Michiel van der Meer - mvdm.io

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Michiel van der Meer

Effective .NET Web development for individuals and small teams

Effective .NET Web development for individuals and small teams

The challenge at my current employment is to get the most out of a small team and a relatively small budget. This essay is my vision on how to accomplish that. Background At the time of writing I'm the tech-lead of Jewel Software. Jewel specializes in management and operation software

The water cooler is a silly place

The water cooler is a silly place

After the lockdown restrictions from the COVID-19 crisis ended we, like every other company, discussed about going back into the office. One of the arguments that repeatedly came up in favor of going back to the office was that we needed the ‘water cooler conversations’ back. To the people who

Developers are not socially awkward introverts; here is how to understand us

Developers are not socially awkward introverts; here is how to understand us

Recently a well-accomplished Product Owner told me that he thought programmers were weird people. He thought of them as anti-social, extremely introverted and, dare I say it, akin to autistic. The main reasons he thought so were that his developers were wearing headphones all day, got annoyed when they were

What it takes to lead software development teams effectively

What it takes to lead software development teams effectively

Clarity and focus. Effective software development teams have a clear picture of their milestones, of what is expected of them, and of the way they work. After that they need to focus to make it all happen; meaning uninterrupted time to build the milestones you agreed on together. Milestones By

You can only make a first impression as often as you want

You can only make a first impression as often as you want

“You can only make a first impression once.” Can you? “First impressions are everything.” Are they? “If you don’t impress someone in the first 5 seconds you’ve lost them.” Really? I heard some form of those truisms when I suggested we present our not-yet-fully-finished product to some potential

You can't do agile without a customer

You can't do agile without a customer

I’ve worked on many projects during my career. Many of them eventually delivered high-quality products that were used by a good amount of customers. However, most of them went over budget, as is very common in the software development industry [forbes]. I can’t speak for all projects in

The unwritten rules of remote communication

The unwritten rules of remote communication

I’ve had a discussion at work recently about the ‘etiquette’ of communicating remotely. To my surprise, some people were unclear about the proper way of communicating; meaning when it is appropriate to call someone, or send an instant message, or type it up in an email. I was surprised

Agile bill of rights

Software Development

Agile bill of rights

I’m reading ‘Clean Agile’ by Robert C. Martin. On pages 56 and 57 he describes ‘The Bill of Rights’ as defined by Kent Beck, Ward Cunningham, and Ron Jefferies, among others. I wanted to record them here because I expect I’ll be referring to these often when interacting

Improving on the 'yearly disappointment' at work

Improving on the 'yearly disappointment' at work

At work, I’ve dubbed my yearly performance review the ‘yearly disappointment.’ It’s the time when my supervisor and I look back at the past year and review how much of my goals have been met. The supervisor then gives me a score between 1 and 10. Based on

List of fully-remote businesses

List of fully-remote businesses

Sourced from Twitter: https://twitter.com/chris_herd/status/1336427593864798210 * Deel - Payroll platform * Doist - Remote work tools * Gitlab - CI/CD platform * Zapier - App workflow automation * Github - Hosted Git repository and CI/CD * Modulz - User interface design tool * Remote - Payroll platform * Commsor - Community