Building Better Software: An Interview With Damon Young

Like many 80s kids, Damon Young’s interest in technology began with video games.  After he reached his limits with Yar’s Revenge and Berserk on his old Atari 2600, he started transcribing games from computer magazines to his first PC, the Atarti 600XL. Armed with a degree in computer science from Princeton, he went on to hold several technical roles in business and technology consulting. He is now Director of Sales at ProjectLocker, an innovative company that helps software developers build quality software in less time. 

You seem to be the poster child for spreading the word about the development of quality software in less time. Tell us about that.
It actually started back in college, when I discovered I was an exceptional communicator. While I scored well in engineering classes, I held practically a 4.0 in any class that required me to write papers. I went into the working world on my first assignment with Andersen Consulting as a technology analyst.

I followed that same path at Cambridge Technology Partners, and doing architectural work helped give me a bird’s eye view of every project. My role required me to interface with every stakeholder: clients, empowerees, management, developers, and testers, so I was able to have a much better sense of what are we actually building, and what it was expected to do for the business.

"Theses early experiences made me really religious about software quality & best practices."

What is quality? 
In software, as with any product, quality is essentially a measure of how closely your solution matches its functional requirements. To achieve quality, software development teams need tools to verify how closely their product is adhering to its requirements at each stage of the development life cycle. 

The great work being done in the open source space has produced a set of best practices tools. However, these very tools can hinder the development process due to the time and effort involved in their own implementation. 

"To get the most benefit from a quality process, teams must be freed of the burden of configuring and managing these tools so that they can focus on their real objective: the application itself."

How does ProjectLocker’s solution relieve software teams of this burden – to focus on the right things?
With a turnkey set of tools that lets teams follow project best practices from day one, rather than waiting for a team member to set up a tool they found on their box at home -- or waiting for an IT department with an overloaded agenda to get around to it.

Teams can allocate more time to communication and setting clear metrics earlier in the process.  And, since our primary focus is on corporate clients, we provide a level of support around these tools, in terms of application monitoring, security, availability, and 24/7 coverage, that none of our smaller competitors can match, at a price that none of our larger competitors can seem to beat.

You seem to like selling 
It gives me a chance to spread the Gospel. There are better, easier, faster ways to develop quality software. 

"When development is easy and fast, those of us who love it can rediscover the passion that first brought us into the industry in the first place."

It’s easy to sell something you believe in and understand.

Who are the most likely prospects for your services and solutions?
Our clients generally fall into four profiles: Commercial software developers, startups that want to tap into the talent and resources of a larger organization's infrastructure, teams within large organizations that want to move more nimbly than their traditional channels allow - and enterprises who understand the value of software quality and want to economically deploy a solution to all of their users.

Do you sell directly to customers or is it a pure Internet model?   
While we receive fairly robust business through our website and online ads, all of our biggest accounts have been through direct contact with prospects. 

We hope to continue to grow our direct channels in the coming quarters.

"Our focus has always been on providing an experience that goes beyond a do-it-yourself cheap hosting model."

How are you personally making a difference in your sales role?
By understanding what clients truly need to make a difference. As a client advocate, I have more direct contact with our active subscribers than the technical team, and I have far more interaction with prospective customers, both those who choose to subscribe and those who don’t. 

As a result, I hear much more about why a potential customer might choose to subscribe to ProjectLocker.  Any given month, I may have a dozen prospective contacts that are all looking to use our services in the same, very specific, heretofore unforeseen manner. 

We’ve been hearing about open source for 20 years.  Is open source software an idea whose time has finally come? 
Individual software developers around the world will now invest the time & energy to create an open source application under the assumption that the application’s usefulness will ultimately lead to global adoption, like Linux, Napster, and BitTorrent.

"The fact that there are now  multiple economic models to support a marketplace for free software demonstrates that open source has finally, as they say, arrived”.

What has it done for developers?
While developers don’t receive wealth through the obvious venue of simply packaging and selling their application, the web now makes it possible for them to achieve fame through their application. 

And fame within the software community leads to a whole host of ancillary revenue streams, ranging from actual job offers for their demonstrable technical expertise, to sitting on the board of a company that builds proprietary software on top of their open source code, to pure “cult of personality” revenue like book deals & speaking engagements.

Can you give us an example of how open source has changed the software business?
Much like these developers, whole businesses can now be built around the ancillary markets supported by the software itself. In the past, a company such as Microsoft would look at software as their primary revenue stream, and things such as Microsoft Press or their Training & Professional Services practices were simply the icing on a very lucrative cake.

"Now, whole publishing houses such as O’Reilly Media can be supported purely by generating training & resource tools for open source tools. Open source applications are also a great opportunity for professional service firms."

How so?
In the past, a client would have to balance consulting fees against the often-exorbitant licensing fees of full-scale enterprise applications. With robust open source tools and applications, professional service organizations can now offer engagement packages to clients, in many cases, with considerable overall cost reductions. 

What other types of opportunities is open source creating?
There are opportunities being created for pure hosting companies, which can provide remote access to secure instances of the open source applications themselves instantaneously, as well as the expertise to maintain & support them without forcing potential clients to engage in significant ramp-up time for their own employees.

There are still tremendous opportunities for companies to build and sell proprietary software by building custom extensions and/or integrations to existing open source software. 

Of course, those opportunities are limited by the actual boundaries established for the open source software by the initial creators. For instance, some have license agreements that allow anyone to use and even extend their code, as long as said extensions are not used for commercial purposes.

Can software companies introduce open source applications into their proprietary suite of offerings?
Sure. By releasing the code of targeted applications to the public, the company creates an instant community of software developers who are regularly exposed to their brand, creating, in essence, a new marketing medium for their other proprietary applications.

What do you remember about your first programming experience?
There wasn't anything even remotely resembling today's text editors, so a missing semicolon would cause an entire application to fail. I guess you could say we've come a long way since then.

Contact Damon at dayoung@projectlocker.com or visit his company at www.projectlocker.com