High-performance software teams have never been more important, yet so challenging to build.
Building cross-functional teams is hard.
Success hinges on having teams people with the right mix of skills and experience to quickly build and deliver products that customers value. And yet businesses of all sizes struggle to find, engage and retain talented people.
Moving quickly is hard.
Speed wins. Whether it's finding product-market fit, adapting to changing requirements or testing new ideas, the ability for a business to move quickly greatly increases the chances of success. But dialling-in the right process isn't easy.
Scaling is hard.
It can be challenging to know where to look for the problem when a complex mix of people, processes and tools aren't reliably delivering results, not delivering results fast enough — or perhaps not delivering results at all.
Choosing the right tools is hard.
There are more frameworks, programming languages and platforms available than ever before. But how to select the right ones? Managing technical complexity while keep options open is key for high-performance teams.
Building high-quality products is hard.
The right amount of test automation allows teams to move quickly with the confidence that they won't introduce poor experiences for customers. Too much test automation can slow down teams. Too little test automation allows bugs to slip through.
Cloud infrastructure is hard.
Site reliability automation gives developers productive workflows while providing customers with a delightful experience. There can be a lot of ground to cover. Where to start?
Something needs to change.
Struggling to ship software products without the right people, processes and tools costs you time and money — both of which are in short supply as startups work to prove their ideas, scale-ups work to land more customers, and established companies work to increase innovation. Meanwhile, your runway is getting shorter, your customers are churning, or the competition is innovating faster than you can.
Modern software development is fast-paced, highly-collaborative and iterative. Usually, the right solution isn't immediately obvious or intuitive. It takes time to know what works ‐ often 10 years to develop great software development skills, and then another 10 years to develop great management and leadership skills.
Since the majority of software developers joined the field in the last 10 years, it's very likely that the software developers and managers in your business don't have enough experience to successfully dial-in the right mix of people, processes and tools to enable high-performance teams and deliver great results.
Experience matters when implementing transformative change.
I'm Jeremy Bower. When I started my career as a software developer, I gravitated towards startups so that I could move quickly with others to invent the future. While we had significant successes (two of the startups were acquired: Fortiva by Proofpoint in 2008, and Viigo by BlackBerry in 2010), there were also challenges. Typically, it was because we didn't have the right mix of skills on the team, didn't have an effective way or working together, or we weren't focused on what mattered most.
To help teams move through these challenges, I shifted from individual contributor to leadership roles. For over a decade, I focused on learning about the people, process and tools that enable software teams to perform at a high level.
Today, I work with companies to 10x the business impact of their software teams. Building high-performance software teams that delight customers by quickly and reliably shipping quality products doesn't just happen. They're the result of applying decades of experience and skill to attract, engage and retain the right people, create an amazing culture of collaboration, and use the right tools for the mission.
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Experience leading large software development groups responsible for systems that generate nearly $1 billion in revenue
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10+ years of software development experience building web, mobile and cloud applications
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10+ years of technology leadership experience
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3000+ hours of agile leadership experience
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Degrees in computer science and business
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Certificates in agile leadership, agile product management, cloud computing, machine learning, and advanced cybersecurity
Ahmad Nassri
Chief Technology Officer
"Jeremy has long been a role model I look up to as a strong technical manager, empathetic people leader, and a clear strategic thinker. Jeremy's attention to detail and keen sense of user experience is what sets his work apart, his results oriented approach allowed him to retain, foster, and grow teams of future leaders. An industry veteran, Jeremy's insight and experience in scaling product organizations and technical teams from zero to a hundred is a deep well of knowledge to draw on, and one I've come to rely on over the years."
Gene Sobolev
VP Data Science
"Jeremy is an exceptional technical leader and working with him was a great experience. He is focused and methodical with deep strategic and tactical skills. Jeremy's positive and results oriented attitude allowed him to lead an exceptionally productive team as we collaborated on an innovative fintech app with intrinsically many unknowns. It was a pleasure working with Jeremy and I picked up a lot of organizational and leadership skills from him. I hope we get to work together in the future."
John Rose
Senior Software Engineer
"Jeremy is that rare combination: one who is talented at the craft of software development itself, as well as the art of leading software developers. You don't often get to work with one who's quite so good at either of those things, much less both."
Let's work together to 10x the business impact of your software teams.
Wait, is 10x even possible? Yes! The important detail to remember is that we're talking about ten times the business impact, not necessarily ten times the output. While it is very likely that overall output will increase, what gets done matters just as much as how much gets done.
Here's a very common example of a startup that accumulated a lot of technical debt while searching for product-market fit, is struggling with competing priorities, and teams have processes and workflows that don't enable them to do their best work quickly and reliably.
Using a data-informed approach, we will start by estimating the relative performance of your software teams. During an initial 45min call, you will get a complimentary report that compares your teams with the behaviours of high-performance teams.
Next, we will work together in four phases to inspire your teams, identify opportunities to multiply their impact on the business, implement transformative change, and support your teams as they continue to level-up.
Phase 1: Inspire your teams to 10x their business impact
Over the course of a day, you will get a 50 minute live presentation to inspire your teams that implementing change to 10x their business impact is not only necessary, but realistic. Plus 60 minutes of facilitated breakout sessions with team members to brainstorm ways that they can 10x their business impact. The presentation and breakout sessions can either be delivered virtually (ideal for fully remote or hybrid teams) or live at a company event.
Phase 2: Identify opportunities to increase business impact
Over several weeks, you will get a report outlining the current state of your software development group, identified opportunities to increase business impact, and a recommended roadmap to implement transformative change. The report is based on interviews with team members and business leaders, observing the team's culture of collaboration, and a survey of tools and technologies.
Phase 3: Implement transformative change with experienced leadership
In three month cycles, your teams will get experienced leadership to guide the implementation of transformative change. Solutions might include:
- Aligning the technology roadmap to support product and business strategy
- Developing a culture of collaboration using tools that support high-performance workflows for co-located, hybrid and remote teams
- Coaching individual team members so that they can level-up and support the business
- Improving the talent acquisition process to attract, engage and retain the right team members for your business
- Revising technical roles and levels so that team members have a clear career path and know how to best support their team and the business
After each solution is implemented, you will get a report comparing the new performance levels of each team with previously established baselines. The report will also include recommendations for next steps.
Phase 4: Support teams as they continue to implement transformative change
On average, it takes more than 2 months before a new behaviour becomes automatic — 66 days to be exact. In this engagement over 3 months, you will get ongoing support as teams establish new habits and continue to implement transformative change.
How would high-performance software teams change your business?
Let's get started!
I'll be in touch soon by email. Please be sure to check your spam folder just in case.
— Jeremy