Musings on business and technologyhttps://www.jameswarrick.com/https://www.jameswarrick.com/using-astro-to-build-corsos-help-site/https://www.jameswarrick.com/using-astro-to-build-corsos-help-site/We recently rebuilt our merchant-facing help and documentation site to make it easier to update, and easier to use. User-facing documentation is an important element of good sof...Sat, 26 Oct 2024 15:02:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/one-way-door-decisions/https://www.jameswarrick.com/one-way-door-decisions/In his 2015 shareholder letter, Jeff Bezos talks about two types of decisions - those that are best represented as one-way doors, and those that are more like two-way doors. Thi...Sat, 07 Sep 2024 15:59:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/corso-analytics-ai-how-we-built-it/https://www.jameswarrick.com/corso-analytics-ai-how-we-built-it/Corso recently released our analytics AI feature under a beta tag, and as is our tradition we wanted to show how we built it. AI can feel like magic, even to experienced develop...Sun, 18 Aug 2024 20:59:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/strategies-and-tactics/https://www.jameswarrick.com/strategies-and-tactics/In both the fog of war and the chaos of business, it's very difficult to be successful without defining both what you are trying to accomplish and how you intend to accomplish i...Fri, 02 Aug 2024 06:47:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/different-ways-to-implement-ai-in-software/https://www.jameswarrick.com/different-ways-to-implement-ai-in-software/There's hardly a single piece of software available today that hasn't made a big deal out of adding AI functionality. On top of adding AI features to existing software, startups...Sat, 20 Jul 2024 20:55:35 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/blurring-the-line-between-software-and-services/https://www.jameswarrick.com/blurring-the-line-between-software-and-services/The idea of bundling software and services together has been around for about as long as there has been software. In the earliest days of software development, everything was on...Thu, 11 Jul 2024 04:05:05 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/the-corso-data-stack/https://www.jameswarrick.com/the-corso-data-stack/Modern data infrastructure has become quite complex. Companies need to ingest data from multiple sources, store it, process it, and otherwise make it useful. To do so they lean ...Thu, 04 Jul 2024 22:19:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/everything-i-needed-to-know-about-management-parenthood/https://www.jameswarrick.com/everything-i-needed-to-know-about-management-parenthood/I've been saying for years that I would write a book on the parallels between parenthood and managing people. My bucket list is already longer than I will ever be able to accomp...Sun, 16 Jun 2024 06:25:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/ai-as-an-operating-system/https://www.jameswarrick.com/ai-as-an-operating-system/Your computer is a collection of electronics like a hard drive, processor, display, networking, etc. The operating system is what takes all those different parts and makes them ...Tue, 11 Jun 2024 13:43:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/ecommerce-consolidation/https://www.jameswarrick.com/ecommerce-consolidation/I've been actively involved in E-commerce for a few years now, and one of the most impactful trends I'm seeing is consolidation among the apps and services used by merchants. It...Sun, 09 Jun 2024 04:25:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/dry-wet-aha-and-doing-things-that-dont-scale/https://www.jameswarrick.com/dry-wet-aha-and-doing-things-that-dont-scale/If you have been building software for a while, you've undoubtedly heard "Don't Repeat Yourself", commonly shortened to DRY. The phrase suggests that you should write your code ...Tue, 04 Jun 2024 03:47:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/architecting-automation/https://www.jameswarrick.com/architecting-automation/One of the most valuable features of a returns, exchanges, and warranties platform is automations. When automations are implemented throughout a platform, it allows merchants to...Tue, 28 May 2024 22:25:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/temp-slug-40/https://www.jameswarrick.com/temp-slug-40/If you've ever broken an ankle, gone through a procedure that immobilized part of your leg, or done anything else that required you to use crutches, you were probably very thank...Thu, 16 May 2024 14:33:57 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/postgres-permissions-concepts/https://www.jameswarrick.com/postgres-permissions-concepts/Untangling the complexity with our favorite databaseMon, 13 May 2024 21:10:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/climbing-the-corporate-ladder/https://www.jameswarrick.com/climbing-the-corporate-ladder/Remember your first job? It might have been washing dishes somewhere, or collecting carts at the grocery store, or replacing tried-on