The Technology Edge

Two Exciting Announcements

2012-01-10T21:35:00.003-06:00

Friends,

I have two exciting announcements to share with you. For the past ten years Solstice Consulting has been focused on helping enterprises embrace emerging technologies. For the first time since our firm's inception, we have found ourselves in the midst of a transformational shift in information technology - Enterprise Mobility. The combination of the intuitive nature of multi-touch interfaces, context-aware smartphones and tablets, the expansion of high speed wireless networks and the proliferation of cloud computing services, has created a new age in human-computer interaction.

Through the adoption of enterprise mobility we have helped companies open new revenue streams, transform their marketing strategies, create new channels of information sharing and even embrace a new definition of the 'workday'. Since I began consulting in the world of emerging technology over 15 years ago, I have never seen a technology have such a rapid and disruptive impact on business as we know it. What's even more exciting? I think it's just getting started.

My first announcement is that going forward, Solstice Consulting will adopt a singular, laser focus on Enterprise Mobility. Over the past 12 months, we have been retooling our current workforce, while doubling its size with an ingestion of the best mobile technology talent in the country. We have formalized our enterprise offering into the following mobile service lines, with deep expertise in each of these channels.

Mobile Enablement Services	Mobile Development Services
Mobile Strategy Mobile Design Mobile Security Mobile Infrastructure	iOS Development Android Development Mobile Web Development Cross Platform Development Mobile Testing & Support

Although we have been working in the enterprise mobility space for several years, we are excited to focus all of our talent and thought leadership in this transformational technology. Also, as Agile is an ingrained part of our culture, we will continue to offer our highly acclaimed Agile Transformation Services.

Our second announcement is just as exciting. Over the years, we have gotten several requests from our clients to help them in a technology staff augmentation capacity. Clients enjoy working with our seasoned engagement managers, all of which come from a deep IT delivery background. They also appreciate our extensive technology community involvement and ability to network and form meaningful relationships with top IT contract talent. As the necessity for experienced, on-demand IT talent continues to increase, we are proud to announce a new Solstice company:

Solstice Workforce is a formalized expansion of Solstice Consulting's ability to mine the top IT talent in the country. SW leverages the entire Solstice physical and virtual social eco-system and utilizes a unique community-driven sourcing approach to mine talent. The service is led by a team of engagement managers with a deep IT delivery background and the best technology talent acquisition team in Chicago. Solstice Workforce offers effective and efficient technology staff augmentation across all engineering and operational IT disciplines.

We're excited about the changes ahead, and I want to thank you for your support and guidance over the years. I am encouraged about the rapid evolution of technology in our industry and look forward to the opportunities it will provide our employees, our clients, our community and our country.

Your Friend,

J

Avoiding Random Acts of Mobility - Forming the Mobility Center of Excellence

2011-12-25T14:11:00.004-06:00

Large organizations are starting to suffer from Random Acts of Mobility. This is when disparate departments in an organization commission the development of an app without talking with one another or a centralized technology group.

The pitfalls of Random Acts of Mobility include increased project costs due to duplicate efforts; increased support costs due to the use of disparate technologies, increased security risks and higher risk of project failures due to each department taking on a pioneering role in the organization.

Depending on the organization, it may be unrealistic to think, at this point, IT can quickly form a team to support all mobility initiatives utilizing a consistent reference architecture and unified support organization. But this shouldn't give the business an excuse to continue down the mobility path firing revolvers into the air; eventually, it's going to catch up to them.

The short-term answer is a Mobility Center of Excellence (MCoE). The MCoE is often a virtual group with representation from Enterprise Architecture, Legal/Compliance, impacted or interested Line of Business folks, Information Security and IT Infrastructrure and App teams. The goal of the group is to start to set some standards around Mobile App Dev Platforms, Mobile Security, App/Server Side Integration, Legal Compliance and App Deployment and Distribution. This group shouldn't hold up business initiatives but empower them. If they don't have all the answers they can at least be aware which direction a project is going to go; and the project team, in turn, will have the foresight to know what may need to be refactored in the future so they build/fund accordingly.

It's not difficult to set up a MCoE, and given the excitement around mobile technologies, it's usually not hard to find volunteers for this virtual group. Once this group is in place, it's also easier to identify what work should be done on the enterprsie level vs. the project level. It also begins to shed some light\justification on what enterprise level capital and expense funding may be required to help facilitate mobile strategy for the organization going forward.

If you have any additional questions or tips on forming a MCoE, feel free to leave them in the comments below or check out our Mobile Strategy service offering.

My Personal Top Ten Business Productivity Apps

2011-11-07T18:01:00.002-06:00

I am always evaluating new apps to help me better manage my day. Here are my favorites that I actually use on a daily basis. Stay tuned for my follow up blog on what common thread makes all of these apps great.

1) Evernote - Evernote is awesome. A free cloud-based note-taking service that has apps on all major smartphone and desktop platforms. Got a PC, an iPad and an Android phone? No problem. Seamlessly syncs notes between everything. Good-bye notebook!

2) Drop Box - If you haven't signed up yet, you're missing the boat! Simple cloud based file-sharing on all platforms. 2GB are free. Awesome collaboration features where you can share folders easily with other Drop Box users.

3) Swackett - Simple free iOS weather program that tells you what to wear in addition to the temp (yeah I need all the help I can get in the morning).

4) CardMunch - Recently bought by LinkedIn. Take a picture of a business card and they'll turn it into an Contact for you. Real people on the other end if their software can't figure it out. Has yet to fail me.

5) Square - Be able to take a credit card payment from anyone. Great party trick or a jaw-dropper when your buddy needs to "pay you back for that cab later". Now has new functionality to open up a "tab" at participating merchants. Very cool.

6) Mint - Financial reporting. Getting rid of Quicken never felt so good. Working on plugging our business into it as well to get some of the great expense reporting features that we can't get out of our accounting system.

7) Ride Metra - If you're a Chicagoan this is the best Metra app I've found.

8) Traffic.com app - Terrible app but you can set up your own drives on traffic.com and they have the most reliable data I've found. One touch access to how wonderful your commute home will be. Worth the hassle of setup.

9) TripIt - Automatically scans your email inbox periodically and generates travel itineraries for you based on confirmation emails from airlines/hotels/travel sites. Brilliant.

10) Siri - Oh Siri, where do I even start? You've changed my world and made me a safer driver in the process.

What other productivity apps rock your world?

Touch Interfaces - A New Age in Human Computer Interaction

2011-10-10T18:04:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I don't think folks realize how big of a transformational event we're going through in IT right now. For the first time in about 25 years, a new human-computer interaction (HCI) model has taken hold. From the evolution of the punch card, to the keyboard, to the mouse; Touch has now taken hold as the next preferred mechanism of HCI. Early adopters are now going to their touch smartphones and tablets "first" when they have a question that needs to be answered. If it's not accessible from their touch based devices, they are then retreating to their keyboard and mouse driven PCs. Smartphones are being brought into the field instead of ruggedized laptops. Tablets are slowly making their way into conference rooms, laboratories, doctors offices, sales meetings and class rooms.

Touch devices are being adopted more rapidly than any other HCI transformational shift in history; namely because the layer of abstraction between the human need and the machine has been steadily decreasing. In each shift, computer interaction has become more intuitive.

Punch cards: Not so much.

Keyboards: Well if you spend a semester learning how to type.

Mice: Kind of intuitive but takes some coordination and practice.

Touch: Boom, no learning curve.

I know how to pinch, zoom, swipe and drag because I do it everyday. Everytime I pick up a piece of paper, turn a page in a book, move an object to the side of my desk or open up a file in a file cabinet. I don't have to learn how to use a touch interface. There is no abstraction between me and the machine.

The intuitiveness of touch is going to open up HCI to every demographic, regardless of education level or age. From 18 month old babies to 95 year old senior citizens, touch just makes sense.

Get ready, because we're just getting started.

