OPRETO BLOG

How to Start New Agile Software Projects: Business Domain Discovery

4 minute read

How do you help someone solve a problem if you don’t speak the same language? You learn their language and teach them a bit of yours. Without a shared language, you won’t understand the problem, and your solution may not end up being a fit. You are endangering the entire project. Read on to find out how I establish a shared language with new clients. This post is part of a series. Check out the other posts in How to Start New Agile Software Projects. As an Agile Software Architect and a startup founder, I am one of the first to develop new client relationships and projects. When the client starts working with us, I have to discover enough about the project to solve their problem as quickly and efficiently as possible. Motivation The Domain of the project encompasses the entire problem space. It usually consists of a set of processes, an ecosystem, and a set of users of the system. Users or stakeholders that have the highest level of knowledge of the domain are called Domain Expe...

The Secret Superpower of Productivity: Just Get Started

Alan P. Laudicina

President, Opreto

1 minute read

You’ve come up with a goal, broken it down into achievable tasks, input everything into your project management tool… and then spent the next four weeks rescheduling the first task. You know exactly what needs to be done but, for some reason, you can’t seem to get started. Sound familiar? The truth is, while having a good plan is critical, a project won’t get off the ground until you sit down and actually start working on it. And yet, so many of us find it difficult to take that first step. Why is that? There are a number of reasons why we might procrastinate on starting a project. Maybe we’re perfectionists and we’re suffering from analysis paralysis. Perhaps we’re afraid of failure and we don’t want to risk looking like a fool. Or maybe we’re just plain old lazy and the thought of starting seems like too much work. The fix is simple: just get started. Go to your To Do list and pick the easiest task, something you know you can complete quickly and easily. And then just get s...