Alex Ponomarev (Page 18)

29 Apr 2019 · 3 min read

Writing Good User Stories

Creating a user story is simple: first, you define a user role, an intended action, and a desired outcome. Then you arrange them in a sentence. And then…that’s it. Your user story is ready.

18 Feb 2019 · 4 min read

How to Estimate an Agile Project With User Stories

Estimating software projects is hard. Early on in the development process, you can’t precisely define the scope of a project. Because inevitably, the scope will change after development kicks off, since the team will have learned more about the project and its context by then.

18 Feb 2019 · 4 min read

Prioritizing User Stories in Agile Projects

Software projects are surrounded by a high level of uncertainty. Even if developers or a consultant gives you a project estimate, until development begins, you won’t know exactly what resources you need to implement the user stories that you’ve planned for your next release.

18 Feb 2019 · 4 min read

How to Market Your Product Before Launch

I know many people who’ve created software products using this process: First they generate an idea, then they validate it, build the product, and then launch it…after launch, they start marketing. It’s straightforward, and it seems workable.

18 Feb 2019 · 4 min read

Building Your Development Process Around GitHub

GitHub is a web-based hosting platform where you can host open-source projects and follow projects that you like and want to adopt. It uses Git, which is a distributed version-control system.

26 Jan 2019 · 4 min read

Setting up analytics for your application

Analytics are all about the visibility. Without proper data, you won’t know how your users interact with your app and if they are happy or not. You need analytics to get answers to basic questions.

24 Jan 2019 · 4 min read

Release management in agile project

Once you have set up multiple environments for your application, it’s important to set up the proper release management process. It means that you should have a well-defined set of steps.

23 Jan 2019 · 5 min read

Setting up multiple environments for your app

Continuous integration and testing of new features are at the heart of an agile software project. To implement them properly you need to set up environments for your app correctly.

3 Jan 2019 · 4 min read

Continous improvement and the feedback loop

You might think that once you kick off the development process, most of the work should be done by developers that you’ve hired. While that's true to some extent you still have to spend plenty of time road mapping, planning, and managing the process.

2 Jan 2019 · 4 min read

Managing the software project day to day

Compared to product management, project management is more tactical. It is as vital as keeping the strategic vision for your product. Even if your development team consists of only one person, you still need to make sure that all requirements are understood and deadlines are met.

1 Jan 2019 · 5 min read

Managing the product roadmap

Once you’ve completed the preparation steps and assembled your team, it’s time to start building your app. However, where do you start? In what order should you build everything that you’ve outlined in the spec document? To figure that out you need to create a roadmap.

31 Dec 2018 · 5 min read

Hiring remote developers to build your app

If you don’t know anything about programming then finding the right developer might be a problem. Most of the times you will try to use somebody from your network, but good developers are rarely available for work, so the chances are that everyone you know is busy already.

30 Dec 2018 · 5 min read

Why you need to create the spec document for your product

When I start talking about product specs, most people roll their eyes. A product spec is perceived as a large document that no one reads which takes forever to write.

24 Dec 2018 · 4 min read

Hiring a UI Designer for your app

You probably have many things to take care of, and your funds are somewhat limited. Why bother hiring a designer? Unfortunately, the expectations of users are very high these days. They're used to products built by big teams that have smooth animations and cutting-edge graphics.

20 Dec 2018 · 5 min read

Paper prototyping and wireframing

An essential step of gathering requirements before building a software product is visualizing your concepts and ideas. A visual representation of the UI will allow you to show how you think your users should achieve their goals.

19 Dec 2018 · 5 min read

Writing user stories for your app

Software requirements is a very fragile structure and can be easily destroyed by the misuse of a written language. That’s why most of the lengthy requirements specification documents fail miserably.

18 Dec 2018 · 5 min read

How to find out what you want to build

If you read The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank, you’re probably familiar with his idea of customer development. It’s entirely different from traditional product development approach used for decades.

17 Dec 2018 · 5 min read

How to build your app: Part IV

This is the fourth post in a series where I list steps involved to build your app, from idea to launch. Be sure to check other posts about interviewing customers