Management Tool

Track employee 1:1 notes, feedback, and goals. Use years worth of data to create an annual review that contains feedback from the entire year, not just the last couple months. Proof of concept has been built and deployed.

• Proof of concept

Prairie Programmer

Throughout my time in software, I have read my fair share of blogs and newsletters around technology. The main issue I have with them is that nearly all of them revolve around coding in a major city (New York, San Francisco, Seattle, etc.) I want to write for those in the rural Midwest. For those who might have kids to take care of and/or someone who wasn't coding when they were in elementary school.

Financial Literacy Online Course

Many Americans are not financial literate, in that they do not fully understand how to make the best use of their financials. While I am by no means a financial advisor, there are many out there. Developers are very fortunate to have so many different and interactive ways to learn code, perhaps we can take that approach to finances as well. Think of something like Pluralsights or Codecademy for financials.

Quadrant To-Do List

Many people still rely on your standard to-do list of just a bunch of items. Why not prioritize the things that matter most. Put your to do items into one of four quadrants: Urgent and Important | Urgent and not Important | not urgent and important | not urgent and not important. This method was popularized by Stephen Covey's book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and originally implemented by President Dwight Eisenhower.

Business Strategy Map

I have seen enough business strategies in PowerPoint or Word. Why not create something that employees can actually get excited about. Something that outlines what the strategy is, why the company is the best to achieve it, and how they are going to do it? Let's take it a step further by being able to connect an employees role to what the company is trying to achieve.

Onboarding Assistant

Onboarding is one of the more difficult things to get right when leading a team. It is all about investing in a new person as good as you can in the hopes they will be able to take off down the road. On top of that, you have to dedicate other employees (often other leaders) to assist in the training. Effective documentation, interactive progress tracking, and the inclusion of AI might be able to help.