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A collection of stories and thoughts from the craft focused teams of Umbrage Studios.

Latest June 27, 2022
Helping Your Customers Breathe a Little Easier

Helping Your Customers Breathe a Little Easier

It starts with a relationship. No matter the problem, the solution we’re building or the product we're reworking, we put our working relationship with our clients front and center in every interaction. It’s a crucial part in how we’ve continued to win contracts, even against odds. In

  • Bailey Morgan
  • Bailey Morgan

    Content Strategy

May 25, 2022
Define & Design

Define & Design

Define & Design is a key part of our methodology. We believe that solutions should be validated rather than arbitrary project goals, which means that we have to get to the core of what’s going on. We’re not just treating symptoms — we’re tracking down the root issue(

Joshua Bird

VP of Design
March 14, 2022
Heralds of Change in the American Workplace Culture

Heralds of Change in the American Workplace Culture

"Change or die." It was the business author Alan Deutschman who said so simply what the risk of refusing change was. What is the cost of change? Or more relevantly, what is the cost of complacency for a business? The cost of change is a more daunting option initially. We

Bailey Morgan

Content Strategy
February 22, 2022
Reflecting on the Tired Existence of the American Worker: A Series

Reflecting on the Tired Existence of the American Worker: A Series

Self-starter. Works long hours. Sacrifices personal time in order to ensure company objectives are met. Willing to wear many hats. The summary above reads like a standard job description. It even sounds eerily similar to how I’ve described myself in interviews. It’s from an article published in the

Bailey Morgan

Content Strategy
December 20, 2021
The Industrialization of Design

The Industrialization of Design

94% of first impressions are based on design.  We all know that first impressions matter but in business, they’re even more crucial. You might get a second or even third chance to change others’ opinions of you if you’ve met someone in person. In business, we know that

Joshua Bird

VP of Design
November 16, 2021
Pushing Back On Gatekeeping

Pushing Back On Gatekeeping

At Umbrage, we've never bought into gatekeeping as a business model. But in a market where custom solutions are increasingly becoming standard, how do we stay competitive?

Will Carey

Sr. Product Manager
October 13, 2021
Reducing Risk and Moving Fast (Enterprise Product Development)

Reducing Risk and Moving Fast (Enterprise Product Development)

Software startups routinely live by the mantra of “fail fast.” They want to quickly validate an idea or a feature. But the enterprise has historically moved much slower with a less risky, "bolt on" approach, leveraging existing solutions rather than building its own. When it comes to building new products

Ben McCraw

VP of Design
September 15, 2021
How to Optimize Your Time to Development

How to Optimize Your Time to Development

I have been invited to present at the upcoming DevOpsDays Houston on Optimizing Time to First Deployment. Creating scalable, efficient and effective processes are imperative to the start of a software development project. From the initial decisions around which frameworks to utilize to how to host and roll out a

Matthew Ostlind

Senior Software Engineer
September 9, 2021
Three Ways to Scale a Collaborative Product Development Process

Three Ways to Scale a Collaborative Product Development Process

Everything you’ve worked toward is coming to fruition. The scope of work is signed and now it’s time for the real work to begin. While each product that your team develops is unique, not all work needs to be replicated. Major VARs and larger consultancies are focused on

Meagan Rowell

Product Manager
July 20, 2021
Designing Beyond the Screen

Designing Beyond the Screen

Contrary to some beliefs, the design process does not start with building designs. In actuality, designing a finished product is a holistic affair that involves an examination of not only the user’s workflow, but also the environment in which they are working. To design beyond the screen is to

Sandy Pham

Sr. Designer
July 16, 2021
Come see Umbrage at DevOpsDays Houston

Come see Umbrage at DevOpsDays Houston

Umbrage is a Houston business. We are based in Houston, hire people that grew up in Houston and work with Houston-based companies. We understand Houston Strong. And now we have an opportunity to step out into the community and shine a spotlight on the software development industry and in town.

Ronak Patel

Studio Lead
July 13, 2021
Are You a Software Wizard or Barbarian?

Are You a Software Wizard or Barbarian?

Every software engineer reaches a point in their career where they begin to lean towards one of two problem-solving paradigms, one called a wizard, and another called a barbarian. Wizards tend to take their time solving issues, leading to slow code delivery and missed deadlines. Barbarians like to brute force

Jordan Smith

VP of Software
June 22, 2021
The Software Solutions Your Company Needs Now

The Software Solutions Your Company Needs Now

Enterprise software has long been regarded as a second-class option. Knocked as hard to use and difficult to integrate into other workflows, it wasn’t until recently that software developers began to actually emphasize the user experience. Enterprise users began forcing corporations to adopt software solutions through a shadow IT

Jerome Ferreira

VP of Product
June 10, 2021
What We Wish Our Clients Knew About DevOps

What We Wish Our Clients Knew About DevOps

Enterprise companies routinely fall into a cycle of relying on engineers to build a user-facing product only to become frustrated when the end users are unhappy with the product and refuse to use it. By prioritizing DevOps and infrastructure at the very beginning of the product cycle, your team can

Ahmed Aly

VP of Software
June 3, 2021
Getting Dev Ready

Getting Dev Ready

Kicking off a software project successfully is no small feat. At Umbrage, we really strive to set the tone for success before the development work even begins. We make sure we have the right people in the room and that we utilize the right types of research to align on

Josh Luedicke

VP of Product
May 25, 2021
Taking the First Step Together

Taking the First Step Together

In our first post, we discussed how to assemble the correct project team to ensure a successful delivery. Once all the right people are together, it’s time to put them in the room and get the project underway. For us, that begins with a kickoff meeting. Setting the kickoff

Josh Luedicke

VP of Product
May 14, 2021
You've Signed the SOW, Now What?

You've Signed the SOW, Now What?

The signatures on the contract are fresh and now it’s time for the real work to begin. But before your team starts moving cards in Jira or ADO, there’s some groundwork to do to ensure the project is set up for success. The iterative software product development process

Josh Luedicke

VP of Product
April 8, 2021
Industrialize Your MVP: Why your product team can’t please their users

Industrialize Your MVP: Why your product team can’t please their users

The enterprise excels at making first drafts. But enterprise companies routinely fall short at improving on that initial version and adding true value to their users. At Umbrage, part of the value we deliver to our clients is creating a product-first vision that enables them to industrialize their initial products.

Ronak Patel

Studio Lead
March 23, 2021
It’s Time to Deliver

It’s Time to Deliver

Today is a special day at Umbrage, and a major milestone. We are excited to announce that we have closed our seed round of funding. You can read the official press release here, but I wanted to take a few moments to reflect on the journey so far. On a

Will Womble

CEO
March 22, 2021
We Are Umbrage

We Are Umbrage

Umbrage is a legion of creatives united by a passion to design, develop and deliver consumer-quality digital solutions and experiences to the enterprise and we wanted to take a moment to introduce ourselves. Design ThinkingNot long ago, the enterprise was told it needed to be more “user-centric” when contemplating a

Will Womble

CEO
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