Being independent

Geertjan Wielenga: This whole lean approach is something that you're able to promote because you're working for yourself. You're not promoting a particular tech, framework, or company that has a stack that it wants to get out there in the developer world. You're basically just promoting yourself and your services, right?

Adam Bien: Yes, people suspected me of working for Sun Microsystems at one point and they also thought that I was working for Oracle, but I was always independent.

I get hired by product managers and product owners. Actually, for the last project I worked on, a product owner hired me to verify their framework. I said, "You don't need a framework," and this caused an internal escalation, but the developers liked the decision.

"Developers own the code; they should be satisfied, not the advocates."

—Adam Bien

You can't be political when working with...