I ran across an article this morning that deserves a look if you are endeavoring to complete a software development project anytime soon.  In summary a study was conducted of 450 organizations to determine how efficient their requirements gathering was and how it affected the overall short and long term success of the software development effort.  IAG Consulting found that "One-third of expenditures on development projects are squandered by three-quarters of organizations, because they lack consistent requirements and discovery management processes."

As the article points out, a number of factors contribute to this problem but overall, those companies that employ and agile development methodology are more successful at delivering high quality, successful projects.  You can read the Redmond Magazine article here.

Something interesting is happening.  While touch screen technology has been around for a long time in the form of kiosks and food service seating or other niche applications, it seems to be ready for the masses.  With the iPhone, people are becoming accustomed to working sans mouse and using something that we learned as a child ... pointing with our fingers to elicit some action.  While it seems Apple is the only company out there with touch products, Microsoft has several tricks up it sleeve and one of them is code named Courier.  Courier looks to be a tablet type device (1st image below ... courtesy of Gizmodo.com) that will allow you to point, type, and use a stylus for a wide variety of applications. 

Microsoft Courier

Microsoft Windows 7 Touch on a Dell Lattitude

Microsoft Surface

Also, a lesser known technology of Microsoft's is Surface, a touch screen that comes in the form of a coffee table that provides multi-touch kiosk functionality.  This is still largely limited to vertical applications (i.e. retail, healthcare, public sector, etc.) but portions of its underlying technology were likely used in development of Courier.  Finally, Windows 7 is multi-touch capable.  A host of tablet-like devices are due out soon (read October) using this technology. 

What does all this mean?  We can start to expand on our conceptions of application interfaces in ways we never imagined.  At Adage, we have already begun experimenting with portions of the underlying technology and are excited about its potential.  Tablet applications that did not make sense before because they required a mouse, may be worth another look.

Lean IT/ software development has become somewhat of a hot topic as of late.  As the picture might otherwise suggest below, getting lean is not as easy as taking a pill. It takes practice and hard work.

While we have been following an Agile development methodology for some time now, we realized we were have been adhering to lean development principles for some time.  

As a result, Patrick Emmons, our professional services director, felt it would be helpful if we shared how we apply these principles to our development process. You can read the entire article here.

Windows 7 is scheduled to be released to the general public in October.  Fortunately, as a Microsoft partner, we have had access to the RTM (release to manufacturing) for some time now.  I have been using Windows 7 for almost a month and can say I have experienced no issues.  In fact start up and shut down times have been dramatically reduced (factor of 5?).  This is important for me because I bring my laptop everywhere.

The product works as promised.  We have begun the process of converting our developer machines from XP to Windows 7 (64 bit) allowing them to take advantage of memory that is well over the 4GB limit with XP.  All of or developers are running MS Office, Visual Studio, SQL Server, and a smattering of other development tools like TOAD for Oracle.  With all of these applications running, the memory can get gobbled up quickly.  The benefit is faster reponse time and quicker compiles for large Visual Studio projects.  If you are considering the change, I encourage you to make the leap ... this one is worth it.

Too often, we have people call us and ask (no joke), "I want a web application ... how much does something like that cost?".  This is akin to asking how much a house will cost without describing the number of rooms, bathrooms, garage, land, windows, square feet, light fixtures, etc.  However, software development is even more complicated.  A lot of questions need to be answered before the exact cost of a project can be known.  To best illustrate this, we often refer to the Cone of Uncertainty.  First discussed by NASA, it illustrates why in complicated projects, the true cost is not known until the project is complete.

In the beginning stages, the estimate can easily be off by a factor of 4x.  This means if you intend on getting estimates for development and the estimates range from $30,000 to $120,000 it is not abnormal.  Even when the requirements and user interface design is complete, the estimate can still be off by a factor of 25%.  Unfortunately, software development is a complex effort.  This is why we advocate smaller iterations and a more agile approach to application development.