Architecture determines capabilities. This is not new. Anyone who has planned and architected a new product, or has tried to retrofit capabilities for which a platform has not been architected, knows it first-hand. Yet, time and again, I come across products that have not been planned, and therefore architected, around reasonably expected capabilities. Sometimes I see these as a user. Last week, a client wanted to give me access to their Dropox Team account, so we could share information.

In a world full of email, then SMS, then Twitter-based abbreviations for everything - ttyl, afaik, iirc, rtfm - do good, clean, clear writing skills still matter? Yes. Unquestionably, and without a second's hesitation, writing certainly matters, not solely for the pedantic nitpickers. Good writing skills greatly affect your business success. Secret of Success I once asked a very successful executive what he thought was the single most important factor in his success.

Although the title for this article might imply suggestions for Proctor & Gamble's IT department, instead we will address how badly code can "smell" and how and when to prevent it. In business as in software, the concept of a "smell test" is a base instinct for if something is a bad idea or implementation: if something smells bad, it probably is. One of my favourite technology bloggers, Adrian Colyer, wrote a recent article about a fascinating analysis of open-source projects, primarily Apache, Eclipse and Android.

In earlier articles, especially here, we have discussed why great product management is crucial to a company's success. It is the role that is responsible for a product as a whole, the only one that aligns what the product should do, what features it has, where to offer it, at what price points for which packages. Yet many companies seem to do just fine for an extended period of time without product management, especially in the technology sector.

I have been impressed with Heroku for a long time. Their simple to use platform-as-a-service (PaaS) has made it incredibly easy for software developers to deploy applications lightly and cheaply, and then easily scale them up to production scale. As an aside, the very design encourages them to develop their software in a well-architected fashion; see "The 12-Factor App." Just as Amazon Web Services infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) EC2 abstracts away hardware, so a PaaS abstracts away the operating system, allowing software managers to focus on software.

I often notice the incredible value of great product management. Unfortunately, it is something many experienced people do not get, simply because it is the one area of a business, and especially a startup, that cuts across the company. Every other group has a clear line of responsibility: Engineering builds the product. Marketing defines who will buy it and drives awareness. Sales sells it. Customer support supports it. Finance manages the cash, P&L and balance sheet.