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How to Tell If Your Software Development Is Off Track

May 15, 2026

Latest Posts

SME Software Development December 14, 2023

Quickdraw Hero

Hi, In the team of one of my clients, I earned the nickname “Quickdraw Hero” (My surname “Held” translates to hero in english 😉) Because I shoot so fast. I gained this reputation from the team rather quickly. At that time, it was meant somewhat derogatorily. The team was not accustomed to my pace. They had gotten comfortable. The software has been in development for more than 10 years. And over time, substantial technical debt had accumulated. It was a creeping process.

Marcus Held

SME Software Development December 1, 2023

Legacy Is Sexy

Hi, Unpopular Opinion Warning: Legacy is Sexy! To be honest - I didn’t always see it that way. You probably felt similar. My first (big) professional project was a legacy application It wasn’t actually that old. If I remember correctly, it wasn’t even a decade old. But it felt much older. This was mainly due to the many inexperienced developers who worked on the application. I was green behind the ears as well. The central architectural pattern: The God Class

Marcus Held

SME Software Development November 27, 2023

How a Release Failed

Hi, After 9 hours, the decision was clear: We had to roll back. The first release in almost 1.5 years had failed. And it was going so well. The meticulous preparation of the past weeks had paid off. Everything was going according to plan. The necessary changes to the VMs went as expected. The major migration was successfully completed after one hour of runtime. The new content files were successfully deployed with the new system. The new CD pipeline ran for the first time on production – and it was successful.

Marcus Held

SME Software Development November 23, 2023

I ❤️ Releases

Hi, After almost two years without a release, this Saturday marks the big day. One of my clients hasn’t released for two years - incredible 🤯 Why? There are many reasons. The team got entangled in complexity. Significant (and necessary) changes were made. But these led to numerous side effects. And the goal was to do everything “right.” So, development continued. With one topic completed, five new ones emerged. Breaking out of this cycle was challenging. When I joined the team in July, we decided: We need to break this vicious cycle.

Marcus Held

SME Software Development November 9, 2023

Panic

Hi, Nervousness sliced through the room. I saw it in the eyes of all attendees. It was supposed to be just a routine meeting. Once a week, the development team meets with the admins to discuss current topics. This meeting has been held for years. Same time, same people, (almost) the same topics. But something was different this time. A new colleague participated for the first time. An external. We brought him in to work on “DevOps”. Mainly automation. CI/CD, provisioning, tooling, compile-time optimizations. Everything that improves the developer experience.

Marcus Held