Somewhere along the way, “minimum viable product” stopped being a meaningful concept and drifted into product lore. It’s a term everyone knows and yet almost no one can define the same way. Saeed Khan went so far as to argue the term (and other Product terms) has lost so much shared meaning it’s worth retiring. […]

Over our seven year history, we have evolved our software development and QA processes significantly. We started app development knowing mobile was the future, but back then our QA process was decidedly retro. We manually tested our software on each device, plodding through the same test scripts over and over in iOS on a host […]

  As a strategist I’ve written a lot about Jobs-To-Be-Done. So if you’re reading this post you already know that customers don’t want the drills – they want the holes in the walls. But understanding the value in Jobs-To-Be-Done and App Definition Statements (ADS) and implementing these critical elements into your Mobile App development process […]

How Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) can help solve the fundamental problem of software.  Translating language – an example In true BDD fashion, let’s start with an example: Carlos is fluent in Spanish, but does not speak English. Mary is an English speaker who knows little to no Spanish. However, Carlos and Mary wish to communicate. What’s […]

How to perfect gamification in your app.   Gamification is one of the most popular buzzwords when discussing mobile app strategy. So what does it mean? Gamification is the application of game mechanics to non-game contexts, encouraging action and rewarding accomplishments. Over the past few years, more and more product owners have come to me asking […]

Three pitfalls of self-delusion and how humility, flexibility, and knowledge can save your mobile app development project. 1. Multitasking The term “multitasking” came from my world of computer science. Doing multiple things at once can elusively make us feel as though we are multiplying our productivity, but the actual truth is pretty damning. While you […]

Choosing the right level of concrete vs. abstract will help you derive the most value from Cucumber and BDD. I recently attended an amazing Cucumber workshop. During the training Aslak Hellesoy, the inventor of Cucumber, used a simple exercise to encourage people to make their examples more concrete. He would ask for someone to name […]

Mobile apps are incredibly intentional media. Users must search the app store for your app, download it, open it and then return to it. If you’re asking a user to go through all that effort, there has to be a compelling reason for them to do so. If your app doesn’t have a clear goal, […]