Performance Tips for Adobe Flex Mobile Apps

2011-10-04T16:56:00.002-05:00

I just attended a session at Adobe Max given by Evtim Georgiev and Steve Shongrunden on performance tuning mobile Flex apps. Since I'm a performance geek, I thought I'd post the tips here

How to optimize your mobile view rendering

Avoid heavy components
Defer object creation (lazy)
Use BitmapImage instead of Image
Use Group (with a Rectangle) instead of BorderContainer
Reduce nested Groups
Use mobile optimized component skins
Use ConstraintLayout instead of nested VGroup and HGroup

How to increase your Frames Rates

Use cacheAsBitmap on images that don't change often but redraw often
Avoid a lot of nested containers
Use ContentCache class for caching server side data - cache on by default, queue off by default
Use PNG for all images (much faster than jpg/gif)
Use Label over RichText over RichEditableText (Label is a LOT faster than the other two)
StyleableTextField (turn off edit and selection if not needed) - This is used by LabelItemRenderer and IconItemRenderer (can't use directly in MXML)
StyleableStageText - new in 4.6. Use this very responsive editing and scrolling (used by mobile TextINput andTextArea (can't use directly in MXML)
Create ItemRenderes in MXML. Use mobile-optimized IconItemRendererand LabelItemRenderer
Avoid creating heavy ItemRenderers (don't use heavy (text) components. Turn off autoDrawBackground if not needed. Avoid Filters/drop shadows.
Avoid complex binding expressions (i.e. on scrollable content)
Reduce nested Groups

Some other tidbits: Why are Adobe mobile optimized components better?

Use StylableTextField (lightweight layout)
More sophisticated ContentCache
Their configurable (use styles for properties)

What's coming in Flex 4.6?

On demand scrollbars (created when touch interaction starts) - up to 15% faster for list based views
ItemRendererFunction recycles, so now it's mobile friendly
32-bit rendering in Android available, but 16-bit rendering is faster

Feel free to add any other tips in the comments below.

Have You Ever Tried To Tie Your Shoes With One Hand?

2011-09-07T21:01:00.001-05:00

I wanted to let you all know about a 5K run/walk (www.pssweloveyou.com) my wife and I are putting on, at 8:00 AM on September 24th in Glen Ellyn, IL, to benefit Pediatric Stroke Survivors. As many of you may or may not know, pediatric stroke touched our family 2 years ago when our son, Johnny, had a stroke while he was still in the womb. Thankfully, his stroke was relatively mild and thanks to some awesome therapists, he will make a full recovery.

But many kids aren't so lucky. Some babies (1 in 4,000) have had more severe strokes in-utero, or have strokes as kids, which are harder to bounce back from. These kids get some therapy from the state or insurance but it's rarely enough. Our goal is to raise money to give these kids a chance to be "normal" and get them all of the therapy they can handle to be the best they can be. We can tell you first hand that therapy WORKS. It's amazing how the brain can be re-wired and re-trained by qualified therapists. Want to understand some of the challenges a stroke victim has? Try tying your shoes with one hand. Or cutting food with one hand. Therapy will help these kids do the things many of us consider trivial.

I know times are tough out there, but if you have a little extra time or a little extra cash to help these kids, here are some options.

# 1) Volunteer. We can still use some volunteers for the race. This will be about 2 hours of your time and will be a blast. Mainly we need folks to stand at intersections to keep cars at bay while runners come by. Handing out water and pre-race registration/packet pick up are also options. Volunteering will be Saturday morning (9/24) from 7-9 AM and you'll leave feeling like a million bucks, we promise!

#2) Make a donation. EVERY SINGLE DOLLAR WE RAISE is going to a charity called CHASA (chasa.org) whose sole focus is helping pediatric stroke survivors. Their expense ratio is ridiculously low, so if you donate $30, $30 goes to CHASA and ultimately to an hour of therapy for a kid. Even one hour makes a big difference.

#3) Run Forest, Run! (Or Walk!). $25 gets you into the race, an awesome T-shirt, a day-old Einstein Bagel at the finish-line and a warm, good-feeling inside. Nothing makes you feel better than a 30 minute jog, right? Come on out and kick off your Saturday with a brisk fall jog down the beautiful Glen Ellyn Prairie Path. By the way, we already talked to Tom Skilling and he assured us it's not going to rain. :-)

For those of you who are already supporting the P.S.S. 5K, thank you! For those interested you can sign up for #1, #2 or #3 above by clicking the button below. Thanks for reading this and for all your support!

Mobile, the Driver for SOA?

2011-07-22T22:50:00.002-05:00

So SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) was the talk of the town throughout the 2000s, at least by enterprise software vendors. But SOA adoption was more of a pitter patter than a bang.

The first major issue was funding. How do you get the business to buy-off on an enterprise-wide refactor without offering them any real new functionality? Sure you could tout the eventual cost savings and interoperability. But that's a hard argument for CFOs to swallow.

The other issue with SOA adoption was the change management challenge, particularly for large organizations. It's hard to get dozens of development teams (often geographically dispersed) singing the same song to make SOA work right.

But there were some successful SOA adoptions in the last 10 years and the most successful were iterative, not big bang. Meaning that over a period of time, enterprise apps would one-by-one, refactor into a SOA model, exposing reusable services across enterprise apps while they incorporated new functionality for the business.

If you're still trying to get your SOA program kickstarted, mobile could be the catalyst you're looking for. The best enterprise mobile apps aren't writing new business services, but integrating with ones that already exist. And not every feature needs to be refactored, just the ones that make sense in a mobile context (i.e. iterative refactoring).

So as you begin your enterprise mobility initiatives, think of it as a way to kickstart your SOA adoption as well. Put some thought into using a consistent set of patterns and technologies when exposing your existing enterprise services to the mobile channel. You just might get your enterprise "service-oriented" quicker than you think.

Enterprise Mobility: It's About Tasks, Not Apps

2011-06-30T20:25:00.002-05:00

Although customer facing apps are real differentiators, I think mobility "behind the firewall" is the real game changer. Targeted mobile apps to employees can make their jobs more efficient and enjoyable. But in order to do it correctly, we've got to change how we look at apps.

Historically, we think of applications as monolithic, comprehensive sets of features around a particular domain. CRMs, HR Systems, Financial Systems, Business Intelligence Platforms. An employee may keep these applications open on their desktops all day as they do their job. Porting these apps (or even portions of these apps) individually onto mobile devices, is not necessarily the best approach. The reality is, there are probably only a few real value-added mobile use cases in each of these applications.

Instead I want you to focus on exposing mobile TASKS. A mobile app's adoption is greatest when they are designed as simple utilities, not full blown applications. Quick hits. Something an employee can load quickly, get the information or enter the data they need to quickly, and get out, quickly.

So if you're thinking about getting your employees mobile, think about the mobile use cases that exist across your enterprise applications. What are the specific items that really make sense in a mobile context? Maybe it's workflow approvals for some time-sensitive business processes. Maybe it's a customer lookup utility that shows a quick, consolidated mobile snapshot of customer information across CRM, Account Maintenance, Order Management and SharePoint platforms. Maybe it's a Point of Service utility that allows an individual to log a call report to a CRM, or a trouble ticket to an issue management system or perform a simple order entry.

Think about building an enterprise app the same way you'd look at building a portlet on an enterprise portal's front page. Quick snippets of information from various systems. Simple, contextual, aggregated info, without exposing all of the complexities of the underlying application(s).

The beauty of this? You can build these mobile tasks iteratively, one at a time. So dipping your toe in mobility "behind the firewall" doesn't have to be expensive. Quick hits means that the utilities are not only simple to use, but simple to build. And with the rapid adoption of mobile apps on smart phones and tablets, your employees will thank you for it, and so will your bottom line.

Need some help setting your mobile strategy (Platforms, Device Management, Standards and Mobile Use Case Identification?) or mobile app development? Let me know and I'll get you in touch with the best mobile strategists and architects in Chicago.

BlackBerry. Is. Dead. There I Said It.

2011-03-27T00:49:00.007-05:00

There's been considerable legacy investment by enterprises in Research In Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry platform, and rightfully so. But the tide is changing, quickly, and companies need to reevaluate their investment in the RIMM platform as they increase their investment in enterprise mobility.

