Robert on Software Development

Where has the time gone? My last entry was on July 29, 2009. To say that a lot has happened since then would be a grand understatement. The short version is that I left the world of SharePoint consulting and accepted a full-time position at a software company here in Des Moines. As the Director of Product Development, I serve in multiple roles. Product architect. Project manager. Software developer. Tech lead. You name it, I do it. I have a team of eight people, including developers, QA, and documentation.

This job was a dream come true for me and to be honest, accepting it turned my life upside down. I canceled my plans to move to Dallas and start my SharePoint consulting firm. I canceled my SharePoint certification tests. I ceased all work on Flipism. And most surprisingly, I bought a house. I decided to fully invest in this new opportunity, and I accepted all the risks that came along with it.

We are developing the application in C# 3.0 and WPF. I decided to build the application in WPF because I believed it offered us the most flexible platform for future opportunities and growth. It was a risky gambit, partly because nobody on the team knew WPF. I had a limited exposure to it from my days at HP, but I was hardly an expert. But my team pulled it together and we took the plunge into WPF. While I acknowledge that developing the product in WinForms would be “easier,” I don’t think that it would make our product better. WPF has given us many gains, and the architecture lends itself well to our future plans.

I’ve learned so much since I started on August 31. While the company has been around for several years, my team is brand-new, and the product we’re working on is brand-new. We’ve all had to learn how to work together. We come from different corporate cultures and technical backgrounds. I’ve had to draw on the entirety of my experience in order to lead this team, but I love it. Love love love it. I feel like every decision I’ve ever made in my life and career has led to this. It’s hard for me to feel regret about bad choices I made when I was younger because I might not have been led to where I am now. I know that sounds corny, but it’s true.

Obviously I have a lot of hope about the future and the change it brings. And to that point, the focus of this blog has to change as well. Pretty soon I will relaunch this blog to focus on my experiences as a leader in a software company. Hopefully what I share with you here will be of interest, or at least entertainment value.

So tell me: do you want to come along for the ride of your life?