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Last week I asked why you thought this shower fitting was so bad: You gave a number of answers, some close* and some not so close (it really is a shower, not a chocolate dispenser, Mr Flibble). Most of you guessed how the shower works. The larger dial, mounted nearest the well, controls the flow [...]
For me, one of the most important things in a conference is the venue. I think this is beyond a hygiene factor – it’s not sufficient not to have a bad venue; a good venue really makes a difference. So I’m off to Boston this weekend to look at venues for Business of Software 2008. [...]
I first read Donald Norman’s the Design of Everyday Things a decade or so ago. It made me realise that whenever I can’t use a kettle or a telephone or even a door it’s not my fault. Somebody, somewhere, made a poor design decision. It’s never user error, always designer error. Ever since then I’ve [...]
Giotto was a Florentine painter, architect and sculpture of immense talent. As the artist who first broke free from the constraints of medieval and byzantine art, he’s considered the first genius of the Italian renaissance. At the start of the 14th century, word of Giotto’s mastery reached Pope Benedict XI in Lombardy. The Pope sent [...]
Last week I argued that great software companies are like horses: although we might struggle to define them, we all know them when we see them. I also claimed that we can define them in terms of their family relationships with other great software companies and not by the characteristics that they have. I then [...]
I’m reading "The Toyota Way" by Jeffrey K. Liker at the moment. Although it’s nominally about the car company, I’ve yet to find anything I disagree with and that can’t be applied to running a software company. One salient point is Toyota’s long term philosophy. They make decisions based not on short-term financial benefits, but [...]
In my previous post, I asked – and tried to answer – the question "What does it mean to be one of the world’s great software companies?". As part of my answer I listed some companies who I think are among the world’s great software companies, and those who aren’t. Here’s my list: My list [...]
At Red Gate it
The end of the 19th century was a golden era of exploration and dumb-ass, ill-starred expeditions. That of Salomon August Andr
There were many reasons that Simon and I started Red Gate Software back in 1999. One of the reasons was that I was less than happy in my then job. I’ve heard this from a few people who’ve set up companies: they feel they can’t do well in their current environment, or possibly any existing [...]