RIMM did a bang up job early on of introducing seamless, secure, enterprise mobile communication, but they have failed to address 3 big movements in the market in the last few years:

1) Consumer Adoption of Smart Phones/Enterprise's Bring Your Own Tech (BYOT) Programs
Smart phones are set to eclipse feature/basic phone purchases this year. With Google giving Android away for free, phone manufacturers like HTC, LG and Samsung can introduce smart phones at an extremely competitive price, to the point where carriers offer them for free for new/renewed contracts. This trend combined with Verizon's iPhone launch and ATT's recent $49 iPhone 3GS plan, makes smart phones primed to become, well, phones.

This adoption has lead to knowledge workers pushing for support of iOS and Android platforms on their corporate networks. Many enterprises are supporting this through BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) programs; whereby instead of purchasing phones or plans, companies provide a stipend to employees for their own device purchase and usage. This is not good for BlackBerry. Why? Take a look at the last 5 months of Mobile OS Stats.

Couple that with RIMM's recent lowered guidance on 2011 numbers and analysts agreement that there is no where to go but down.

2) The Introduction of Mobile Device Management Platforms
Mobile Device Management Platforms (MDM's) are replacing the need for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Companies like MobileIron and McAfee's Trust Digital offer the same capabilities with additional functionality like remote wiping, mandatory OS and app updates and secure tunnels into the enterprise across all major smartphone platforms.

3) Advancement in Other Mobile Operating Systems and Mobile App Platforms
Let's face it, BlackBerry's OS is behind. It's slow, clunky and hard to use in comparison to iOS and Android. It's app development SDK is immature in comparison, it's upgrade paths are horrific, and it's App World model is unrefined. Thus, app developers (enterprise and independent) have flocked to Apple and Android's App Platforms. This is evident in the number of apps in the various app app stores. Apple/iOS roughly 350,000, Android roughly 100,000 and BlackBerry roughly 10,000. That's an order of magnitude difference. BlackBerry's recent news that their new tablet will support Android apps (kind of) is about as symbolic of a white flag as you can get.

Where's It All Going?
Is RIMM going away? Not right away. But the OS (and Apps) running on BlackBerries most likely will be going away. As a comparison, Nokia, who has the most popular smart phone platform in Europe and Asia, called Symbian, recently announced they will be embracing Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 OS going forward. They recognized that Symbian, despite it's current market share, was too far behind the other smart phone OS's. They also recognized that at the end of the day, Nokia is a device manufacturer, not a software company. BlackBerry should/will do the same thing. I would anticipate BlackBerry phones running on Android or Windows Phone in the next 12 months. If RIMM doesn't make that shift soon, then they will be going away.

As you look to refine your mobility strategy, consider the points above. Most enterprises are starting down the trail of mobile app development, not just externally, but internally, and that means they need to pick the OSs they're going to develop on. So we're not just talking about phone purchases anymore, we're talking about software capital investment. Be sure you're building on a platform of the future, not the past.

-J

J Schwan is the VP of Product Development for Solstice Consulting. His team helps companies with mobility strategy, MDM selection and mobile app development.

Solstice Launches “Bottega Sol”, Mobile Product Development Studio

2011-03-08T07:53:00.003-06:00

Solstice is pleased to announce the launch of Bottega Sol, a sister corporation of Solstice dedicated to building mobile solutions for businesses and individuals that make their lives more efficient and improve interactions with their customers.

After building great mobile products for Solstice clients over the years, Solstice engineers have come up with a few ideas of their own. Bottega is where those ideas manifest into real products.

Bottega will utilize Solstice’s proven Agile Software Development Methodology and Mobile Product Management philosophy to launch products quickly, and iterate as customer feedback defines the future features of the products.

Bottega’s products will be sold on a subscription basis, with no-long-term contracts, utilizing a Mobile as a Service (MaaS) model.

Bottega’s first flag ship product will be MiGym, a mobile platform built specifically for the fitness industry that will provide health club members with the information they need about their gym on the go. MiGym will be a free app in the Apple App Store (launching 3/17). Gym owners will pay a nominal monthly fee to expose their gym’s schedule, promotions and other information through the app. Gyms can also use the platform to launch their own branded mobile app in the App Store for a higher monthly fee. MiGym will officially launch at the International Health and Racquet Club Association Convention next week in San Francisco, CA.

Other Bottega products include MiContacts, a mobile contact management solution and MiBusiness, a mobile marketing platform for service-based businesses to reach their customers through the mobile channel.

Existing and future Solstice Consulting clients will benefit by having access to the intellectual property being developed by Bottega Sol, helping their mobile products get to market faster. Solstice employees will benefit by having alternative career paths and the opportunity to cross-train themselves on newer, emerging technologies.

We invite you to visit bottegasol.com to learn more about the Company and meet the team.

Big Corporate - Stop Stopping Innovation

2011-02-08T23:44:00.010-06:00

I watched the Social Network tonight and was fascinated with the part of the movie when the young Zuckerberg initially built Facemash (a hot-or-not type website for on-campus Harvard students) in one night. Whether this was fictional or not, as a skilled programmer by trade, I believe he totally could do it in one night (and drunk, as portrayed), assuming no bureaucracy was stifling his innovation.

But Big Corporations have Big Problems - security issues, compliance (SOX) issues, availability issues,public relations issues, etc. etc.

These are real problems that need to be seriously considered and dealt with appropriately. But these constraints should not constrain innovation.

Too often large corporations put big processes in place to solve these big problems. And that's fine when it comes to deploying to production, or the public eye. But the amount of effort and cost needed to spin up innovative environments, needs to be free of these constraints.

Let me give you an example of what I mean: Marketing Department A has an idea to create a consolidated Twitter account made up of employee's tweets, tagged appropriately, to be fed into a corporate Twitter account. This is a smart idea, crowdsource tweets for the corporate account (this is what we do by the way).

Do I need to go through a heavy-set bureaucratic ITIL process to see if this can work? What if I'm not sure if I even want to launch it until I beta test it? If I can hire a programmer for $2K to beta test this, why do I need to spend additional thousands of dollars to justify the spin up of an innovative environment?

Infrastructure departments need to keep pace with innovation. And although it's important that they maintain consistent records of what environments exist and where, don't stifle innovation with bureaucracy. Utilize virtualization to feed development and test environments to your user-base on demand, as needed (private cloud baby!). And put an expiration date on them and spin them down for pilot projects that never make it to the real world.

Don't punish innovation with process. If you're a big corporation, use your capital and your data centers to encourage innovation. Leave the ITIL process to when things are baked enough to go to production, that's where the due diligence is needed. Maybe even use cloud environments for these innovation test beds. And if a company is truly being innovative and Agile, there may be a small percentage of environments that are actually spun up for production use. Finally, the owners of these seed-environments should not be punished, but commended. This is what keeps companies alive, kicking and competing with the dorm rooms ready to redefine any and all industries.

Does your company have this figured out? Let others know in the comments below.

OH S*&% Is My Business Reliant on Facebook?

2011-02-01T23:33:00.018-06:00

We use Facebook to promote our brand and enable more meaningful customer interactions. It's been sweet. But what about those situations that aren't so sweet? Can it handle the bads as well as the goods?

My Facebook account recently got hacked by some 419 scammers, and through Facebook IM, these turkeys contacted some of my friends asking them for money claiming my family and I were mugged in London and needed them to wire some money. Thankfully, no one fell for it. One of my friends reported the conspicuous activity to Facebook and they quickly disabled my account.

After I realized what happened, I filled out Facebook's re-enablement form. That was over two weeks ago. I've filled out the form two more times since and I haven't received any correspondence back from them. . .Boohoo, right?

But here's the deal. Facebook is a big communication platform, not just for me, but for my business. My company has a very active Facebook page (facebook.com/solsticeconsulting), of which I am one of the administrators. We post all of our events through that channel, cross promote them through our personal Facebook networks and get a lot of attendees to our events from our Facebook "friends". Thankfully there are other administrators besides myself for our company page, but what if there wasn't?

I also use my network on Facebook to crowdsource feedback on some of our ideas for our business. For example, we're launching a product development arm of our company and I wanted some feedback on our logo competition. I love tapping my Facebook friends for candid feedback on stuff like that. Cross industry, honest, multi-demographic, no-holds-barred-feedback-from-that-girl-in-high-school-that-never-gave-you-the-time-of-day, it's a gold mine of great reactions. But I was locked out and couldn't use it. Sure I tapped LinkedIn, but those guys' feedback is blah. It's two different contexts and conversations. Facebook gives me a more candid market reaction.

