Yes, I know that it is already the middle of February and that this post is long overdue. I also know that if I don’t take the time to write it now (when I have a few spare minutes of breathing room) then I never will and this initiative will die a fast death.

So here goes. As some of you may have read, I posted a list of the five objectives for my company for January, 2010. I am pleased to report that a lot of progress was made on each item, though some of them still aren’t in the “done” category.

1. Update and upgrade hosting environment. This is completed. Not only did we apply all relevant patches to the hosting environment, we also doubled the amount of member available on the dedicated hardware node that hosts our VPS instances at bodHost from 16gb to 32gb.
2. Updates to applications. This is about 60% done. We have moved to ckEditor (which I highly recommend), and changed how the application includes javascript files (which has improved performance dramatically). The removal of YUI completely from the application hasn’t been completed yet, but should be by the end of February.
3. Migration of websites to file share. This is completed. There are no longer any site files on the individual web servers, and they are all on a backed-up file server.
4. Enhancements to management software. I am pleased to report that this is about 60% done, but with everything else that was being worked on last month (and how it took a substantial amount of time to complete), it is still on the open item list.
5. Launch of public website. This is also still pending. Again, with the amount of time taken to get the other items done, it seems that the dentist’s kids will continue to have bad teeth for another month.

Overall, I am incredibly happy with the changes, and I have received very good feedback from our clients (which is the point, after all). Still, there are a lot of open items on that list. If I had to give us a grade for January, I would have to give us a B- or a C+. We will do better in February.

I cannot believe that 2009 is already over. It was a hell of year all around, complete with the ups (new clients and partnerships, solid new business stream, and great software enhancements) and the downs (family deaths, lack of days off and sleep, and one lost client) of a new company.

As I look back on it, one of the things I could have done better was to have a plan for our team. I have long been of the opinion that no plan survives first contact with reality, and so I have been playing pretty fast and loose with scheduling things. While I feel like that gives me the ability to make tactical changes quickly, it also means that a lot of things get overlooked and have to be made up later (for example, I have spent the last three days applying updates to our production servers).

With that in mind, I’m going to try to put together a monthly list of things that I would like to accomplish each month throughout 2010. While putting an item on this list doesn’t 100% guarantee it will be done, I will also have to post an entry at the beginning of the next month and it should be clear to everyone what was and wasn’t accomplished (ah, the power of shame). I hope that it will provide some guidance for us, and most importantly, some metrics that we can use to measure our progress.

1. Update and upgrade hosting environment. While part of this is already underway (with the server OS updates), we will also be investing heavily in hardware upgrades. This will primarily be focused on doubling the amount of memory allocated to the web servers in our hosting environment. The great part of this item is that, other than the OS updates, this will all be handled by our hosting company.
2. Updates to applications. Without going too heavily into the internal architecture of our products, there are a couple framework changes and a couple functional changes coming. First and foremost, the mishmash of Microsoft AJAX and YUI that we currently have will be going away in favor of a unified jquery script engine. That should provide both client-side performance improvements as well as making future enhancements easier. As part of that effort, we will also be getting rid of the YUI text editor and replacing it with the CKEditor. As far as the functional changes go, we will be adding anonymous surveys, more refined employment tracking, and possibly profile merging functionality. That last one should make our clients’ lives a whole lot easier when it comes to managing their membership info.
3. Migration of websites to file share. This one is pretty self explanatory, but let me clarify this one. Right now, we have web sites spread across five servers in our hosting environment, and the files for each of those sites are on the servers themselves. There are two issues with this. First, it makes moving a site from one server to another more laborious than it needs to be, as the files have to be copied over. Second, it complicates the backup strategy as there are currently 5 sources (and growing) instead of just one. As a way to fix both of these, we will be moving the sites to a centralized file share that will hold the files for all of the sites. This isn’t a very technical process, but it will take time. Additionally, a number of our clients are all on the same template. By centralizing the files, we can also make the functional template the literal template with just a different configuration file.
4. Enhancements to management software. Perhaps the thing I am most excited about are the features that will be added to the management software we use to maintain our hosting environment (both the servers themselves and the application installed on them). This will include improving the monitoring software, centralizing the bulk email communication, and centralization of the database and file system back-up strategy. This will all be coupled with the current contact and project management software, so at a glance we will be able to see who the client is, who the contacts are for that client, what projects are currently underway for them, what server(s) they are on, what urls are used for them, and and what tasks and deadlines are upcoming form them. What makes this most exciting is that this will lay the groundwork for the future work later in the first quarter that should make it possible for us to be able to set up a new client (domain registration, database, file system, templates, nameservers, backups, and bulk email) by filling out a simple form.
5. Launch of public website. One of the long standing open items that we have been working on is a revamp of our public website. While I know that the town shoe maker’s children are often barefoot, the fact that we still have a static html website has been something we have had to talk around in sales meetings. We have been working on it for months, and are very excited about the design and content. I will be sure to send out links to it once it is up.

