Business: insights from people who build products

Why agile estimates miss and what to do about it: seven estimation challenges, hours vs story points, why an estimate isn’t a commitment, what AI coding tools changed, and a worked example of how we estimate a product.

Hiring marketers before you know who buys and why burns cash on guesses. What a marketing team costs in 2026, what the founder should do at each stage instead, and five signs it’s time for your first marketing hire.

A ten-step IP checklist for founders building software in 2026: make the company own the code, get contractor rights in writing, keep accounts in the company’s name, file your trademark, track open-source licences and handle AI-written code, with fees from the official offices.

Nine things to do before your startup’s first line of code in 2026, from writing requirements and cutting scope to owning your code, testing from week one, choosing an engagement model and pricing the build.

MVP means minimum viable product: the smallest version of a product that real customers can use, built to learn if they want it before you spend the full budget. Here are 7 business scenarios where it pays to launch one, how small it can be, what it costs in 2026 and what post-MVP means.

Nearly every customer has a smartphone, so reach is not the question. Five reasons a business app pays off, the number that proves each one for your business, what owning an app costs each year, and how to see when the build pays back.

What an in-house developer really costs next to a dedicated team, using BLS pay and benefit data, where each option wins, and how to decide role by role.

What a business analyst does in a software project and five reasons to have one: requirements, the link between your business and the developers, documentation, acceptance testing and the whole-system view. Plus when you can skip the role, 2025-2026 data from IIBA and Stack Overflow, and what a BA costs.

The discovery phase in 2026: what it is, how the agile discovery process runs in a week, who takes part, what it must deliver, what goes wrong without it, what it costs, and how a real discovery led to an approved MVP.

How to pick between finalist tech vendors: what a proposal’s assumptions tell you, the people to meet, the five contract terms that protect you, and how to use a short paid milestone before a long contract.

The product owner responsibilities a founder takes on when hiring a development team: what the Scrum Guide makes the product owner accountable for, seven responsibilities in practice, what you can delegate and what you can’t, how much of your week it takes, and how to put numbers on the business case before the build.

Seven ways to grow a small or mid-sized business in 2026: a goal with a number, keeping the customers you have, selling more to them, taking back hours with automation, a new sales channel, partners and a steady look at competitors, plus how to check a piece of software pays for itself before you build it.