So what gives? I've filled out that re-enablement form three times now without so much as an auto-reply back that they got my request. In the meantime I've coincidentally gotten a (no-reply) email notification that our Facebook Ads credit-card on file is going to expire in two months. Sorry, can't update that Mark Z, I'm locked out of my account.

At the end of the day that's bad business. Facebook isn't a garage-band start-up anymore. Their valuation tops Amazon.com in some circles. Could you imagine Amazon not replying to an account lockout problem? And what if I was a small business owner (or a marketing department) and I was the sole administrator on my company's Facebook page? Social Media Life Lesson: Make Sure You Have More Than One Admin for Your FB Company Page

Hackers are a problem, and they are going to migrate to where the people are (Windows, Facebook, eBay, Craigslist and the like). But their infiltration should not impede the power-users of those platforms. The power users are the lifeblood of making these networks continue to grow and proliferate purpose beyond their original intention.

Zuckerberg, if you're listening, crank up the customer service. It's a big shop now, and although I'm not expecting a 1-800 number to call, there does need to be some attention made to your most active constituents; to breed confidence that the platform is not only some place to share videos of my kid eating Cheerios, but getting some business done as well. We're promoting your platform as a business-enablement tool, I need you to stand behind it.

Locking out hacked accounts is not the answer to solving your hacker problem. The answer is building in better fore-front security and secondarily, providing a simple means for a real user to re-enable their account, and quickly re-gain access to the personal (and business) content they trusted with you in the first place.

In the meantime, follow me on Twitter (@jschwan).

-J

An iPad App Is Not a "Big" iPhone App

2010-12-22T06:37:00.023-06:00

As the iPad user base matures, a useful iPad app will need to look and act very differently than it's iPhone sister app. Many developers are missing the boat on this. Although the development skillset needed to build these apps are very similar, the user experience and design considerations are very, very different.

By nature of the smaller 320 x 480 screen, the iPhone (or any smartphone for that matter) is geared towards goal-based actions: check the weather; approve a workflow request; browse headlines; check your flight status; record a call-report for a customer; etc. The iPhone fits easily in your pocket or purse, so it's ideal for these quick hits of productivity. Because of it's small size however, it's not ideal for reading lengthy articles, doing in depth analysis or researching on the web.

The 1024 x 768 screen size reverses the purposefulness of the iPad (or any tablet for that matter). Given it's size, you can't carry it in your pocket and therefore it is decidedly less convenient than your phone for these goal-based activities. However, it's high resolution screen, light weight and ergonomic design make it ideal for pulling it out on the train/plane/cab/couch to do some research on the web, reviewing your call center statistics, responding to an email or drilling into some corporate business intelligence reports.

So after we build an iPhone app for a client and they ask, "How much to port it to the iPad", the answer is typically, "well not much if we utilize the same design and information architecture, but do we really want to do that?"

The use cases for the two devices are different, and although there inevitably will be some cross pollination of features between the two apps, some thought needs to be given to what makes sense on the respective devices. Or, at a minimum, what prominence is given to which features in the navigation.

Take Amazon for example. Their iPhone app includes some nifty camera features like scanning a barcode to trigger a search or taking a picture of a product you see to remember it for later.

Now granted, an iPad doesn't have a camera (yet) but even if it did, it's not optimal for performing on-demand actions.

Conversely, the Amazon iPad app puts Today's Deals as a main navigation item, something that someone on an iPhone is probably not going to be as interested in.

If a user visits the Amazon app on their phone, they've probably got a product in mind. If they visit it on the iPad, they may be more apt to browse these deals.

Content layouts and navigation in general also need to be modified to take advantage of the larger screen real estate. For example, the simple iOS tab bar navigation on the iPad, in many cases, fails to do the app justice on a 1024 x 768 screen. Both ESPN's ScoreCenter and Bloomberg's market research apps do a nice job of presenting integrated content feeds on their iPad's home screens, along with different navigation models than their corresponding iPhone apps'.

Bloomberg iPad vs. iPhone

ESPN ScoreCenter iPad vs. iPhone

So keep the different mobile use cases in mind when launching into the iPad world, and leverage the capabilities of the respective devices. Your apps will be "stickier" and your users will thank you for it.

Attention CIOs: Four Reasons Why You Should Allow Personal Smart Phones on Your Networks

2010-10-15T19:12:00.008-05:00

I've been hearing a consistent murmur from my CIO friends about the pressures they are getting to support personal mobile devices (iPhones, Droids, iPads, etc.) on their networks. This is obviously a request that needs to be given it's due diligence; but I'm going to suggest that responding with, "We don't support that" and burying your head in the sand, is NOT the right answer. Also, those that are looking at one device at a time (i.e. we're thinking of supporting the iPhone) are going to find themselves in an endless cycle of analysis as the number of mobile devices continue to increase and the market share of these devices continues to rapidly change (Android is now the leader and it didn't exist 2 years ago).

Here's why you need to support personal mobile devices on your corporate network:

1) Your Peers Are Doing It
I'm not a follow the herd kind of guy, but understandably, some conservative CIOs are, so here's a nugget. A recent study by Aberdeen showed that 73% of companies are allowing some or all employees to use personal mobile devices at work. 8% plan to allow all employees personal device access in the next 12 months. This is going to continue to increase (not decrease), I guarantee it. Do you require corporate assigned PCs in employee's homes to access your VPN?

2) Your Best Employees are Asking For It
I'm willing to bet that your most productive employees are the ones asking for personal device support. They realize that the mobile channel allows them to do their job more efficiently and they know they'll be more efficient if they can have personal and corporate data on one device. That's why they are asking for access. Not to cause you headaches, but to be more efficient. Also, this allows them to pick a device based on their needs. Not everyone wants last year's sh*tty Blackberry, and similarly not everyone needs an iPhone 4. Let them decide.

3) It Will Save Your Company Money
Your best knowledge workers are already buying smart phones for their personal lives. Allow them access to your corporate data and you just saved yourself from having to buy them a work-specific device. Just give them a stipend every two years for a new device. Oh, and just because they use a personal device for work doesn't mean you have to pay their entire cell phone bill. Give them a fixed monthly allowance (i.e. $40) for voice and data use. This will make 99% of your employees happy and save you a ton on mobile contracts. Your other 1% making daily calls to the UK or India can get on a different plan.

4) Security Ain't That Hard
For many companies (and I acknowledge this isn't true for all), you need very basic security features to protect your organization; namely password protection on the phone and remote wipe capability. All major smartphone OSes support these capabilities. Also, require your employees to register their personal devices if they want to use them for corporate data access. This allows you to provide selective access to your Exchange Active Sync and Blackberry Enterprise Servers without having to open them up to the world. Some enterprise software vendors like Mobile Iron and Trust Digital make it even easier to monitor and remotely administer/wipe any lost or stolen mobile devices accessing your network.

Supporting personal mobile devices, in a controlled manner, is going to make your workforce more efficient and ultimately save you headaches (and reduce the slips in the "Complaints" box). As the number of mobile devices and capabilities continue to diverge, a well thought out policy with proactive registration and minimal security will keep your employees happy, and your data safe.

Got other tips or a differing opinion? Use the comments below!

Building A Business Case for Mobile: Some Interesting Trends

2010-09-20T23:28:00.025-05:00

While the necessity of a mobile channel used to be considered a nice-to-have, it is quickly becoming a necessity. Here are some recent stats to help drive your business case.

First let's look at Mobile Subscriptions versus traditional information consumption devices:

Mobile subscriptions are on track to hit 5 Billion worldwide this year. That means more people will have access to data through their mobile device than through TV and PCs combined.

Here are some other interesting drivers:

Data surpassed voice in mobile traffic in December of 2009 – Ericsson
Data traffic globally grew 280% during each of the last two years and is expected to double annually over the next five years - Ericsson
Mobile search increased by over 400% in the last 12 months – Google

These stats show that people are starting to look to their mobile devices less as voice devices and more as data consumption devices (i.e. PCs). Google's latest stat about mobile search increasing 400% in the last 12 months demonstrates the trend that folks are going to their mobile devices FIRST to find information. Where we used to think of the cell phone as the 'third screen' people use to find answers, behind TV and the PC, it is quickly becoming people's 'first screen'.

