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Everyone knows that having a good Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) process in place is the key to developing software on-time and on-budget. If you wish to use an Agile approach to software development, having an ALM in place is absolutely essential!
The ALM process is all about having a well-defined process in place for developing software. Many developers think an ALM conflicts with the Agile approach to software development. This is not true. If the two processes are well integrated, and everyone understands the process from start to finish, these two processes work very well together. |
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If I asked you to tell me how long it would take to go to New York City, what would you say? 5 hours, two weeks, or two months? Why are all three likely to be correct? Well, it depends of course. Download this special report to learn more...
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There is probably no such thing as a completely secure company. However, if you are not thinking about security in your company, you are running a big risk. Application security or web site security is not the only security you need to think about. What are other risks such as; stolen data, stolen equipment, lost business, or even worse, lawsuits due to not securing private customer data? You need to start doing some planning and coming up with a security threat assessment for your business. This will include all areas such as physical security, network security, web site security and data security. |
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Software development is a lot more than just writing lines of code. You need to think about project management, prototyping, database design, software architecture, framework usage and a whole host of other factors. In this article you will learn one approach to developing software applications from start to finish. This approach has been used successfully to develop hundreds of applications by a software development company that has been around since 1991.
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When most developers talk about Architecting they are typically referring to the way their Data Tier and Business Tiers are structured, or how they put their services together. While this type of architecture is very important, how about the architecture for the user interface (UI) layer? It should be given the same thought and design process as everything else in your application.
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When is the last time you lost an important document, only to find out that you had no backup of it? This is one of the most frustrating feelings in the world. While the loss of a single document that affects only you is frustrating enough, think about when you lose a whole server, or set of documents, that affects an entire company! This can be positively disastrous. That is why whether on a small or a large scale, the importance of planning your backup is very important. In this special report you will learn about some of the different types of backup strategies you may need to employ at your company.
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Are you or your developers writing stored procedures by hand? Are they creating duplicate CRUD (Create Read Update Delete) logic in multiple places? If so, you should consider a code generator. The benefits of using a code generator to generate your data access logic are huge! If you are not using one, you need to ask yourself why? If the answer is because you think no one else can write code the way you can, that is not a good enough reason. When you consider how long it takes you to create, test and debug data access code, and how much time you put in when the schema of a table changes, you will soon find out that you are wasting a lot of time.
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If you do not have a set of guidelines, templates and documents which describe and assist you in the many phases of a software project and the many challenges of running an IT organization then what are you doing in IT management? You must have these items in place in your IT organization in order to run a lean, efficient, on-time and on-budget type of shop. There are several items you must have in order to have a successful shop. • Software Development Lifecycle • Architectural Guidance • Management and Human Resource Practices Let's look at each of these to see the kinds of guidelines, templates and documents you must have for each one of these different sections.
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"You Get What You Pay For" Yes, we know it is cliché', but it is still very true! We have seen it over and over again in our consulting travels. Someone tried to save money by going offshore, or by hiring the lowest cost consultant they could find to help them solve their business and/or software problems. They then end up spending more money in the long run. When that “Low Cost” consultant fails to solve the problem, the company has not only wasted their money paying these people, but they have also wasted precious time of their internal people. In addition, they may have lost the business opportunity they were going after.
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This article talks about how to configure a computer for developers. PDSA uses this to ensure all developer's machines are configured exactly the same.
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When you begin any new development project, you need to decide which technologies you will use to develop the application. There are a wide variety of languages to choose from, various database engines you can employ, and you need to choose a style of user interface to use. In all of these areas, you need to weigh a lot of disparate criteria when deciding on the best technologies for the task at hand. To decide which language to use, you need to consider which languages you know and which language will let you perform the tasks that need to be accomplished in the application. For example, you would not use Visual Basic to develop a device driver. Instead you would choose a language like VC++, as it allows you better access to the hardware than does Visual Basic. You would choose Visual Basic over VC++ to create a standard business application because the RAD (Rapid Application Development) environment lets you create this type of application much faster than VC++. When choosing a database engine, you will also weigh certain factors. You need to consider what database engine your client might already have in-house. You might look at how much and what type of data needs to be stored. You also want to consider how easy it might be to integrate with other databases, or to be able to replicate data from one server to another. All of these factors are weighed before you choose a particular database engine.
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If you are an independent consultant or contractor you always need to be thinking about where your next job is coming from. This is one of the hardest things any professional has to do. Contained within this special report are some ideas that we have found useful over the years.
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Almost everyone in business today has tried to develop custom software at one time or another. 74% of these projects (according to a recent study by the Gartner Group) has failed! Read this report for the "Top 3 Steps" you should do to ensure success.
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Hiring developers is a tricky business. Some developers can "talk" a really good game in an interview, only for you to find out later that they really don't know what they are doing. This is, of course, after you have spent a great deal of time, money and effort trying to use the skills they professed to have. Then there is the issue of how to terminate those developers that are not performing to your expectations. All of these things can be very challenging and even frustrating. However, with a little forethought, and a good process in place, you can limit or completely eliminate these frustrations.
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As developers we all love to code. However, we all have a tendency to want to jump into the coding as quickly as possible. In addition, we all may not be doing the things we know we should be doing. For example, we may not be following industry-standard naming conventions for variables, not writing specification documents, and/or not creating good, reusable components. All of these things should be done, but often is not. |
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Like all professional services, the experience of those you’re hiring is everything. While you should always do your typical due-diligence when hiring any vendor, there are certain qualities that you should look for when hiring an IT consulting company. Below is a list of some of the things you should be asking each consulting company that comes in selling their services. |
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If you think that your client's requirements are not something that you would normally get from a client then you probably are fine doing things the way you have always done them. If you see the same requirements from your clients all the time, then now might just be the time to consider creating or purchasing a Framework that will do all these things for you. Yes! Faster...better...cheaper!
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