Oh, definitely. While Trenza (the company I went to straight after LG) is my standard example of "doomed bubble company", complete with Aeron chairs and complete lack of consensus what we were building, Buzzpad (which I joined after Trenza imploded) is my example of "the one that should have worked". Tightly managed at all levels, strong focus, and a brilliant technology stack from bottom to top:
-- A low-level peer-to-peer database engine, on which was built: -- An extraordinarily deep Windows library that let us hook into Microsoft's products, on which was built: -- A co-browsing system that let two people truly share a browsing session (which *still* hasn't been matched by anyone), on which was built: -- A business plan to use this for customer service on high-value sites (initial target being mortgage applications).
It was also the company where I picked up my passion for Agile Development. Buzzpad was in many ways the reaction to LG -- most of us were LG refugees, and shared a mantra of "never again". (LG was a great place, but project management wasn't its forte.)
We'd started playing with Extreme Programming in the latter days of LG, when the concept was still *very* new. Right around when I joined Buzzpad -- around when the company moved to Wellesley -- Tom decided to start exploring XP more seriously. We gradually added the disciplines of XP, one at a time, feeling out how they worked and seeing how they synergized. By the end, we were doing most of XP, and it was by *far* the most smoothly-run project I'd ever been involved with.
(Elsethread, I remarked on being startled about the news that Tom Leonard's been laid off from Valve. Buzzpad's the main reason why: more than any other job, it formed my idea of how you do software engineering *right*, and Tom was a central part of that.)
Anyway, by any measure Buzzpad *should* have succeeded, and would have done so if miserable timing hadn't derailed us at the last minute. I was all set to wind up with *quite* a good payoff, when the nuclear winter suddenly derailed everything. I still mourn the company and the tech: more than any other project I've been on, this one deserved to succeed. It's my lesson that, even if you do *everything* right, bad luck can still screw you over...
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Date: 2013-02-15 02:28 pm (UTC)-- A low-level peer-to-peer database engine, on which was built:
-- An extraordinarily deep Windows library that let us hook into Microsoft's products, on which was built:
-- A co-browsing system that let two people truly share a browsing session (which *still* hasn't been matched by anyone), on which was built:
-- A business plan to use this for customer service on high-value sites (initial target being mortgage applications).
It was also the company where I picked up my passion for Agile Development. Buzzpad was in many ways the reaction to LG -- most of us were LG refugees, and shared a mantra of "never again". (LG was a great place, but project management wasn't its forte.)
We'd started playing with Extreme Programming in the latter days of LG, when the concept was still *very* new. Right around when I joined Buzzpad -- around when the company moved to Wellesley -- Tom decided to start exploring XP more seriously. We gradually added the disciplines of XP, one at a time, feeling out how they worked and seeing how they synergized. By the end, we were doing most of XP, and it was by *far* the most smoothly-run project I'd ever been involved with.
(Elsethread, I remarked on being startled about the news that Tom Leonard's been laid off from Valve. Buzzpad's the main reason why: more than any other job, it formed my idea of how you do software engineering *right*, and Tom was a central part of that.)
Anyway, by any measure Buzzpad *should* have succeeded, and would have done so if miserable timing hadn't derailed us at the last minute. I was all set to wind up with *quite* a good payoff, when the nuclear winter suddenly derailed everything. I still mourn the company and the tech: more than any other project I've been on, this one deserved to succeed. It's my lesson that, even if you do *everything* right, bad luck can still screw you over...