By Avonelle Lovhaug
Publication Date: 1/20/2008 4:00:00 PM
It is surprising to see what some people consider to be acceptable risks.
Sometimes there are logical reasons for the discrepancy between what might be an acceptable risk but not in others. For example, the dangers associated with rock climbing (injury and death) make it an unacceptably risky activity for me. But for others, the benefits (enjoyment and exercise) outweight the risks. And of course, experienced climbers know how to mitigate the risks.
Software development has many risks. Often those who sponsor development projects don't adequately understand those risks. One of the principle risks that is not considered is the ...
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Publication Date: 12/29/2007 4:00:00 PM
News stories about software development projects gone bad are published regularly. One such story is this recent article about the Minneapolis convention bureau "Meet Minneapolis", who decided to develop and sell software. The bureau, which gets most of its money from the city, asked for a $2.5 million loan from the city to develop and market software for managing convention sales accounts, hotel vacancies, amd convention registrations. As of now the loan is up to $9.1 million, still without showing a profit.
Of course, hindsite is always 20-20. Still, it is apparent to me that several factors known at the ...
Publication Date: 12/17/2007 4:00:00 PM
Here are some tips for keeping software development costs under control:
1) Don't try to do everything.
This is a common problem for people who are new to custom software development. It is easy to think that it is better to just add that "one more feature" rather than wait until later. However, it is better to weigh each feature carefully, and leave some thinks to do for version 2.
2) Don't try to solve all the edge cases.
Related to the first tip, this is an easy trap to fall into. Most business processes are more complicated than ...
Publication Date: 12/16/2007 4:00:00 PM
Software development (like most business processes) is dependent on decision making. If people are unable to make decisions when they work with programmers, the process cannot move forward and the result software will not be built.
This seems obvious, but sometimes people forget this. They get frustrated when the project is behind schedule, forgetting that the software developer cannot always proceed until decisions are made. Otherwise, if they guess incorrectly, they invite the "opportunity" to re-write the code.
Something I try to do is anticipate the decisions that will need to be made. That way, if I can get ...
Publication Date: 12/8/2007 4:00:00 PM
This week I started maintaining a web application written by someone else. The code itself isn't bad; it isn't how I would organize it, but that's not particularly surprising.
But the user interface, and in particular the validation, is pretty old-school. For example, for fields like dollar amounts that should only allow numeric values, you can type whatever characters you like, and then it provides an error after a postback to the server. Another example: when I left a password field blank, I got two errors instead of one - one for the missing password, and one because the password ...
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Avonelle is an incredibly talented software developer. She works fast, is economical, and offers great insights into the project at hand. She is also not afraid to speak up when she has concerns about a decision or approach. We’ve utilized her talents on many of our software development projects over the years.
Carrie Rocha, Chief Operating Officer @ HousingLink
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