SME Software Development
May 15, 2026
How to Tell If Your Software Development Is Off Track
Five signs your software development has problems, and what you can do about it as a leader without a technical background.
Marcus HeldSME Software Development
July 23, 2024
What if...? CrowdStrike
Hi, What if…? I must have read this sentence hundreds of times in the last few days regarding the CrowdStrike outage. Everywhere, people are looking for someone to blame. And that is wrong! We are witnessing the classic blame game. It is more important to find someone to blame than to solve the problem. This only fosters fear. An employee of Tom Watson, the founder of IBM, once made a mistake that cost the company ten million dollars. When the man was called into Watson’s office, he was sure he would be fired. To his surprise, his boss said: “Fire you? Not after I just invested ten million dollars in your education.” ~ The Winners Laws by Bodo Schäfer (translated from German edition)
SME Software Development
June 4, 2024
Customer Support
Hi, When “the customer” calls, very different things happen in various companies You probably know this from your everyday life. You have a question about your mobile contract. So, you call the hotline. A computer answers. You press 1… then 3… then refuse to have the call recorded for training purposes, and finally, you end up with some employee in a call center. You explain your problem. The employee has a script in front of them and goes through it with you from top to bottom. If they’re good, you don’t even notice it.
SME Software Development
May 27, 2024
4 Weeks Incident
Hi, What happens when software rots over decades? More than I can list. The software has accumulated so many problems that they can’t be described compactly. The monitoring is incomplete The deployment is cumbersome The infrastructure is heterogeneous Libraries are outdated Knowledge has been lost Background and context for decisions are missing The code is tangled … and has high coupling So far, this is not surprising. Maybe you have worked on such a project yourself.
SME Software Development
February 23, 2024
Challenges in SMEs Are Similar
Hi, Currently, I am writing a new article for Golem.de. In this context, I have been reflecting on the similarities in software development in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The German Federal Statistical Office defines SMEs as companies with 10 to 250 employees and a turnover of less than 50 million euros. At first glance, this range seems very wide. Intuitively, one would expect the challenges and solutions to be very different as a result. And to some extent, this is true. However, this does not align with my experience over the last 15 years, during which I have worked exclusively in SMEs. On closer inspection, it turns out that the number of developers is not that different after all.