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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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