Having a long term plan helps measure progress towards your goals. I’ve used a simple spreadsheet for two years now to track my annual business goals and it’s helped me grow and accomplish things I never thought I could do. I was planning my 2010 goals and thought I would share the spreadsheet so it [...]
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Answering My Own Contractor Questions
In a previous post I talked about some of the common questions I ask contractors in order to understand who they are and what kind of work they enjoy. I thought it would be a good idea to post my own answers here, so you can get an idea about who I am and how [...]
Grasshopper Government
A common idea shared by a lot of businesses is that working on government projects is slow and burdensome. One of my contacts in a national government emailed me with the following quote: It’s not true that things happen slowly in government. Rather, things happen quickly but very infrequently. Our mascot should be the frog [...]
Expanding My Services
After a bunch of planning, I’m adding new services to Little Stream Software for Redmine. I’ve already done these informally for clients but now they’re available separately from my Custom Software Development. System Architecture Blueprints Every project needs planning. Waterfall calls this the Requirements and Design stage. Agile calls this Iteration 0 and Iteration Planning. [...]
New Contractor Questions
I talk to a lot of people online, some of them want to help me or work with me as a contractor. Over the past year, I’ve assembled a set of questions I ask them in order to get a better idea of them and the kind of work they do. I’ve found their answers [...]
How to bring in new sales in slow times
I’ve been asked a lot about how to keep bringing in sales through a recession and slow periods. I’ve been hesitant to share what worked for me because I felt it was overly simple, but I’ve come to realize that even something simple takes a lot of hard work to execute. Pick a Niche And [...]
The Great Unveil
Welcome to the great unveiling of Little Stream Software’s company blog. I’ll be writing about running a one person Ruby on Rails consultancy and the mistakes I’ve made while doing it (and boy, are there a lot of mistakes). I’m going to cover common topics like customers, pricing, and contractors as well as topics specific [...]
Brochure web site
Brochure web site For many small businesses a simple website, called a “brochure web site”, can be a great investment at a low cost. A brochure web site is very similar to the printed brochures that many companies create, however the web site is placed online so anyone with Internet access can view it. Typically [...]
5 ways to improve the usability of your website
It is easy to get a web site online now, but businesses have to compete even harder for the attention of visitors. One of the best ways to gain an competitive advantage is to improve your web site’s usability. Here are a few easy ways: 1. Use a standard layout One of the best ways [...]
