Peter Bell Interview part 4 - SpeakGeek

Peter Bell, founder and CTO of SpeakGeek, discusses how his company helps business owners work better with developers.

SpeakGeek gives business owners a better idea of how software development works in 3 main areas:
1. Hiring developers
- How to determine if a programmer is a good fit for their problems
- How to make a programmer want to join their team
2. Specifying software
- Explaining why incremental software development works
3. Managing software development
- How to keep an eye on things without being overbearing (e.g. check the commits on Github)
- Helping them to accept things, like that some of the terms will be technical and they won’t understand it all, and that some things that developers think will take a day take a week.

SpeakGeek is based on the concepts built up by the Agile & Lean movements, but makes them accessible to a business person.

The primary focus of SpeakGeek is to work with entrepreneurs – teaching them how not to waste the money they’ve raised. With agencies, the focus is more to attract and keep top digital talent, and with enterprises, the issues are more around working with larger teams and solving larger-scale problems.

If you go to SpeakGeek.co, you will currently see a landing page where you can sign up for more information. Over the next couple of months, a set of training materials will be available, you will be able to sign up for free newsletters, paid in-person and online courses, and eventually longer-form classes that will be available through incubator and other spaces, as well as short-term consulting for crucial decisions.