Leaving Independent IP

As of September 1st, I will no longer be working as a full-time employee of Independent IP. I will still be involved in an advisory role.

The last three years have been a wild roller coaster ride and I am incredibly proud at the things we achieved together.

I stood at the cradle of little Fuga and saw it grow. I saw it take its first little steps by delivering content to webshops. I smugly noticed how the little kid outran all competing products, gained lots of compliments all around and was generally hailed as THE digital delivery solution for music. I watched the company change to accomodate the maturing of Fuga.

It is a kind of magic to nurture and grow a product like this. Very intensive, but very rewarding, more so if customers are happy and benefits are visible to everyone.

Professionally, when I started out on this venture I had lots of ideas how I wanted to develop the software, such as:

• test-driven development
  
• high test coverage
  
• development team works from home
  
• demanding recruitment criteria
  
• weekly release cycle (short sprints)
  
• clear split development / operations
  
• component-based design
  
• issue tracking
  
• integration / staging / production (similar to OTAP)
  
• proper testdata on staging
  
• testing by developers on integration
  
• testing by non-developers on staging
  
• external code reviews (I heartily recommend Springsource)
  
• process for functional requirements
  
• open culture where process and results can be challenged
  
• topic complexity; easy=text, medium=voice, hard=face-to-face
  
• utilize the strengths of team members to knit a tight team
  
• wrong people off the bus, right people on the bus (read Good to Great if you did not already!)
  

It is good to see that most of these ideas contributed to the success of the product. The value of all of these ideas, however, pales in the shadow of the wonderful and talented people whom I had the honor to serve with. It is a rare occasion to participate in a team that makes you feel like you can take on the world and yet that was exactly what I felt. For all of you, please allow Henry V to put into words my feelings:

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Fare well, my friends.