Some may argue most phones out there aren't mobile web or app friendly. Take a look at web/app-friendly smartphone adoption in the US:

Smartphones are on track to eclipse basic/feature phones by next year in the US. That means more people are going to be able to access the mobile web and mobile apps than ever before and will look to those channels to provide them information about your business.

Are you a B2B company? Consider this:

The world's mobile worker population will pass the one billion mark this year and grow to nearly 1.2 billion people – more than a third of the world's workforce by 2013 – Gartner
The United States has the highest percentage of mobile workers in its workforce, with 72.2% of the workforce mobile in 2008. The U.S. will remain the most highly concentrated market for mobile workers with 75.5% of the workforce, or 119.7 million workers, being mobile in 2013 – IDC

With the acceleration of mobile internet and mobile applications, there is strong recognition that mobility isn’t just mobile email. It’s about anything and everything needed to support doing business on the go.

Are you ready? Now is not the time to stick your head in the sand. It's not expensive to get your website "mobile friendly" if you're working with the right vendor. And building an iPhone, Blackberry or Android app can definitely give you a competitive advantage for your savvy mobile customers.

TITM Interview on Mobile and the Cloud

2010-08-31T18:56:00.010-05:00

I'll be speaking at http://www.techinthemiddle.com on September 11th. Highlights from my interview with the conference coordinators appear below. I hope to see you all there!

August 30, 2010: Take 4: Q&A with J Schwan - J Shares His Take on the Future of Mobile and Cloud Computing.

J Schwan is the Mobile Technology Practice Partner at Solstice Consulting, one of Consulting Magazine's 2010 Seven Small Jewels.

TiTM: Why did you choose to focus on technology/software for your career choice? Was there a defining moment when you just knew that this is what you wanted to do?

J Schwan: I went to college in the late 90s and the advent of the web. The aspect of connecting people and opening lines of communication that didn't exist before really interested me. I've spent my career exploring those capabilities and building systems that I feel genuinely have made people's lives easier. Whether it's a business or a personal system, it's a great feeling to build a tool that helps improve someone's day.

TiTM: What are some trends you are seeing right now and where do you see the mobile and/or cloud spaces evolving within the next year?

J Schwan: For the cloud I think the services will start converging. As more mission critical information begins to be stored in the cloud, individuals and companies are going to be more concerned about the viability of the service provider. Similar to other utilities, I think we'll end up with a couple large players, with some level of government regulation. This may not be in the next year, but it's where it's headed.

For mobile I think the technologies will continue diverging in the near future. We're just on the brink of understanding the capabilities of these devices, and I'm not sure the OS battle has even started yet. Just look at Android's market share in under 2 years! As the mobile technologies continue to diverge, companies need to be smart about where they make their mobile investments.

TiTM: What would you say is the current state of the Chicago tech community?

J Schwan: It's OK. I think we have a lot of knowledge and passion coming out of our university system but I think the investor community is weak. Luckily with the introduction of mobile and cloud technologies, the necessity for tech startups to require large up front capital is decreasing.

TiTM: Tell the Tech in the Middle Audience something interesting about yourself that isn't included in your biography.

J Schwan: First programming experience came at the age of 8 building a game (shark chasing a turtle) built in Basic on the Commodore 64.

High Performance Mobile Apps - "It's all TCP/IP, Brother"

2010-08-14T12:38:00.017-05:00

I started my career at a Big 4 consulting firm in the mid-90s. First year analysts at the firm were referred to as “green beans” and boy was I green. Educated as a Materials Science Engineer and without any real programming education in college, I had a lot to learn and I had to learn it fast. I was also lucky enough to be part of an emerging technology group called the Internet Center of Excellence or "ICE".

With the retail adoption of the Internet, companies were investing heavily to get their first generation websites off the ground. At the same time, internet technologies were changing rapidly with very little standardization; which equated to our group working our butts off trying to get dot-com and brick-n-mortar sites launched on rickety app servers, poorly performing databases, 10 MB networks and limited, expensive, hardware.

Needless to say, our biggest problems were usually around performance. Each and every problem was unique, sometimes having to do with the App Server waiting for a database call, a Web Server waiting for an App Server to finish processing or a web browser waiting for some HTML to be downloaded. There was never a silver bullet to these problems, but as a trained engineer, I had a pretty good knack for using the scientific method to isolate variables and determine what the route causes were, so I got assigned a lot of the performance problems to debug.

I was an applications guy and I would work with the guys on the infrastructure side to figure stuff out. One day I was racking my brain on a particularly tough performance problem. We were working on a large greeting card company’s e-Commerce site and the ‘Checkout’ function was taking forever. The lead infrastructure engineer on our team was a guy by the name of Garren Du. Garren was a cocky, but likeable, New Yorker who was very smart and swore a lot. He always seemed to have a can of soda in his hand and wore a sly smile on his face when he talked, often making brash statements, hoping to strike up a good-natured argument. Garren was one of the more senior guys on the project (and when I say senior, I mean like, 25). Being a 22-year old green bean I looked up to him and thought him wise beyond his years. Turns out, he actually was.

Struggling with a particularly tough issue, trying to figure yet ANOTHER application server, I asked Garren, “How do you keep up with the Internet technology changing so fast? It makes it so hard to pinpoint problems. Every project is a different database, a different app server a different web server. It’s impossible to know it all!”

His response was simple, “It’s all TCP/IP, brother.”

I wasn’t shy about my greenness in those days, “What’s TCP/IP”?

“It’s a standard networking protocol, it’s the way all this data is packaged up and sent flying around the network and the Internet. I don’t care what the server is, call it what you want, Informix, Blue Martini, BroadVision. It’s all the same sh*t. It’s just TCP/IP man. I can write a shell script in Unix, pop open a TCP/IP socket connection and do the same thing that any of those overpriced software packages claim to do.”

“Yeah, but how’s that going to help me fix these performance problems?” I asked.

“Because it’s simple man. SMALL DATA. Small data means fast performance. You keep your data small, your application is going to be quick. You got big data, you got big problems.”

“OK well how do I keep data small?”

“Small and infrequent queries to your database. Getting only what you need. Small content output from your app server so it doesn’t take forever to get to the web server. Small images on your webserver and small includes on your web pages, so it doesn’t take forever to download stuff. And here’s the other thing. Keep the data close to your end users. The further away data is, the longer it’s going to take to get it to them. It’s simple physics man. If the data is on the web server, it'll be fast; if it has to go to the app server, slower; back to the DB, slower; to some other external systems, SLOWER. So you've GOT to cache that sh*t, on every tier. Limit that TCP/IP traffic. . .But not too much or you’ll f*ck up your memory.”

Garren was smiling, while my head was spinning, Garren said, “You can comb through that code for hours looking for the needle that’s causing those problems. Me, I packet sniff the network stream and I can tell you exactly why something is slow. It’s big data man.” He smiled, knowingly. “Now come on let’s go get a coke.”

Garren's simplistic view of the Internet holds all the more true for mobile applications today. Now more than ever, we’re dealing with limited hardware (cell phones), limited network speed (cell networks) and rickety new technology (iOS, Android, etc.). So how do we deal with it? Keep it small, brother. There's a million manifestations or practical tips on this, here are a few of my favorites:

Limit the download footprint of your mobile web pages/services by minifying the whitespace in your code. Don't include content that is not going to be displayed or used. This includes heavyweight javascript libraries or irrelevant CSS files.
Limit your use of cookies. Cookies get transferred with every request/response. That's extra data being transported over TCP/IP that probably isn't being used.
Avoid redirects in your codebase. Redirects cause additional TCP/IP roundtrips between the client and the server. They're brutal over slow connections.
Batch your data requests. Limit the amount of times you need to go back to the database for any given page or service. This can apply to the front end as well by using CSS sprites instead of having individual images downloaded. That's less data being downloaded in fewer TCP/IP trips.
Cache cache cache. Use Cache Control headers on your services to your advantage, and use the power of the internet to cache relevant parts of your app. If you want more details, read this. And cache on other tiers as well. Use HTML5 DOM Storage to cache information locally in the browser. Pre-generate dynamic content asynchronously and store it on your web server instead of having your app server generate it on-demand everytime. Store common database queries in your app server's application scope, and share it amongst users. Limit that TCP/IP traffic!

