Archive for Software Development
While I may be a little biased being a developer myself, I recently came across a tremendous article that basically illustrates what happens when software developers get pitted against project managers and they both feel in the right. The project managers lose their credibility with the engineers and it’s often downhill from there.
While I’d like to cater to my ego and say that developers are the rockstars while project managers are the band managers, I don’t think it’s quite that simple. Of course, each team is different and has different dynamics, so there are no universal truths.
However, with regards to the above article, ultimately, project manager has to have an in-depth understanding of the business rules, business goals and requirements, as well as an accurate understanding of technical practices, methodologies and restrictions.
I say accurate because that’s really what’s important. He or she doesn’t need to know the details of how changing an application to a new framework is a lot of work, just that it is. And when they’re unsure, they ask questions to get that accuracy. It would be perfect for the project manager to have enough of a technical background to be able to have that in-depth technical understanding, but nothing is truly perfect in this world. 
May 3, 2011
A recent post by Tim Peter about designing for a certain browser got me thinking about design and usability and the current state of the browser wars.
Tim argues that instead of looking at what the general market trends in browser usage is, you should look at what the usage of your users are. I completely agree with that sentiment.
Given the current state of modern browsers, however, there is very little reason that your website design and development can’t support the majority of browsers. There might be slight display issues in some cases, but the big hitters: IE7/IE8/IE9, Chrome, Firefox and Safari, are all relatively easy to support. Of course, there are occasional bugs here and there (I’m looking at you IE7) that require special attention (and often additional hair-pulling), there is little reason beyond working with some intense JavaScript or cutting-edge CSS3/HTML5 features that your website will not work in the above browsers.
Once that’s accomplished, it becomes a business decision how far you want to go to support less common situations or exotic browsers or antiquated browsers (hey, IE6). Just like how how much A/B testing you do becomes a business decision, how much cross-browser compatibility your company is going to pursue is also a business decision.
April 4, 2011
I recently read Nudge, a book that covered some really interesting cases of how people can be affected simply by the way a choice is presented to them.
In the case of software, this is a tremendous issue. How many people use the default theme in Chrome or Firefox? How many people have the grass background in Windows?
Those are certainly mundane examples that matter very little to a user, but there are certainly other cases where the default does change their experience. Take signing up for a newsletter, for example. Or getting notified when there are additional comments on a blog post. Those choices will greatly affect a user’s experience with that piece of software.
Much of Nudge discusses giving people the option to control their environment and what they want should they want to make an explicit choice. Otherwise, give them a default that will most likely work best for them and educate them about the possibilities out there and what’s available.
For software, do you make your default something that will make your company money right now? Or money in the long term? Or promote customer retention and recommendations?
Ultimately, those are business decisions. Though, personally, I think it’s always clear that those last goals go hand-in-hand.
March 30, 2011
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