In Part 1 of this blog, I talked about two main development processes that software developers use, waterfall and agile. In this post, I’d like to examine how those processes are relevant in business process, not just in software development.

I have the privilege of working closely with a number of our software vendors to help them improve their products both for our use and for their entire client base. As I have worked with them, I’ve discovered that there are some amazing correlations between software development processes and business development processes. Those similarities have changed the way I look at development, in many areas.

There is a lot of talk in our society about finding balance in life. For me, sometimes, it seems like there is so much pressure and focus on this topic that I have to have everything in perfect balance every moment of every day and, if I don’t, I’m failing. Often, this perceived failure causes me to end up even more out of balance as I try to drop what I’m doing to fix the imbalance which, inherently, causes more imbalance. If you’ve ever seen the I Love Lucy episode where they are working on the factory line, yep, sometimes it feels just like that!

Over the past few weeks, I have personally witnessed some incredibly horrible cases of customer service and some amazing cases as well. While tremendous amounts of money are spent on marketing to acquire new clients, often, existing clients are taken for granted or overlooked. It amazes me to see how much people, and companies, often ignore basic customer service and undervalue its benefit.

Thinking Outside of the Box is a phrase often used but rarely done. It can be easy for us to say we want to or are thinking outside of the box but the very fact that we are still thinking about the box indicates that we are still constrained by that box. The idea, however, remains important as the practice of out of the box thinking is critical to the health and growth of individuals and organizations. If we don’t figure out how to master thinking outside of the box, how can we have breakthrough innovations and ideas?

In the last blog, I walked through things we have learned to be able to Write Great SOPs. This is great but it falls short if all you do is stop there. Businesses, people and processes should be continuously maturing and improving. The difficulty is in figuring out how to get this to happen in a consistent fashion.

This week, I am headed to an IT conference in Orlando where I will have the privilege of presenting on how we have built our business and culture with a 100% remote workforce. Advancements in technology allow people to work remotely, often with similar access to IT resources as they have when they are onsite. However, a remote environment requires some paradigm shifts and maturity, both in the team and the leadership, to work effectively.

Earlier this year, in a blog titled Here’s to the Crazy Ones, I talked about how we approach failure and our attitude towards it. Recently, I came across a video from Simon Sinek where he is talking about how you train your mind to perform under pressure and I wanted to share that.

Over the years, we have struggled to find and hire good people. A very real part of this struggle was that we lacked the maturity or awareness to know what we really needed and the discipline to hold to what we knew we needed and choose to not hire people that weren’t a good fit. Now that we have a solid grasp on the kinds of people that are a good fit for us, another part of that struggle is emerging…finding those kinds of people.

Back in June, I talked about how we celebrate failure in Here’s to the Crazy Ones. But, is changing our perspective on failure enough? Can we survive, emotionally or practically, in a state of constant failure?