Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

This may be the first time you have read an article posted on our “Behind the Scenes” blog – or you might be a regular reader.

Whatever is the case for you, you will have formed some kind of impression about our company, and the type of B2B software services we provide.

As such, we’d like you to tell us what you think of us, as this will help us to continue to develop and enhance the services we provide – now into our 2nd decade of service.

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On Friday 5th March, we began a process of brainstorming about what it means (to us) to share our primary value of “Customers First”.

The following Friday (March 12th) we continued this process – to talk about our 2nd Core Value – that being a Relentless Drive^{(see note)} to learn more, to improve and grow as people – and hence to deliver ever-increasing value to our customers.

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Stephen sent me a link to this presentation by Geoffrey Moore at the “Business of Software” conference in 2009.   Thanks for that!

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We were going to attend this conference in 2009, but it clashed with the commencement of our Autopsy 2 process, and as such we had to give it a miss. Geoffrey Moore is a well-known author that I was particularly looking forward to hearing present, and I am happy that this teaser was made available online. Perhaps the 2010 conference (October 4th, 5th and 6th in Boston)?!

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This is the 2nd post on the topic.

The first post was made almost 2 months ago, and remained incomplete whilst I focused on higher priority issues (such as the recruitment of our GM DDD WCW).  In the meantime, we have had several conversations internally with respect to the implicit responsibilities of the position.

This post is intended to be a starting point, from which further refinement can be made once our GM DDD WCW has started with the company.

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I was speaking with someone today, who stated that they had inferred I would have a tattoo on my butt reading “Agile Rocks” (or something like that).

I do apologise for any misconception caused by posts such as this one.

I also apologise for the images inadvertently conjured up by the first sentence.

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(Excuse the sad pun)

This week we went out for lunch with one of the guys in the office who was celebrating his birthday.  One of the small things we do in the company to celebrate the uniqueness of every individual (that’s a tick – thanks for suggesting it those years ago, Ricky).

Anyhow, as we were waiting for our meals to arrive in the local steakhouse and conversation drifted to some of the more detailed technical nature of software development, my mind began to wander (yeah, that’s a cross) and I pulled out the latest copy of INC, which had just arrived in the mail and started to browse (yeah, another cross)!

An article in the magazine caught my attention, as it provided a few pointers about the workplace culture that we are working to cultivate internally.

Given that I have been asked a couple of times this week by candidates for our Chief Software Engineer position about our culture (how it is now, and how we want to evolve it, over time), I thought it would be useful posting this (though I know it does not absolve me of the crosses above). read more »

Perhaps a year ago, we bought our first copy of this book. One of the guys read it then, and highly recommended that we get a number of copies such that everyone in the office could read (alas no book review online then).

We did this, and a number of others did read the book – giving similarly rave reviews.  Coincidentally, they commenced a software development project (our “UPIP project”) with the “lessons learnt” still fresh in their mind.

However, the wheels fell off – leading to the UPIP project being canned indefinitely.  This was one of the major triggers for me to instigate our Autopsy 1 process, which continued into the Autopsy 2 process, my stipulation that we were going to go Agile, and the commencement of our process for looking for our Chief Software Engineer.

Note that there is plenty more we can learn from the many things that went wrong in the UPIP project – with a view to improving ourselves for the future.  When I find the time, I will post a more detailed retrospective as a restricted post, just about that project.

Don’t get me wrong – I understand that we had significant shortcomings that were the root cause of our calamity.  For instance, it became clear through this process that our team collectively had no major project management experience – hence a read of a single book (no matter how good) was not going to make them competent (especially with respect to a complex project).

However I did wonder how a project to could go significantly off the rails (and in the early stages) so soon after a number of people had read, and raved about, this book. read more »