Chris Young

As the Principal of Harled, my role is to hire great people, to foster a culture of excellence and to engage with clients who want to change the world. A major part of this mission is to develop and employ junior talent in a way that larger enterprises cannot. Greater responsibility, experience and direct impact to the success of our clients in a shorter time period.

My role is also to lead by example. That means I am committed to rolling up my sleeves and helping with any aspect of our project delivery. I do my best to write at least a little code (and ship to production) every week.

Finally, I am responsible for ensuring that Harled effectively supports the ability of a “small but mighty” team to deliver incredible projects for a few special clients.

I've been fortunate to have several decades of experience working with tight-knit teams delivering to fortune 100 clients. However, none have been so effective and impactful as the team at Harled. Being a small team and small company creates a unique agility and alignment that is just not possible in larger organizations.

Something new that I have learned through this role is that armies of experience in a large organization can be rivaled by a smaller, entrepreneurial team with a very clear and aligned mission and culture.

Our ability to move fast and develop a deep understanding of our client's business is what sets us apart from the traditional industry of software development outsourcing.

We understand that clients have an outcome that they want to achieve, that they believe software has a role to play and that we need to collaborate and iterate quickly to find out what that final solution is. This ability to go from zero-to-one is only possible because we appreciate that “perfect is the enemy of good enough” in the early discovery days of a new application.

We aim to deliver the initial Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in weeks and then proceed to iterate many times until we get it right. Think of it as derisking an uncertain outcome by taking small steps and continually confirming that we are all headed in the right direction.

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast" - Peter Drucker

I really like this quote because I do believe that a highly effective team can find ways to win even without the perfect strategy. With that said, it sure is a lot easier to do great things with a strong culture AND a thoughtful strategy.

Human User Guide that is. If so, Chris has one to share with you.

• Ruby on Rails
• HTML5
• CSS3