Tips for Working with Programmers

• Why you should care about errors

  By Avonelle Lovhaug

  Publication Date: 1/19/2009 12:00:18 AM

  One of my customers has a web application that uses the out-of-the-box exception handling instead of a custom error page. So every time a user encounters an error, they see information that is useful to the developer, but isn't understandable by the end-user. There are several reasons why this is a bad practice:

  • Usability #1: All this error information is typically fraught with technical details that can be overwhelming to the end user, and doesn't help them understand what occurred and how to deal with it.
  • Usability #2: Often the generic pages do not include navigation links or menus to ...

  Read More

  Comments (0)

• What everyone ought to know about software development estimates

  By Avonelle Lovhaug

  Publication Date: 1/6/2009 8:18:01 AM

  I recently delivered some software to a customer that took more than double the time of my original estimate. Since my bids are typically at a fixed rate it didn't affect my customer's costs. However it could have affected their planning timeline for implementation.

  Here are some things you should keep in mind about software development estimates:

  Estimates are by their nature imprecise

  An estimate is called an estimate because we don't really know for sure how long it will take. If we knew for sure, we'd call it something else. The only way to know exactly how long something ...

  Read More

  Comments (0)

• Motivating Programmers

  By Avonelle Lovhaug

  Publication Date: 12/10/2008 11:36:44 AM

  Frank Kelly has published some good ideas about how to motivate developers. If you manage programmers, you will find it valuable.

  I think one of the things vastly overlooked in some large, complex corporate environments is the drag that non-programming activities can have on productivity. In my experience, the more busy work to be done (meetings, status reports, team-building exercises, etc.), the more productivity can take a major hit.

  What many don't realize is that it isn't just the time these activities take that suck the productivity from the programmer. It is also the illogical aspects of some of ...

  Read More

  Comments (0)

• Are they inexperienced?

  By Avonelle Lovhaug

  Publication Date: 12/4/2008 2:08:25 PM

  Something I recommend in my white paper Selecting a Programmer is to find someone who has built something like your application before. In a way, this can be more complicated than it appears. After all, the reason why you are building custom software is because there isn’t any software like yours anywhere (at least not that you have access to).

  But it is important here to understand the real point. Let’s say my project is a YouTube clone for uploading and playing video. There are unique challenges associated with dealing with video and larger files. So if I had trouble ...

  Read More

  Comments (0)

• Don't fall into the feature tar pit

  By Avonelle Lovhaug

  Publication Date: 12/1/2008 10:24:02 PM

  The last few weeks I've been setting up some third party software in a test environment so that I can do some development work on it. The software is an enterprise CRM, with a myriad of features and options.

  One feature of the software is its complex security model. Permissions can be set at a very detailed level: on each table, report, query, etc. Permissions are tied to groups, and users can be associated with multiple groups. Also, permissions are identified by different connection types (for instance: a LAN connection vs. a web connection.)

  The end result of these options ...

  Read More

  Comments (0)

1. Previous page
2. 4
3. 5
4. 6
5. 7
6. 8
7. 9
8. 10
9. 11
10. 12
11. 13
12. Next page