Three Quick Tips for a Successful Software Project
Success custom software development projects don’t happen by accident. If you read the statistics, they fail more often than not. But they don’t have to. Here’s three quick tips that will keep ANY project on track.
1. Weekly status meetings, weekly status: Have a weekly meeting, either in person or on a conference call, at the same day and time every week. Make it a habit. Make it short, no longer than 30 minutes. For any size project. Really. Don’t let anything blow up into a big discussion-this is just the status meeting. Schedule the rest of the meetings for the next couple of weeks (if need be) at the right times and with the right people. After the meeting, have one person (usually the vendor) send out meeting notes to the group. Make sure the meeting notes get sent out within one hour from the end of the call. For one thing, you don’t want someone spending all day creating meeting notes. The notes should be sent out soon enough that the meeting is still fresh in everyone’s mind.
2. Send out an Agenda before EVERY meeting: Allow everyone to be prepared. Allow everyone to be ready to contribute early in the meeting to get the meeting over as quickly as possible so every one can get back to work. The worst meetings are when nothing can be discussed because no one has the answers, and this meeting turns into a pre-meeting for the real meeting. Then you’re in Dibert-land.
3. Have Fun With It: Not all work has to be a chore. For many people, work sucks. But it doesn’t have to. I find any new project to be the most exciting part of my day. What can be more exciting that creating new, custom, business critical software that will have a major impact on your business? So many people equate ‘new’ projects with ‘change’ and no one likes that. But embrace the milestones, the meetings, the relationships, and the people. Have fun with it. Put a little bit of yourself into every project you’re involved in.
Will the iPad kill the iPhone? Or the Kindle?
After a solid week of using the iPad every day, and almost every hour I’m awake, I finally went back to a device that I used the love-Amazon’s Kindle.
It’s hard to read books on the iPad, as there’s just too much eye strain. The Kindle feels more like a book, reads more like a book, and weighs more like a book.
I know the iPad has been out for the less than a month, but some books I wanted to buy were on the Kindle, and not in the iBooks store.
I have tried the Amazon Kindle app for the iPad, but I use if more for a reference, not so much to read a couple of chapters.
So for me, the Kindle lives on.
That said, I barely touch the iPhone now, except when I’m using it as a phone. I haven’t run an app on that thing in a week. I don’t even check my email on it anymore. The iPad has taken over. It makes me think that maybe I should have gotten the 3G iPad and just cancel the data plan on the iPhone.
No need to rush though-I’ll need a few more weeks to let the new-ness wear off before I decide how all of these wonderful devices can be used.
By the way-I went back to writing in this blog on that ancient piece of technolog called a PC. It’s just better for typing.
The Best and Worst of the iPad
Hands down, the best thing about the iPad is the instant-on feature. Press the power button, and it’s on. No powering up, no fan lumbering up to speed. There’s not even an Apple logo and ‘loading…’ text that flashes by (think Windows). When you want to use it, you can. When you’re done, it’s instant-off. There’s just no waiting for this device.
Apple has been working on this concept for a while now. Recently they ran ads for a laptop that would be on by the time you opened the screen.
Another best item that I like-the power cord is small, and is inter-changeable with the iPhone. Laptops generally have a large power supply, which affects the portability of the whole thing. Even my net book has a pretty beefy power supply.
The worst of the iPad is the lack of muli-tasking. You can’t have two apps open at the same time. The biggest issue with this is when you’re going back and forth between email and Safari. It’s cumbersome at best.
A best and worst feature is surfing the web itself. Surfing the web is light years ahead of any phone, iPhone or otherwise. But many sites just don’t work right. Nevermind the flash debates. Google adwords actually crashes Safari on the iPad. I’m writing this post on the iPad, and I can’t get the ‘Visual’ view of this post to work.
All in all, it’s still a thumbs-up.
Of Course the iPad will Matter!