Regardless if you're building mobile apps, or web apps, or client server or Minority Report apps, this premise will always hold true. Keep it small. It's all TCP/IP Brother. Big Data means Big Problems.

Let's help each other out and put some other performance tips and tricks in the comments below, eh?

Happy coding,

-J

Mobile Apps: Make Your Users More Awesome

2010-08-02T23:16:00.023-05:00

So out of the 239,000+ apps in the App Store (and 48,000+ publishers), active iPhone users download roughly 10 apps/month and launch an app fewer than 20 times before discarding it. What's going to make yours stick? How are you going to make your icon worth clicking on after you've gotten them to download it? The answer: Make your users more awesome (or at least more interesting). Give them a reason to mention your app when they are asked "What new apps you got?" To do this, understand that mobile users are looking for apps that provide one of three things:

1) A utility to get things done (quickly)

2) An answer to a question in a local context

3) Something to entertain their ego while they are waiting for something else

Your app should fit into one of these three scenarios. If it doesn't, it's probably not going to make the 20+ opens mark. For some examples, let's focus on one industry that all of us deal with in a mobile context - Banking.

A Utility to Get Things Done Quickly

Don't wait to release your app until it does everything. Start with building one polished feature that makes someone's mobile life easier and get it out there. Ask your users for feedback on additional features they would like to see and deliver on the demand over time. But first and foremost - stop spinning. Build a utility first - not an app.

Here's a good banking utility example - Chase. Chase allows it's users to take a picture of a check and deposit it through their app.

That is awesome. It's a mobile use case that saves its' users minutes (if not hours) a week. Forget the balance lookup or any of that other me-too stuff. I would use this app if the mobile check deposit feature was the only function it provided. That feature makes a user awesome. I envy Chase customers because of this feature.

Answer a Question in a Local Context

Mobile users are on the go and are more-often-than-not looking for local information. For a (non-banking) example check out Do I Need an Umbrella Today. Click the icon, it comes up with a yes or no answer. Local, simple, meaningful.

I'll give you a bad banking example - Citibank. I have been a Citibank customer for 15 years. I like the bank, but I always have to hunt for a Citi ATM. I want an app that allows me to quickly find a nearby Citi ATM. I'm a pretty technical guy, but I have yet to be able to get Citi's iPhone app to work for me. It requires some convoluted registration on their mobile site (which I have completed) and it still doesn't work (until I call Citi support?). The bigger question is, why do I need to register to find an ATM? Make life easy for your users on the go. Only require security on information that needs to be secure.

Something to Entertain The Ego

OK, so your user is in line, on the train, waiting for a meeting to start, etc. "Entertain me, clown!" Unless you are a game developer you have some stiff competition. My suggestion - let them check their ego. People love checking their self-worth while they are bored (i.e. comments on their Facebook wall, LinkedIn connection requests, experience points on the social RPG game du jour, etc.). In the enterprise it's opportunities in the pipeline, forecasted sales bonuses, KPIs they are managing. So what information do you have that appeals to a user's ego? Provide it to them in a mobile context and they'll use it.

In the banking context Mint allows users to aggregate all their accounts so they can get a simple snapshot of their net worth. Their iPhone app provides a solid interface to this information.

I would change it slightly by proactively polling and aggregating account balances so they are available instantly (albeit delayed), instead of performing the sync on launch of the app, but the premise is solid. Show me my chops based on the latest stock tickers.

At the end of the day, the focus of apps needs to be on limited features in a mobile context. Find a utility that adds immediate value and get it out the door quickly. Provide a channel that allows mobile users to request additional features. Make your users part of your mobile product development. They won't steer you wrong.

Comments, experiences and perspectives below are always appreciated.

A Tale of Two Tailors - An Outsourcing Fable

2010-05-21T20:06:00.024-05:00

This is a follow up post to my recent blog on Domestic Agile Teams vs. Waterfall Offshore Teams.

I'm going to tell you a story about two textile factory workers, Oscar and Albert. About 40 years ago, Oscar and Albert worked for a regional clothing manufacturer. Both were good at their jobs and were well-liked by their managers, albeit for different reasons.

The managers liked Oscar because Oscar was FAST. As the clothing made it’s way down the assembly line, Oscar could stitch two pieces of material together faster than anyone else in the factory. He took the patterns that were given to him without question, kept his head down and pushed product through his station quicker than anyone else in the factory. His quality was good, better than most in fact, and his percentage of defects rivaled those of anyone else on the line. He consistently received praise from management for his speed, efficiency and relative quality ratings. Oscar really didn’t care if the clothing item he was building sold well, that wasn’t his problem, he was there to stitch together material, and he was going to do that better than anyone else in that factory.

The managers liked Albert because Albert was SMART. Albert could also stitch material together quickly, although not quite as quickly as Oscar. But the reason they really liked Albert was because he thought a lot about the work he was doing. After Albert was given a clothing pattern to work off of he would think of ways he could make it better. Sometimes he would come up with ideas on how to change the pattern to make the assembly line flow better, or he would suggest design changes to the pattern if he thought it would make a better selling clothing item. The managers loved Albert since his recommendations increased the overall productivity of the line and also helped to increase client satisfaction on the items that were being produced.

In the fall of 1971 The Company decided that it was going to outsource the manufacturing of its clothing to Bolivia. The cost of textile manufacturing labor was much cheaper in Bolivia and, with the advent of new technology, the act of stitching textiles together had become somewhat commoditized.

Oscar went to his bosses in disbelief. “How can you do this? There is no way those Bolivians can stitch clothes together as quickly as I can. I’ve been doing this for 20 years! Those guys are just learning this stuff. Not just that, their quality is terrible! Look at their defect rating, almost a third of their product is throw away work!” The managers listened to Oscar, and were sympathetic, since he was such a good worker. But alas they said, “You’re right Oscar, you are faster and build better quality product, but the bill rates of those resources are so low, that even with the slower speeds and poorer quality, we’re still saving money.” Oscar was furious. He went to work for another factory, where he was once again the fastest, but alas, that factory eventually moved offshore as well and Oscar was out of another job.

Albert took a different approach when he got the news. “I really do love stitching clothes together, but I’m never going to compete with those Bolivian prices, no matter how fast I work.” Instead of going to work for another factory, Albert opened up a tailor shop, where he built custom garments for customers that had very specific needs, that could not be attained on an assembly line. Some customers would come to Albert with specific designs in mind and he would give them other ideas on how to make the items even more appealing. The customers loved Albert's ideas and his work.

Albert went on to start designing his own clothing, coming up with new patterns and styles that the world had never seen. His ability to design great clothing items did not go unnoticed, and his products sold for a premium. There was no way that his ideas and creativity could be replicated by an assembly line, and people paid a premium for them. Sure, a lot of customers still went to the Bolivians to mass produce clothing items, but if they wanted something special, something that no one else had, they went to Albert. He quickly became rich designing some of the most beautiful garments in the world.

__________________________________________________________________

Outsourcing application development in the new economy is not something new. Companies have been adopting the model at various rates and for various reasons for the past 20 years. Application developers are being forced to make a decision on how they are going to remain relevant and differentiate themselves from their offshore competition.

I see a lot of Oscars and Alberts in my industry. Oscars are still able to find work, for now, since not everything is being sent offshore and people like fast developers. Oscars like the waterfall model because it suits them and it plays to their strengths. They get the requirements, they don’t ask many questions, and they build exactly what their managers want as quickly as possible. Oscars never complain. But Oscars also don't care if end-customers like the software product or not. That’s not their problem. They are there to code, and they are going to do it faster and with better quality than any Bolivian ever could.

But Alberts are the ones that are really making a place for themselves in today's economy. Alberts don't differentiate themselves through speed but through innovation. Like Oscars, Alberts love to code, but they like being part of the product solution, not just a cog in the wheel. Alberts like to take the product owner's ideas and expand on them, give them alternatives, demonstrate progress and ask for feedback. Alberts like to build wonderful products, products that truly give their company an advantage over their competition. And because they prefer to work collaboratively and with shared accountability with their product owners, Alberts utilize Agile methods to build those things faster and with better quality than a whole slew of Bolivians ever could.

