The Business of Development: Guidance for Professional Software Developers

Welcome to Dev Pro's article series about the business of software development and technology! The topic of this series, business development for software developers, covers some different ground than most of the other articles available at Dev Pro. Too many developers think in terms of bits, CPU cycles, and reads/writes to a disk drive. Rarely do developers and technologists think in terms of how an application feature impacts a company's bottom line, the importance of time to market, why marketing is important, the ramifications of contracts, and many other items. This series will help in explaining the importance of these elements of business development.

You're probably asking questions such as "Why is business development important?" and "What possible value can I gain from learning about business development?" An understanding of business development—aka the business of development—can be helpful in increasing your company's income, improving your relationship with management, increasing your own income, and enhancing the value that you provide to your company, among other advantages. Knowing these benefits, who wouldn't want to understand business development?

Now I'd like to take a moment to introduce the authors of this article series.

I'm Wally McClure. With apologies to my cousin Troy, you might remember me from a bunch of .NET Framework books and articles. I'm a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) with a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering. I've been a professional developer for 25 years. I've worked for major organizations as well as startups (two of which were successful and were sold; another made a spectacular crash). Before .NET, I started as a developer working with C on Sun UNIX systems. After several years of doing that, I fell in love with Visual Basic. While working with Visual Basic, I worked with Classic ASP systems before starting with the first alpha version of .NET in August 2000. I am a Microsoft MVP, an ASPInsider, and a Xamarin Insider and Xamarin MVP. Along with all this technical work, I've worked with companies on their business models and how to focus more on the customer and less on egos. LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/wallymcclure

Jeff Chelko began working with Microsoft technologies in 1998, building custom desktop game and entertainment software. He attended Georgia Tech, and after graduating with a degree in computer science, went into consulting and application development. Currently Jeff lives in Atlanta, where he is a principal software engineer for Cardlytics. LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffchelko

John V. Petersen started his development career in 1987 while working as an accountant. John has worked with numerous development tools over the years. He is a Microsoft MVP, an ASPInsider, and an author. He has a B.S. in business administration, an MBA, and a J.D. from Rutgers School of Law. John is currently a practice manager for Neudesic. LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnvpetersen

Business Development Wisdom

Our hope is that by imparting to you some of the lessons we've learned over the years, we can help you avoid making some of the mistakes we've made. None of our advice is foolproof, and not all the guidance we'll provide will work in every case. Even so, it is our hope that the nuggets of information we share will help you when used in the appropriate situation.

Articles In This Series: