Management & Best Practices

Should you start thinking, as an IT Director, in terms of Service-Oriented Development rather than Application Development or even Commercial Software; if you really want to meet the challenges of today’s new business requirements?

The question is worth asking no matter your line of business. Surprisingly, even though we have been praising new development methodologies such as Agile Development and other development tools and fast development approaches for more than a decade, the fact is that the majority of large and medium-sized enterprises are still moving forward with long-term expense heavy IT projects, leveraging notorious platforms such as SAP or Oracle or commercial software.

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The assessment of software development performance, be it of a software development team or a software development project will vary greatly depending on the type of metrics used.

This request for performance assessment in software development projects is constantly coming back and is a source of major concern for Managers; which is quite normal considering the low ratio of projects delivered in time… and costs.

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Process performance and innovation create a bond of heart and reason within any flourishing business or, at the very least, any enterprise must become innovative in order to flourish because innovation almost always leads to a gain in performance on one level or another.

Thus, the company that wants to perform must innovate and the innovative company will perform… most certainly!

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The perception of software development performance truly varies according to management style; hence, performance assessment is, in fact, a question of perception. The performance assessment of a development team is closely linked to the management style and, more precisely, to the priorities it dictates; in software development as in any other activity.

Any manager would like to have an objective assessment of the performance of both his development team and his IT department as part of a software development project. The term “objective” is the key to the riddle here. Is there an objective method for assessing the performance of a developer, a development team or a software development company? Is there a key performance indicator in software development that really tells the truth?

In fact, one can hardly count the systems, methods, and nomenclatures that have been created since the beginning of the industrial era to evaluate performance in software development, as in any other field.

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This article is made out of excerpts from a joint Survey made by MIT & Google conducted in late 2016, and which you can download here.

Machine Learning is for many enterprises the new proving ground for Competitive Advantage. A recent survey conducted by MIT Technology Review Custom and Google Cloud reveals that while the majority of businesses are struggling to apply Machine Learning, others are hard at work developing strategies for the technology — and are already realizing genuine ROI.

The survey included 375 qualified respondents representing a variety of industries, with the preponderance coming from the technology industry (43%) but also business services (13%) and financial services (10%). Most qualified respondents were either C-level executives (39%) or enterprise developers (37%), rounded out by vice president-level executives (23%).

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The day is not far off when every company will integrate features of Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning to its processes, there is no doubt about it.

The question is: where is your business today? Are you ready?

Technology now provides us with virtual assistance, it allows us to generate ideas and analyze unstructured data – allowing entrepreneurs to focus on growing their business. Bu that’s already yesterday!

Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Business

And now with AI’s ability to analyze a problem faster than a human mind could, you will be sure that you will have considered all possible scenarios for a given situation.

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Artificial Intelligence is only beginning to penetrate the workplace, and it’s causing leaders to rethink how their businesses run or so they should. But the thing is, far from killing the jobs of knowledge workers, Artificial Intelligence tends to free them up to do what they are paid for: innovate, model, refine, and improve on the expertise of their business.

“AI is not eliminating jobs, it is creating a shift in the type of jobs by eliminating tasks of jobs, and creating new jobs that are more human jobs,” says Josh Bersin, principal and founder of Bersin by Deloitte. Bersin defines “more human jobs” as those that require traits robots haven’t yet mastered, like empathy, communication, and interdisciplinary problem solving.

The integration of early artificial intelligence tools is causing organizations to become more collaborative and team-oriented, as opposed to traditional top-down hierarchy.

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We need multi-level cybersecurity in 2019 including double authentication to better protect ourselves from threats, attacks, hacks and frauds of all kinds that have happened over the Internet these last years and which all of the major Web Services,  Applications and Social Networks have suffered from: Twitter, Spotify, LinkedIn, Windows, Apple, Android, Facebook, Gmail, Netflix, Reddit, The Guardian, The New York Times, CNN, etc.

It’s huge… way too much!

So, just to make sure everybody gets a fair chance at starting 2019 on the right foot; here are key excerpts from a few ZDNet articles suggesting 5 basic privacy and security measures and utilities to be installed on your 3 environments (mobile, computer and browser). And a few bonuses…

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It’s an evidence, no enterprise wants to discover a security breach in its IT systems and applications and make the news with its data all over the Internet. Cybersecurity is an obligation for all enterprises to which they must comply; and today, enterprise security goes way beyond IT systems and applications.

In the last few posts, we discussed the many advantages of Cloud Services of which cybersecurity is key; like data protection (encryption on the wire, sometimes in the DB, protection from hackers, backup, etc.). So, what about IT systems and applications in particular, and your enterprise in general?

Protect but don’t affect

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The goals that a company approaches the Cloud with may vary of one thousand one manners, such as its effect on Agility, UX, Cost, Scalability, and Reliability; and they will determine how it will implement its Cloud process and now, strongly suggest implementing a service-oriented Application Development.

The very first decision you should make is whether or not, you’ll go for a Private Cloud or a Public Cloud. More precisely, here is an overview of both characteristics to take into account for your applications and services configuration.
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Although it’s been one of the most talked-about buzzword of the last few years, surprisingly, there are still a lot of misconceptions regarding the benefits of moving to, being on and operating on the Cloud. Nevertheless, there are still many good reasons to go on the Cloud for Startups and SMBs. So maybe it’s time to take a second good look at it and give it a second thought… if you haven’t yet.

The basic premises remain the same:

• forget about hardware, we’ll provide it
• forget about licensing, we’ll provide it
• you only pay for what you use

So why not give the Cloud a first shot or, some may say, to give your company a second chance!

6 good reasons to go on the Cloud for Startups and SMBs

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We strongly believe that Custom Development can and should adapt to IT Legacy systems.

As an IT Consulting firm offering Custom Development Services, we have developed over the years the knack for analysing and recognizing the minutiae of IT legacy systems and designing different communications protocol to exchange data with them.

Of course, if you ask IT how to go about addressing new challenges, they will probably go with the systems and technologies in place. It’s a question of comfort and risk management because it is not usually appreciated to add other systems and applications to the existing IT environment.

But the thing is, that’s not always the best course of action.

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Do we have to remind the positive impact on both productivity and profitability of Custom Software Development and digital technologies? Not really. Nevertheless, it might be interesting to understand its nature, how this impact comes into play, at which levels.

A 2015 study from Deloitte & MIT Sloan shows that digitally mature enterprises are very much focused on globally integrating digital technologies such as Integrated Systems, Social Media, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud to transform their business process while enterprises digitally less mature are concentrating on solving specific problems with specific technologies.

The key words here being « globally integrating » ; it’s by integrating globally digital technologies that enterprises transform their business process and their way of doing business, therefore, there must be a global integration strategy of digital technologies and Custom Software Development into play.

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Lean Software Development is the extension of the Lean principles to IT Products and Services Development and Management; more specifically, it aims at eliminating any type of work that adds no value to an IT product or service.^[1]

Lean Six Sigma is a methodology that relies on a collaborative team effort to improve performance by systematically removing waste,^[1] on eight types of operation: Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Over production, Over processing, Defects, and Skills (abbreviated as ‘TIMWOODS’).

One shouldn’t underestimate, in a more and more predominant eBusiness and eCommerce environment, the crucial role IT has come to play in businesses’ primary activities of delivering value to customers.  IT often provides products and services that enable customers to find, order, and pay. IT also provides enhanced productivity and allows both suppliers and employees to better communicate, collaborate and produce / execute.

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100 times go back to your work, again, again and again… and so it goes also for your Application Development Project and your Application Development Business Case.

The fact is among all enterprises, budgets are getting scarce and their distribution is getting rare as well. When it comes to application development project, we clearly see where it starts but not necessarily where it will end and not always in a good manner for that matter; which leaves bad memories and a bitter taste in the mouth of too many C-levels.

Although the initial motivation to start an application development project seems legitimate in the eyes of CMOs, CIOs or CTOs; their Application Development Business Case not always adequately supports it. The general idea is always to increase revenues but maybe we can add some rigor to it since you’ll have to sell your project on the inside and validate your Application Development Business Case.

Your challenge consists mostly in answering a few questions and validate your initial assumptions. So, here’s a basic pathway and a few useful arguments.

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