Remember, all of our clothes may be manufactured in China, or Indonesia, or wherever the low cost labor provider du jour is; but the designs, the trends, the thought leadership is coming out of New York or Los Angeles or Paris.

Are you an application developer? Do you love coding and want to continue developing software for the foreseeable future? Then you have a very important decision to make on how you're going to differentiate yourself from your offshore competition. Are you just going to be a better "coder" or are you going to be an engineer, an innovator, a competitive advantage? Are you going to be an Oscar or an Albert? Our country needs Alberts. And by the way, if that's your chosen direction, we're hiring.

-J

Domestic Agile Teams vs. Offshore Waterfall Teams

2010-04-29T00:40:00.012-05:00

Many companies are struggling to figure out how and when to utilize low cost offshore labor in relation to domestic engineers for building applications and engineering new hardware platforms. Here's your answer.

There is a popular chart referred to as the Stacey Matrix:

(www.communityoutcomes.govt.nz)

The premise is this: If a project has a combination of low technical complexity (the technology is well known and proven by the organization) and low social complexity (the solution being pursued has functional and political consensus amongst all stakeholders involved) then it is a candidate for predictive development. Predictive development means waterfall. Define requirements, ship it to some commoditized labor force, get it back, validate it and deploy it.

There are many projects that fit into this bucket; however, less than many people realize. Social complexity in particular, creates change in many cases, and the cost involved with introducing change in predictive/waterfall projects often negates any cost savings gained by a commoditized labor force. I've seen it all too often. Timelines are extended, the business gets frustrated and any pursued cost savings are negated by the cost of extending an onshore management team and/or losing time to market.

On the other hand, if a project is complex from a technical perspective, i.e. utilizing new or emerging technologies; or from a social perspective, i.e. "we'll know it when we see it", or "the solution may change as external influences come into play", it is NOT a good candidate for predictive methodologies/offshore development. The reason being that communication is the key factor in the success of these type of engagements. In these cases, a domestic approach is necessary. And to truly embrace change (vs. challenging change) an Agile method is preferred.

An offshore, predictive development team can be equated to a military force of tanks barreling into a battle. In this case the goals are often set and the opposing forces are known.

An Agile team can be equated to an elite strike-force of Navy Seals or Army Rangers that drop into an unknown territory with less initial direction, less manpower and hopefully, less casualties.

There are times when one approach makes more sense than the other. The only way the tanks are successful is if the goals do not change and they are managed by a remote commander broadcasting the mission directives. The only way the strike-force is successful is if they are in constant, direct contact with one another, and the person dictating the mission is with them on the ground.

There is not one single sourcing/methodology solution to every IT problem. The Stacey Diagram factors must be considered, so the right team and the right methodology is put in place to solve the problem at hand.

What are your experiences?

How to Increase Your Productivity by 250%

2010-04-17T10:32:00.008-05:00

This post was guest written by Zeke Camusio. Zeke runs the Internet marketing agency, TheOutsourcingCompany.com. If you want a lot of work done in a short amount of time, I suggest you contact Zeke.

Five years ago I was working 12-hour days. I started studying productivity principles because I wanted to get more done in less time (who doesn't?)

Now I never work more than 6 hours per day and I get so much more done than before! I want to share with you the tips that took me from where I was five years ago to where I am now.

Do ONLY What's Really Important

Ask yourself, "what is my main goal?" At any given moment there are two or three things that will get you closer to that goal. Those are your priorities. That's what you should work on. Go through your to-do list and eliminate all those items that aren't very important. And no, organizing your music library is not important. You can put all the irrelevant items on a separate list; I call this list "Maybe One Day".

Learn to say no. Most people -myself included- want to please everyone. Don't do it. Say no more often.

Don't Do the Urgent Before the Important

Let's say you're working on a very important proposal that is due on a week and you need to return a DVD today. Finish the proposal and pay a late fee for the DVD. Remember: do what's important first.

Avoid Multitasking

Once you've figured out what your top priority is, work on it and don't let anything interrupt you. I let calls go to voice mail, I asked my co-workers not to send me text messages or instant messages and I disabled email notifications. I start doing something and I don't do anything else until I'm done.

Don't multi-task; "single-task" instead.

Good Enough Is Good Enough

Most things don't need to be perfect. If the letter you just printed doesn't have symmetric margins, don't print it again. Use the one you have and move on. If your website color isn't the right one, who cares? Leave it as it is and focus on bringing in more clients. Good enough is good enough. Get things done fast and move on. You can always correct or improve something if necessary.

Break It Down

Almost every time you find yourself in front of a project you don't know what to do about, it's because you haven't broken down the project into smaller pieces. Let's say you need to find vendors for your new business. That's overwhelming! Let's break it down:

1. Do a Google search for "wholesale chocolate supplier".

2. Find 50 companies and gather their email addresses.

3. Make a list of things I want to ask them.

4. Write a template email.

5. Send the email to the 50 companies.

The 5 tasks above are really easy to do. Remember the old saying, "the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time."

Process Tasks in Batches

When you group similar tasks together, you save a lot of time. Make all your phone calls at once, process your emails together and run all your errands at once.

Use Parkinson's Law to Your Benefit

Parkinson's law says that things take as much time as you have available. If your boss asks you for a report by next Friday, you'll have it done by then. If he asks you for the same report by tomorrow, you'll finish it tomorrow. Having limited time to do something is a good thing. It means that we stick to the very crucial and don't worry about irrelevant details. Give yourself deadlines and meet them. For example, I have a limit of one hour per day answering email. That forces me to answer the very important email and I can use the rest of my day to create value for my clients. If I were to answer every email I get, I'd spend 6-8 hours per day just doing that.

Learn From Your Mistakes

When you find yourself wasting time, stop for a second and think about why you're doing it and how you can make sure it doesn't happen again.

Set Realistic Goals

There's no bigger morale killer than never achieving your goals. Set realistic goals and celebrate when you finish each day's to-do lists.

Rest

In order to chop down a lot of trees, you need a sharp axe. Spend some time sharpening your axe. Rest every time you need it, re-charge your energy levels and go back to work.

Should You Buy an iPad?

2010-04-09T10:40:00.017-05:00

So I've had my iPad for about a week now and I wanted to share my thoughts for those who are considering the purchase. Couple disclaimers:

1) I am a self-proclaimed Apple geek. I have an iPod/iPhone/MacBook/AppleTV and even a Hackintosh at home for the kids to bang on. I love Apple products. They just work.

2) I bought the iPad with every intention of returning it. I thought the concept was foolish and bought it merely out of curiosity and for the fact that we'll be building apps for it in the near future.

Executive Summary: I'm not returning it.

As I clicked the Apple Store Checkout-Button, I told myself that I would keep the iPad only if it could replace my Netbook. My Netbook is a $300 Asus EeePC. I use it purely for mobile computing. I crack it open on the train, on the couch, in meetings, etc. It is the smartest electronics purchase I have made in the past 10 years. It actually has made me more productive and my back has never felt better. The Netbook is great for pounding out emails, editing a Word document, scheduling appointments, or hooking it up to a projector for a presentation. In contrast, due to the small, low-fidelity screen and weak processor, it sucks for surfing the web, watching movies, reading long articles or playing games. It looks cheap. When I'm working on it I'm hunched over and awkward looking. I imagine I look similar to what Andre the Giant would look like working on a regular size laptop.

The iPad is the polar opposite of the Netbook.

It is a consumer device that is awesome for consuming content. Reading books on it is a pleasure. Better than a paperback. I am actually reading before bed again. Same goes with the newspaper. USA Today is giving away their app for free until July. It's a great way to read the paper; more convenient, intuitive and interactive. ABC has an app that allows me to watch any of it's television shows on demand (do you watch Modern Family? Hilarious). Netflix allows me to stream movies to it. Even attending meetings via GoToMeeting works great. VPNing into work from it and remote desktoping to my computer is a snap. The screen is beautiful. It's looks twice as sharp as the 1024*768 resolution it displays. It's a great way to show photos to friends. The (Flash-less) web looks awesome on it. Playing games on it is really fun (I do not think the same is true for the iPhone). The device is intuitive, fun to use and interacting with it feels natural (unlike a Netbook).