The biggest change I’ve seen between the iPhone rollout and the iPad rollout is the menion of ‘business-ready’. The iPhone was always meant to be a consumer product, although it found its way in to many businesses pretty quickly. I’ve noticed many IT guys with Windows Mobile and Androids, but the CEO has an iPhone.
Apple started pushing the concept of the iPad for business pretty early, and they dedicate a whole section of the iPad site to business (http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/). They mention connection to Microsoft Exchange, security, and a powerful platform for apps.
While the iPad is a powerful platform for apps, I would debate just how powerful it is. The iPhone/iPad strategy lacks the ability for companies to easily create custom applications and deploy them out to their workforce. Apple does have an Enterprise Developer program, for companies with 500 or more employees. That leaves alot of smaller companies left hanging.
Truth be told, there’s alot of custom software that runs companies both large and small, and you’ll never find it in the App Store. It’s purely custom, it’s not a product, and it belongs to the company that created it.
I would think that Apple would address this issue at some point. Locking out the millions of companies that exist with less than 500 employees is odd.
Granted, Apple would love for all apps to go through it’s App Store and they make their 30%. But for the iPad to really succeed in business, businesses are going to have to be able to create custom applications.
To that end, the low hanging fruit is the HTML5, CS3 approach through Safari. I think this will have some great power in business. But browsers (even with HTML5) can only do so much. Just look at all the great apps on the iPhone. When was the last time you used an iPhone app and thought-’I wonder how this would work in a browser?’
Native applications, even on Windows, are generally better User Interface experiences than browser based applications.
Custom, native applications on the iPad will be the true driving force in it’s adoption in the business world.
Will the iPad matter?
April 3rd is the big day, when the iPad finally hits the shelves and users can finally purchase it and finally really start to either love it, or hate it.
There’s been a lot of comparisons to Netbooks, specifically some nice ones that HP has come out with.
There’s also been alot of comparisons the iPhone and iPod, as everyone tries to figure out how this new device fits in.
With all the talk, most of the comparisons point heavily to the hardware, the memory, video, lack of USB support, etc. From a hardware standpoint, the Netbook wins.
But-as we’ve all seen from the iPhone, it’s not the hardware that makes the device great, it’s the applications.
The iPhone has some tremendous drawbacks (being forced onto AT&T’s network being the biggest) – but it thrived.
There’s no reason to think that people won’t make another 100,000 applications for the iPad, like they did for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
I like Netbooks, but I don’t remember any big rush of application development when they came out. We used the Netbooks to surf the internet and read Word Documents. The Netbook was a more convenient PC. It’s great in airports.
The iPad gives us the applications that we love from the iPhone as well as better screen real estate, in a device, application-on-demand fashion that everyone loves so much.
So give the iPad a couple of months. Wait a little bit for the applications to catch up with the device, and then see how the iPad matters.
Another Great Gadget: The Outlook Social Connector
We’ve been using various CRM packages for years, the latest being Microsoft Dynamics CRM. One of the greatest things about these tools is you can very easily get a history of all of the activities you’ve had with a client.
Microsoft just came out with the Outlo0k Social Connector. Even though it’s in Beta, I installed it anyway, and it’s a must-have.
The Social Connector displays a new pane at the bottom of every email and contact in Outlook that quickly displays all of the past emails, appointments, tasks, etc. that have occured with this person. You get a lot of CRM without having to buy CRM.
You can check out more it here: http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2009/11/18/announcing-the-outlook-social-connector.aspx
and download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c87e257c-d76f-4785-a09b-af36babd6e32&displaylang=en
There is a Social Media component to this as well, and it will connect to LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. It’s a whole new reason to keep Outlook.
Once I installed this thing, I couldn’t figure out how I ever lived without it.
By the way-it doesn’t actually replace CRM! An individual’s data is still on their own little island, you can’t see all of the emails from a person across the whole company.
Perfect Sense: Microsoft Silverlight on Microsoft Mobile
With all of the success of the iPhone and the hype of the Android, Microsoft is still figuring out what to do in the mobile space. Something worthwhile, that is.
