Get it right from the Start!

“adventure [ad-ven-cher], v. 1. to risk or hazard. 2. to take the chance of; dare.”

It is rare that a venture is all venture, it includes some adventure, granted. Limiting the adventure part of this equation is essentially what these methodologies are about. My experiences, good and bad, have led me here. My teaching experiences will drive how I explain the “who, what, why, when and how” of starting a business.

The last company I started and sold was a leading Information Technology methodology company, Structured Solutions, Inc. (SSI) popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. SSI’s customers were some of the best of the Fortune-500. SSI developed the best-of-breed and probably the most used software development methodologies of the times, many still in use today. The driving force behind those methodologies was to bring an engineering approach to developing large computer systems. Systems development in the pre-methodology period was far from being a well-behaved event, far from being a science, not exactly “systems engineering” as we know of it today.