Bruce Eckel is Reinventing Business

Bruce Eckel just announced a change in his professional focus. He is going to investigate and try to find answers on how business can be done differently. The title of his new blog and moderated discussion list is "Reinventing Business" and its tag line is "What if Everyone Loved their Work?" What indeed?

Although Bruce has only posted one article, Introduction, I love the blog already. He is a no BS kind of guy who thinks differently and has always challenged my own thinking. To be honest I've been kind of bored with other efforts he has lead. He runs the discussion group that spawned the book I edited, "97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know". I'm grateful for that but the actual discussions are of no interest to me. The 97 Things book was my parting fair-well to software architecture as a profession. I'm off developing user interface experiences now. Focused on Natural User Interfaces which is only a good name for saying "Cool Stuff!".

When I read his new blog on Reinventing Business it resonated with me at a level that made me immediately need to blog - despite being in severe crunch mode this weekend. I've been doing business differently this year than in the past. I've subcontracted out all the work I need help with to people who understand that they are working on just that one thing and when they are done, they are free to go off and do something else. Call it Free Agency. I call it fun. It works.

Here are some examples of people I've hired over the course of the past few months. The first person I started subcontracting this year was Stefanie Noe an amazing graphic artist and UI designer. Stefanie is a free agent. She can leave the project at any time - I think she's considered a couple times - and I won't hold a grudge. I pay her for exactly what she produces. She works at home - I didn't even know what state she was in until recently and that's after working together for a couple of months! You can find this free agent at NimbusBlue.com.

The second person I hired was Ken Krutsch a 20 year veteran of experience and UI design and a friend from back in high school. Ken came into the project and did exactly one thing: He redesigned the user experience. The result is a UI that is so easy and intuitive to use it's just plain invisible. Ken continues to work with me and Stefanie on design of the UI as we move toward our first Alpha in about a week.

The third person I hired was Stuart Williams of Pervasent. I've been working on an iPad eReader for a client and I had some issues with downloading and multi-threading. Pervasent is known for their deep skills, so I called them up and said, "Do you have someone who can help me with background threads and downloading?" Three days later Stuart Williams of Pervasent was solving my problems and providing me with guidance. I had spent 3 days stuck on a complex threading problem and helped he solve it in under 3 hours.

The fourth person I hired is Tim Glenn an experienced iPhone developer. Tim is actually Stefanies husband and partner at NimbusBlue. He just started working with me today in fact. He's putting the UI together that Stefanie, Ken and I developed. He's fast! I was so worried because I was overwhelmed with having to do the plumbing of the application and the UI that when I found out he was available I hired him instantly as a subcontractor. Tim is going to help me get the alpha ready for the client and probably the beta and maybe even the final shipped application too, but he doesn't have to stay for that unless he wants to.

In fact, while everyone I'm working with is top notch, none of them have to stay on the project. We use source code repositories so they can leave the project at any time and I should be able to find someone to pick up where they left off. That person may or may not be as talented, and hiring a new subcontractor when you already had a really great one is a pain, but its not the end of the World. I can find people because their are plenty of talented free agents out there. Having said that, let me tell you that the folks I've listed are all so good I can't imagine working with anyone else. I love them and their work and I hope that as long as they are happy with me and I'm happy with them, and we all love the work, we'll keep working together. But in the end we are all free agents and that's a system that just works. I'll take this approach over a traditional corporation any day.