Reflecting on Growth
Holy cow, a lot has happened over the last few months. On a personal note, I welcomed my third son into the world. Yes, my hands are full. No, there’s not much sleep. Yes, it’s amazing. And no, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
While my family grows, my company has also experienced a new beginning. The software industry is evolving rapidly; remote work, AI development, and the rise of nearshoring are reshaping the landscape. For agencies like ours, this means adapting, pivoting, and redefining our value.
Rediscovering Focus
This reflection took me back to the roots of Focused Labs, the company I started nearly six years ago. I haven’t shared much about the name before, but it has always been deeply tied to the principles that shaped my career: pair programming, test-driven development, and the view of software as both a craft and a production process.
My background is in XP and Agile, though I never felt tied to the methodologies themselves—just to the results they promised. Over time, Agile became burdened with certifications and enterprise red tape, evolving into a version of waterfall disguised in trendy terms. XP, while it retained its integrity, became an echo chamber of purists celebrating test coverage and small stories but disconnected from the broader need for delivery.
What I’ve always valued about these approaches is their ability to help teams and individuals focus. A small story keeps developers centered on a single piece of value. A test clarifies a single piece of logic. A pair enables shared progress. Every tool and method we use ultimately serves one purpose: maintaining focus.
Focus drives efficiency for teams, individuals, and entire organizations. Methods and frameworks are just playbooks to sustain that focus.
Six years is a long time—this is the second-longest job I’ve ever held. When I reflect on our journey from a two-person DevOps firm to a 60-strong team offering design, product, and software development, it’s clear we’ve grown in both size and complexity. Along the way, though, we blurred our purpose. We lost focus.
A New Era
Our recent rebrand has allowed us to rediscover who we are and why we exist. That’s why we’ve made some changes:
- We simplified our name: Dropping "Labs" clears up confusion. We’re not scientists, and our projects aren’t experimental. At Focused, we build massive production systems that power the world. Our approach is grounded in proven methods, technologies, and processes.
- We refreshed our look: Our new identity reflects our seriousness, our passion for craftsmanship, and our forward-thinking mindset. It acknowledges the legacy systems driving global commerce while embracing the future of technology.
- We clarified our role: By doubling down on delivery, we’ve stepped away from ambiguity. Our place in the software development lifecycle is clear—we are implementers, builders, and tradespeople focused on creating software that is built to evolve.
These changes mark the beginning of a new era for us and reflect the shifting paradigms in how developers work.
Today, we are more Focused than ever.
Back to Explore Focused Lab