Welcome to the Ship Software OnTime Manifesto.

My name is Hamid Shojaee, the founder of Axosoft, an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) that focuses on building tools to help development teams manage their projects and ship great software.

For the past 5 years, Axosoft has been shipping its flagship product, OnTime, at a ferocious pace. We released OnTime 2008, which is the 8th major release in OnTime’s young life in December of ‘07. We have kept the blazing speed of releases by assembling an extremely talented, small team of developers and paying little attention to competitors. We’ve challenged our team to innovate, not only in the creation of the product, but also in our sales methods, marketing, support, user community and training.

The result has been phenomenal adoption of OnTime in the marketplace and incredible success for Axosoft. Far better than any of us had ever imagined and far outpacing average industry growth.

Along the way, we have tested a number of theories, have made lots of mistakes, have done a few things right and generally have learned a great deal about shipping software. This blog will attempt to share some of what we have learned in the hopes that it will help you and your team ship great software.

My Background

I am a developer at heart, but over the last 13 years I have learned a lot about the business side of software.  Axosoft is my 2nd business venture.  My first was a time and attendance software company that never took off in the way I had hoped.  I left that company to join Microsoft.

Prior to starting Axosoft, I worked for several years in Microsoft’s Consulting Services (MCS) division. My job was to help Microsoft’s enterprise customers improve their development practices. I worked closely with a large number of development teams at various Microsoft enterprise customers and have seen a variety of development styles, methodologies and processes in action.  Most of what I saw, you’ll want to avoid.  Some of it was priceless.  All of it was essential in helping me build a successful software company.

While at Microsoft I had a different perspective on things than many of my colleagues.  Having come from a failed software company, I was paying close attention to Microsoft’s fine-tuned systems and business practices.  It was extremely impressive to see such a fine-tuned machine from the inside.  I also learned that it’s easy to beat large companies at their own game.  Fine-tuned mega machines lack the passion that entrepreneurs bring to their work.  Passion reveals itself in the products we create and users, left to their will, will choose a product that was created with heart over a product created by a machine any day.

Articles and Comments

I started this blog to create a manifesto of what it takes to ship software on time. I plan to keep the blog focused on that topic with about one article a week and although I read every comment and highly encourage you to leave comments with your opinion, I probably will not respond to comments, except in the form of future articles.

I hope you enjoy reading the articles as much as I enjoy writing them.