items at the clothing store. Whatever the j...Sun, 21 Apr 2024 04:20:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/do-you-need-product-managers-at-your-software-company/https://www.jameswarrick.com/do-you-need-product-managers-at-your-software-company/I've written before about how various commercialized forms of "Agile" development completely stripped the original agile manifesto of everything it was supposed to be. A group o...Wed, 10 Jan 2024 18:34:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/leadership-and-management/https://www.jameswarrick.com/leadership-and-management/Although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, leadership and management are distinct concepts. I like the analogy that describes leadership as pointing a boat in the ri...Tue, 05 Dec 2023 07:17:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/understanding-wether-you-are-a-software-company-or-not/https://www.jameswarrick.com/understanding-wether-you-are-a-software-company-or-not/Many companies do some form of software development. It might be software that is offered to others in the form of SaaS, it could be a team developing internal tools, or it coul...Wed, 18 Oct 2023 20:59:50 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/the-software-maintenance-quotient/https://www.jameswarrick.com/the-software-maintenance-quotient/Everyone loves the delivery of new software features. Users appreciate the added value. Developers thrive on building new things. Companies want to strengthen market position, e...Mon, 12 Jun 2023 20:16:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/collaborative-software-development-estimates/https://www.jameswarrick.com/collaborative-software-development-estimates/Software development estimates are often a major point of contention and misunderstanding. These problems are almost always rooted in participants having different language, exp...Mon, 20 Mar 2023 23:01:28 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/playing-with-stable-diffusion/https://www.jameswarrick.com/playing-with-stable-diffusion/I've been intrigued over the years watching various machine learning techniques steadily progress. Unsurprisingly, some of the advancements that are most apparent are around art...Tue, 06 Sep 2022 13:00:55 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/embracing-uncertainty/https://www.jameswarrick.com/embracing-uncertainty/A desire for control is a core human trait. We all want to have control over our environment, control over what happens to us in our day-to-day, and control over our future. We ...Mon, 01 Aug 2022 09:44:40 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/the-full-stack-designer/https://www.jameswarrick.com/the-full-stack-designer/Full stack developers are highly sought after in the software engineering world, for good reason. Being able to build a user-facing application while simultaneously keeping APIs...Tue, 26 Jul 2022 07:27:11 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/an-opinionated-guide-to-making-technology-choices/https://www.jameswarrick.com/an-opinionated-guide-to-making-technology-choices/Choosing a technology can be a difficult, stressful, time-consuming process. It's easy to find yourself in complete analysis paralysis, spending tons of time and money ensuring ...Mon, 07 Feb 2022 08:46:20 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-password-policies/https://www.jameswarrick.com/terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-password-policies/When I worked in the US Department of Defense, our computer systems had password requirements that were the stuff of legend. 3 lowercase letters, 3 uppercase letters, 3 numbers,...Mon, 24 Jan 2022 08:49:43 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/lessons-on-resiliency-from-the-james-webb-space-telescope/https://www.jameswarrick.com/lessons-on-resiliency-from-the-james-webb-space-telescope/The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) famously has 344 single points of failure – meaning that there are 344 individual things that could go wrong, any one of which would render...Mon, 17 Jan 2022 09:19:06 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/why-i-have-joined-corso/https://www.jameswarrick.com/why-i-have-joined-corso/I'm excited to announce that I'm part of Corso, a company dedicated to providing high-impact solutions to e-commerce merchants and their customers. Our immediate focus is to pro...Mon, 10 Jan 2022 09:02:35 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/doing-root-cause-analysis-the-right-way/https://www.jameswarrick.com/doing-root-cause-analysis-the-right-way/The concept of 5 whys is frequently trotted out as a formula for root cause analysis. Its proponents claim, "Just ask 'why' 5 times, and you will fully understand the root cause...Mon, 03 Jan 2022 10:42:30 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/reviewing-the-agile-manifesto/https://www.jameswarrick.com/reviewing-the-agile-manifesto/I love the Agile Manifesto. Go ahead and visit agilemanifesto.org, bask in its turn-of-the-millenium