Over the years we’ve developed a repeatable, efficient process for developing small to medium sized web sites. These web projects are usually completed in one iteration in about 2 to 3 months. The process we’ve developed involves considerable interaction with and feedback from the client throughout the project. We’ve broken up the project into 6 or 7 mostly overlapping phases:

Today we want to show off our favorite 30 programmers who have inspired and influenced so many people to become better programmers. Let us know who has inspired you to start and become a better programmer!

* * * 30 People Who Know Lots About Programming * * *

by Dr. John Sullivan

Last week I introduced this series by talking about how general business changes have rendered what many might consider traditional strategy development in talent management more of a hindrance to organizations than a benefit.

I did not say that strategy is not important, or that delivering a strategic impact is not important, but rather implied that how most organizations are approaching talent strategy today is out of touch with the times.

byDr. John Sullivan

In case you haven’t noticed, the economy has gone to hell.

It’s been up and down like a yo-yo for the last decade, a fact that led Time to declare the first decade of the new century “the decade from hell” in a recent cover story. If you work in talent management or HR, this yo-yo pattern certainly isn’t news to you. Surprisingly enough, it’s times like these that present the best opportunity to become more strategic as more managers open their minds to alternative solutions to improve productivity, save money, and move their organizations forward.

I read with interest this morning Dr John Sullivan’s article looking at how to survive in such turbulent economic times, his concept seems to be a play on the software development process Agile. To quote Wikipedia Agile software development is:

By Nenshad Bardoliwalla

In the wake of the long-running massive industry consolidation in the Enterprise Software industry that reached its zenith with the acquisitions of Business Intelligence market leaders Hyperion, Cognos, and Business Objects in 2007, one could certainly have been forgiven for being less than optimistic about the prospects of innovation in the Analytics, Business Intelligence, and Performance Management markets.  This is especially true given the dozens of innovative companies that each of these large best of breed vendors themselves had acquired before being acquired in turn.  While the pace of innovation has slowed to a crawl as the large vendors are midway through digesting the former best of breed market leaders, thankfully for the health of the industry, nothing could be further from the truth in the market overall.  This market has in fact shown itself to be very vibrant, with a resurgence of innovative offerings springing up in the wake of the fall of the largest best of breed vendors. So what are the trends and where do I see the industry evolving to?  Few of these are mutually exclusive, but in order to provide some categorization to the discussion, they have been broken down as follows:

While we are still in the first few weeks of the new year I through it would be good to look at come of the things you should focus on during 2010 to.

In no particular order here is my list of 10 things to do in 2010:

1. Insurance
The outsourcer should have adequate public liability insurance against loss or liability through injury or damage.
2. Third party suppliers
The arrangements as to which party (purchaser or outsourcer) will hold and which party will administer the terms of any agreements currently in place between the purchaser and other third party suppliers. It is advisable to transfer the Maintenance contracts to the outsourcer unless the outsourcer has agreed to provide maintenance services for all equipment and software.
3. Software licenses
Where third parties supply software used to provide outsourced services, the appropriate licenses must be obtained. Any licenses currently held by the purchaser that relate to services being provided may need to be extended to cover the activities of the outsourcer.

By Dan Blacharski

The outsourcing of software development to both offshore and onshore development centers has become widely accepted as a part of the business model of many companies. And while outsourcing software development creates efficiencies both in terms of time and money, it comes with its own set of concerns.

by Jay Philips

It is very important to make sure that your application functions as expected. There may be times that you add one little piece of code and all of a sudden other parts of the application no longer works. You may not have time/capacity to manually go back and regression test all the pieces of your application to make sure they are up to par. Companies use a variety of different testing tools for regression testing. There are lots of tools out there from very expensive to open source.

Below is a list of some open source/free tools that may come in handy.

Please keep in mind that every application is different so the tool you pick from one application may not be the same tool that you pick for another. My advice would be to pick a tool that can meet most of your current and near future needs.