Michael C Hogan

Agile Product Development & Innovation Strategy

Sep
24

By

Before you start, create a plan to stop

Category: Doing

My #1 rule for ventures, especially with friends, is to create an “ejection seat plan” at the beginning. The ejection seat is designed to save friendships and prevent teams from holding on to ideas too long.

Write down a list of milestones that must be achieved in 1, 2, 3, and then every 3 months up to 48 months. Agree that either partner can choose to eject without blame whenever the milestones aren’t met. Agree how much equity will be retained in the event of ejection. Follow the plan.

I credit five inspirations for the ejection seat plan. (1) Tim Ferris’ “dreamline” concept from 4HWW, (2) news stories about “golden parachutes”, (3) my friends who learned this with me the hard way because we didn’t do it, (4) the Stripe Atlas guide to founders equity, (5) my friend who helped me validate that it can work.

Jul
21

By

Creating a Project Plan

Category: Doing, Implementing

Lots of people use Microsoft Project or similar tools to create and analyze project plans. Here is my checklist for creating a project plan in Microsoft Project.

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Feb
9

By

So you want to start a website?

Category: Doing

Five steps that begin with selecting a strong password.

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Apr
12

By

Redirecting web addresses with .htaccess

Category: Doing, Engineering Tags: ,

Here is a tutorial that worked for me:

htaccess 301 redirect tutorial

And here is the key part that I missed on my first couple tries:

Scroll down past all the existing code, leave a line space, then create a new line that follows this example:

redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.you.com/new.htm

It’s as easy as that. Save the file, upload it back into your web and test it out by typing in the old address to the page you’ve changed. You should be instantly and seamlessly transported to the new location.

Notes: Be sure not to add “http://www” to the first part of the statement – just put the path from the top level of your site to the page.

Mar
5

By

Certified ScrumMaster!

Category: Doing Tags: ,

As of February 21, I’m officially a Certified ScrumMaster! Thanks to Mike Cohn and the Agile Alliance for a great preparation course.

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