aesthetic, and read it again. (If you are involved in software development, ...Mon, 27 Dec 2021 03:35:05 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/the-process-of-mastery/https://www.jameswarrick.com/the-process-of-mastery/During my childhood, I always wanted to play an instrument, but for a variety of reasons, it just wasn't in the cards for me. As an adult, I still wanted to learn to play an ins...Tue, 21 Dec 2021 08:17:58 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/improving-information-technology-efficiency-with-low-code/https://www.jameswarrick.com/improving-information-technology-efficiency-with-low-code/One of the most impactful shifts over the last decade in information technology has been the rise of low-code solutions. However, low-code and its potential impact often isn't f...Wed, 15 Dec 2021 06:28:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/thoughts-on-the-wall-street-journals-its-time-to-get-rid-of-the-it-department/https://www.jameswarrick.com/thoughts-on-the-wall-street-journals-its-time-to-get-rid-of-the-it-department/When the Wall Street Journal recently published this opinion piece, it caused quite a few ripples. I first saw the article mentioned in a sysadmin group where, unsurprisingly, i...Mon, 13 Dec 2021 05:33:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/resolving-the-hasura-console-is-not-able-to-reach-your-hasura-cli-instance-error/https://www.jameswarrick.com/resolving-the-hasura-console-is-not-able-to-reach-your-hasura-cli-instance-error/I recently ran into the error shown above (Hasura console is not able to reach your Hasura CLI instance. Please ensure that your instance is running and the endpoint is configur...Fri, 10 Dec 2021 18:31:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/book-notes-the-halo-effect/https://www.jameswarrick.com/book-notes-the-halo-effect/If you have spent any time at all in the world of business, you will have come across different books that claim to have insight into how you can run your business better, be a ...Mon, 06 Dec 2021 05:21:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/maximizing-flexibility-and-minimizing-rework-in-software-development/https://www.jameswarrick.com/maximizing-flexibility-and-minimizing-rework-in-software-development/I recently wrote about why future-proofing as we generally think of it isn't possible, and why the next best thing we can work towards is flexible software. I followed up by wri...Tue, 30 Nov 2021 05:12:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/shared-responsibility-and-incentive-alignment-in-software-development/https://www.jameswarrick.com/shared-responsibility-and-incentive-alignment-in-software-development/At any business where software is built, strategic decision-makers need to have a basic competence with technology and understand the principles of software development. This kn...Tue, 23 Nov 2021 13:15:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/future-proofing-your-software/https://www.jameswarrick.com/future-proofing-your-software/For those of you working in software development, especially enterprise software, how many times have you been told you need to "future-proof" what you are building? Or perhaps ...Thu, 11 Nov 2021 17:34:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/is-the-presence-of-shadow-it-an-indication-of-it-department-failure/https://www.jameswarrick.com/is-the-presence-of-shadow-it-an-indication-of-it-department-failure/Yes, this title is a bit of a hot take, and I could be reasonably accused of manufacturing a clickbaity headline. I didn't pick it because I am trying to stir controversy though...Mon, 01 Nov 2021 12:11:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/be-stubborn-on-vision-but-flexible-on-details-amazon/https://www.jameswarrick.com/be-stubborn-on-vision-but-flexible-on-details-amazon/During a shareholder meeting in 2011, Jeff Bezos was asked a question: "If it's still Amazon's philosophy to make bold bets, I would expect that maybe some of them wouldn't work...Tue, 19 Oct 2021 17:01:52 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/the-art-of-scoping-an-mvp/https://www.jameswarrick.com/the-art-of-scoping-an-mvp/The concept of a Minimum Viable Product has been popularized to the point that the phrase is used without even thinking about it. Perhaps you even hear and use it so often that ...Sun, 03 Oct 2021 21:13:00 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/my-background-and-context/https://www.jameswarrick.com/my-background-and-context/Since my opening post explained the importance of context when interpreting information, it seems appropriate to provide some context to help interpret what I write. I love tech...Sat, 25 Sep 2021 04:37:53 GMThttps://www.jameswarrick.com/always-consider-the-context/https://www.jameswarrick.com/always-consider-the-context/"If content is king, then context is god!" – Gary Vaynerchuk Each time you read something and think about how to apply it to yourself or your business, it's important to think a...Thu, 09 Sep 2021 03:19:00 GMT