Producing content is another story. I cannot edit a Word document or a Powerpoint presentation on it. Not yet anyway. There are some apps that claim to do it but they all screw up the formatting, which I can't have. Typing on it sucks. Even with the larger keypad it's awkward and prone to fat-fingering. I'm getting better at it but I don't WANT to have to get better at it. Sure I can bluetooth a keyboard to it, but that's silly to me. It's a mobile computing device, I'm not going to carry around a keyboard. That means that reading emails and responding quickly is fine, but typing out longer ones isn't feasible. I could never write this blog on the iPad, it would take forever.

So in conclusion, the iPad has made me less productive. The productivity that I gained from actually getting work done on my Netbook has been replaced by me reading novels in bed, watching TV on the train, reading the paper on the couch (and writing this silly blog.) The only saving grace is that I find it perfectly acceptable to bring the iPad into the bathroom, where that would just seem weird with the Netbook. I can't explain why, but I won't dig into it since it's probably too much information already.

So go ahead, buy one. Make Steve happy/your spouse miserable. Let's get unproductive together. I need some folks to have the "Find any cool apps recently?" conversation with. I've found a slot in my briefcase for it where it seems right at home. I never thought I'd need this device, but I'm quickly realizing that Apple has once again redefined/recreated a market. I'm glad I bought it and returning it has not crossed my mind.

As always, please give me your thoughts below. You know I love talking about this stuff!

-J

Cloud Computing: Getting a Larger Audience

2010-04-01T16:24:00.008-05:00

This blog was guest written by Greg Hubbard. Greg is the Director of Application Development for Q Interactive, a Chicago based digital marketing services company.

In a previous post about Cloud Computing I discussed the barriers within technology that make it difficult to get a Cloud Computing prototype moving. After a small scale technology proof of concept has been done, the next step is to get something exposed to a non technology crowd and into production. How is this accomplished?

Show Value
Minimize Negative Impact
Get It Done Fast!

Show Value

Improving something intangible like user experience or department process unfortuately is not an attention grabber. We want someone to pay attention to what Cloud Computing can accompish and for this purpose numbers, especially ones related to money, are best
even when the numbers are relatively small. The idea is to walk into a meeting and say "We're going to replace four servers with a cloud solution. On the server replacement costs, warranty contract and data center charges we'll save $30,000. Not bad for a small test is it?" While large numbers are flashy, most companies could find uses for a suddenly available 30k like training or hardware replacement.

Minimize Negative Impact
When introducing something new, the goal is to not scare the natives. Abrupt change or changing something that people consider very important is difficult especially if that something is unstable. While an unstable application would seem like a good target, especially if you offer to fix a few problems, people would rather deal with the sometimes working devil they know than the devil in the Cloud that they do not. Also, don't use a system or application that has a large monetary loss if it is unavailable or does not work as you expected. If downtime for a specific application costs hundreds of dollars per minute, find something else. People are very cautious about making changes to systems with expensive downtime and rightly so. Most companies have internal applications that have grown important enough to support and make redundant, but not so important that if it were down for an hour it would cause a problem. That's the application to find and use.

Get it done fast

Everyone likes to improve, re-engineer or re-imagine. However when you open the improvement door to change the proverbial "just one thing", scope creep and its associated delays begin. Changes to existing functionality require extensive development time and significant amounts of quality assurance. A better approach, that takes much less development and QA time is to merely move an existing application. You want someone to say "What do you mean the TPS system is in the cloud, it looks the same!" The other benefit to getting it done fast is that by the time someone wants to weigh in on, control or attach their own agenda to your test, you're done.

While it is always nice to make a big splash when trying new technology, it is better to quickly do something valuable to the company while minimizing risk. This gives you a success on which to build.

Mobile Web Development Tips and Tricks

2010-02-26T14:25:00.017-06:00

Watch a brief presentation on 30 practical tips around context, performance, design, security and portability of mobile web applications. This presentation was recently given at Day of Mobile and BNC Chicago, and highlighted on the front page of SlideShare.com as one of the most frequently tweeted presentations. Both the slideshare slides and video of the presentation are available below.

Slides

Corresponding Video (15 minute version)

View more presentations from J Schwan

Augmented Reality - Unleash Your Enterprise's Sixth Sense

2010-02-23T21:54:00.016-06:00

Augmented Reality might seem like a futuristic word but the reality is it's a technology that is already available and the opportunities for the enterprise are endless. Now is the time to start thinking about how you can leverage it to better your corporation. This blog is going to give you some baseline education, some examples and ideas on how you can leverage this technology today.

First, what is it? Wikipedia defines it well but the jist is this: Augmented Reality is a combined view of the physical real-world with information from the virtual world (in most cases, the internet).

Yelp's "Monocle" functionality on the iPhone is a great practical example. It combines the iPhone's camera view, overlayed with a listing of local restaurants and bars. The information presented is based on the phone's GPS coordinates as well as it's compass reading. The short YouTube video below demonstrates this for those who haven't seen it.

Pretty cool, eh? This concept isn't unlike the yellow, First Down line we're used to seeing in NFL games. The line doesn't exist, it augments the physical view of the field based on information about the game in progress.

With the maturation of mobile devices, Augmented Reality (AR) offers additional information that you normally would not have available with your biological 5 senses. Combining a mobile device's eyes (camera), ears (microphone), location (GPS), orientation (compass), movement (accelerometer) and brain (data connection to the internet) a mobile device can provide you with essentially, a 6th sense.

And it doesn't have to be visual. The Shazam mobile application utilizes the phone's microphone (ears) and listens for music playing in the background. It then sends that information to the internet, which performs audio-recognition to determine the name of the song playing. The app then provides the user with the song title, artist, discography information and upcoming concert dates of the artist (based on your location of course).

Examples for the Enterprise

Now let's think of some examples for the enterprise. Let's say you're a sales representative visiting a client. As you near their building, you pull up your phone and launch your mobile AR-powered CRM app. The phone recognizes the building you are standing in front of and overlays it's view with a list of all customers who work in the building. You select your customer's name and are immediately presented with a consolidated view of relevant customer data, including recent call logs from your call center.
Perhaps you're heading to a meeting in your own building and the conference room you have scheduled is occupied. Do you barge in or wait it out? It really depends on who is on the other side of the door doesn't it? You pull out your phone, launch your conference room scheduling app and hold up the camera to the conference room name/number on the door. The app utilizes your phone's location and image recognition on the conference room sign, immediately presenting you with information on the current meeting taking place, including current participants. If you want to see other options, you click a button and it brings up other available conference rooms on the floor. You select one and it books your new reservation.
Perhaps you're in the corporate real estate group doing some location prospecting. You come upon a vacant building. Bringing up your AR-Powered Real Estate asset management application. It recognizes your location and provides you with a mash up of average lease rates/sq foot for the area, vacancy rates, demographic information about the population, etc.
There's a great app that already exists called RedLaser that uses the phone's camera to scan bar codes and presents the user with alternative merchants that sell the product on Google Product Search. Think about the applications for the retail industry with the availability of simple (cheap) bar code scanning functionality!

The point of AR is to be able to make decisions real-time. Historically, being on-line means you're off-life. You have to stop whatever it is you are doing and get to a computer, a computer which is incognizant of the world around you, to pull information about purchases, deals, hires, dates, etc. With AR, On-line no longer means on a computer. It means you're just "on". Imagine if you had the breadth of information available on the internet and your intranet with you all the time, everywhere you were, without a whole lot of squinty thumb typing and without any waiting. That is augmented reality.

Want some good news? It isn't that hard to build this stuff. The major smartphone's SDKs do most of the work in pulling the phone's "senses" information for you. That info combined with some open source image recognition projects, relatively commoditized OCR technology and your company's existing web services and ERP data stores, leaves only one question. What don't you want to do?

You know I love your comments. Share some ideas for the enterprise below and follow this blog. As we build these AR apps we'll be posting best practices, tips and tricks along the way.