy injection.  It is hard to remember back in the old days when I did "a job".  It is so much more fun to have all the hats on - as there are lumps of coal in each area that produce diamonds in other disciplines.  Lesson "RE" Learned - Every function in a company is important and links to every other function.  Every person affiliated with your project has great value that can extend beyond their exact role.  I will continue to make strong efforts to never forget that everyone has value in many areas.

6.  youTube is not as 'easy' as it seems.  While technically it is not that difficult - there are many nuances to setup, content generation, production, etc.  It is a great medium for demand generation, for sure.  However, doing it right it as much work as creating the "product".  It is essentially - another product.  Lesson Learned: Careful about assumptions of ease in areas that you have not previously been involved in the production of.  Again, Nothing is a simple as it seems.  Everyone's job has complexities - if you don't know what they do, that does not mean they are not doing anything - it means YOU don't know what they should do or how difficult it might be.

7.  You are only as good as the least effective member of your team.  Remember - you are part of that team.  You depend on them, but they also depend on you.  Very grateful right now to have such a great team of people helping get the dream off the ground!

It was a great week.  It was a productive week.  I love all the new things I am able to learn more about and I am really enjoying seeing the evolution of the plan.

CEO of a Startup