If there’s one thing everyone can learn from the iPhone, it’s the applications that make it great. The iPhone went from initially being just a really cool phone (Apple is great at making cool things) to being a very functional, useful, and practical device. Just ask any iPhone user and they’ll tell you what their favorite application is, and rarely is it an application that has anything to do with a phone or playing music.
So where does it leave Microsoft? In a recent article on ChannelWeb, it’s now rumored that Silverlight will run on Windows Mobile devices. Specifically, Windows Mobile 7, or whatever it is they decide to name it.
Why is this a good thing? Because it will open the floodgates to allow millions of .NET programmers to create applications for Windows Mobile.
Silverlight, much like Flash, will allow people to share code across multiple devices. This is powerful, so much so, that Apple does not allow Flash to run on the iPhone.
Silverlight is so much better that Flash (from a development standpoint), that people have been saying that Silverlight is a Flash killer for a while now. I’m not sure if that’s happened yet, and Adobe may very well kill Flash on their own without anyone’s help.
It’s the applications that make hardware wonderful, and the ease at which those applications can be developed that makes them widely available. Microsoft has all the right cards here, as their Visual Studio Development tools are second to none. There’s already plenty of .NET developers out there, and along with that, Silverlight developers.
So, you take a .NET developer with some Silverlight experience, and almost overnight you could have yourself a new Windows Mobile Developer. With Silverlight becoming more integrated with SharePoint, you would have a developer who program your website, SharePoint site, and mobile site all in the same day.
It’s anyone’s guess how the iPhone will play out in Corporate America. Apple makes you deploy all of your applications through their App Store, or buy their special server to allow for deployments internally in a corporation with more than 500 users. Either way the licensing doesn’t give you all the freedom that corporations currently have to deploy whatever they want on a desktop PC.
So along comes Windows Mobile 7, finally, with a nice development platform that allows companies to deploy internal applications whenever they want on whatever phones they want.
Microsoft may be on to something here.
Happy Holidays – Let’s Look Forward to 2010!
Happy Holidays!
2010 looks to be a very fruitful year. We’re seeing alot more interest in mobile apps, web development, and SharePoint demand is still very strong. Everyone is shaking off the dust from 2009 and getting back into the swing of things.
Here at Inalign we have many new activities in the works-including an updated customer portal, and the start of bi-weekly webinars for all of our clients.
We’re very excited about the webinars-it gives us another way to connect with our clients, and will we use these to continue to educate about our technologies and software development.
iPhone Apps are Taking Over the Web
Remember years ago when companies were just getting into the ‘internet’ and they started to put their URL into every ad? Print ads, TV ads, whatever, their URL would show up.
Now, the change is to promote the iPhone app. Just another indicator that the iPhone is taking over the world.
For example, Pizza Hut now has an ad on TV that promotes ordering pizza via their iPhone app. The ad doesn’t even talk about pizza or why their’s is better-it just promotes a new convienent way to order. (As a side note, some of Apple’s iPhone TV ads show the Pizza Hut app as an option on the iPhone).
Ease of ordering is still king!
With big companies like Target, BestBuy, eBay, and Amazon all having iPhone apps, you have to start to wonder how much traffic is going to move from the traditional desktop browser to a mobile app.
Another strategy for mobile that seems to be gaining steam is the concept of the mobile-web application. Unlike an iPhone app, which is written specifically for the iPhone and downloaded from Apple’s app store, a mobile-web application runs in a browser on a phone.
The Safari browser comes installed on the iPhone, and Enterprise Rent-A-Car has a wonder mobile-web application than looks very nice in Safari and lets you, among other things, rent a car.
The added benefit of the mobile-web approach is that the same app could run on the Android or some other mobile device, and you don’t have to worry about developing code for one particular device.
Either way, what we’re seeing is more sales channels. Companies are giving consumers even more ways to order their products and services.
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