Well, there you have it. As my father always says, this should keep me busy enough to stay out of trouble.

I honestly wasn’t going to do a 2009 retrospective. Really, I wasn’t. I tend to sit in my own head a few times during the year: the week before January 1st, the week before March 29th, and the week before July 1st. This year was no different. The downside to this reflection is that it tends to be almost always negative - I think almost exclusively about what wasn’t done right and what still needs to be done that I am dreading.

Then today, I read this blog post from my friend Keidra about risk and failure. In it, she expresses a desire to have more of a willingness to take risks and to accept failures as learning opportunities. She also speaks of the internalization of the emotion of failure, and how it can cascade from simple regret into shame and paralysis. Overall, it was a very thought provoking and personal piece.

Given my reflective and self deprecating mindset, it struck a particularly loud chord with me. 2009 has been a learning year (a rebuilding year, as the Cubs and Bears put it), and most of that learning has been as a direct result of risk and failure of one sort or another.

Attached to each of these lessons is some measure of shame, be it of the “I can’t believe that I didn’t know that” or the “I can’t believe I did that” nature. I once heard that shame can’t survive sunlight, and the easiest way to get past it is to tell on yourself to others. With that sentiment in mind, here are my top lessons of 2009.

1. Create a personal relationship with clients. If you are a person that they have to either pay to talk to or have to talk to when something is wrong, there will always be a negative connotation to your interaction with them.
2. Check your ego at the door. You may call yourself the president of the company, but the client doesn’t care if you are smarter in your field than they are. That’s why they are paying you in the first place. If a client complains about something you have done, the issue is always with you.
3. Don’t be afraid to say no to a client, so long as that isn’t the full answer. If you are going to tell a client that they are asking for a service you don’t yet provide, make sure you can tell them who does provide it, and then check up with them later to see how its working out.
4. Use contractors. Heavily. Running a business doesn’t mean doing all of the work, even for a small start-up company. The more tasks you can give to contractors, the more time you have available to work on more strategic items. At the same time, remember that the learning curve will always be steep with a new contractor.
5. Don’t forget that everything has a price, even services that are offered for free. If there is something that you can pay someone to do on a set time line, then chances are you should just pay them, rather than relying on free with an unknown time line.
6. Surrender the fantasy that your life will ever be easy. It may get better or worse at times, but even when it is at its best it still requires a level of effort beyond what you initially expect.
7. If you are drinking an entire 12-cup pot of coffee each morning between 9am and noon and you are having health problems, chances are the two are related.
8. If you want people to allow you to change so that you can be happy, you have to allow for changes in others that are for the same reason.
9. Stop gap solutions are fine, so long as they are just that and there is a plan for replacing them. The good may be the enemy of the best, but expediency often rules the day.
10. Reputation and integrity are everything, which means that investment clients can cost you more than the time and money spent on them.

I know, I know. Those are all pretty obvious points. Some are even things that a child would learn in some sort of school when they are four years old. I will most likely expand on all ten of these items for individual posts later, but to do that here would be a novella.

Like I said, 2009 has been a learning year.