Category: Software

What is the most underrated aspect of software development and why is it measurability?

by paul on December 1, 2016 0 Comments

Designing and developing software is complicated. I have heard there might even be a full industry gathering experts in this domain, and that it could be doing well. Not sure if it will ever be a thing. All joking aside, theories about the optimum way to approach software development are numerous and constantly evolving, which is excellent. Today however, I want to talk about an underrated concept, especially within the realm of software development: measurability. Despite online dictionaries results, I’m pretty sure I just made up that word, or at least the concept attached to it vis-a-vis software development, so let me define it.

What do you mean by measurability and why should I care about it?

Within the realm of software development, measurability can be catalogued in the same category as other transversal high-level concepts, that must be considered at each and every step of the development process, such as user experience, performance, scalability, re-usability and security. Measurability in this sense is the idea that each and every feature of you develop for your software can be measured for popularity and efficacy in order to ultimately evaluate its necessity. That is a lot of y-ending words, which should have convinced you already. Hoping it didn’t, let me explain you why it is important to consider. First, I believe that the importance of these types of high-level concepts does not need further justification: we have all witnessed software failures when their development ignored one of these key concepts, security being the one making the front page most often. The impact of measurability is more subtle but nonetheless crucial. Without measurability, decisions you make about feature prioritization or design become irrational. For instance, if you are developing an API that contains multiple methods of access, if you are unable to measure their popularity or efficacy you will end up with either features that are being costly maintained for no benefits to your end user or features that are massively used by necessity but incrementally building your end user’s frustration. This is a very simple example but it illustrate an underlying notion that we rarely see in the world of zeros and one: irrationality. Indeed, a piece of software is usually extremely rational and quantifiable, which makes evaluating performance, scalability, security or even re-usability a relatively easy mathematical problem. With the advent of software popularization we see user experience has been on the forefront of Agile development, making customer feedback a key piece of feature release. What I am proposing here is to go one step further. Whenever developing a feature for your software, one should ask himself: how will I know if this feature is necessary or not? How will I test for it?

Implementing measurability

Implementing measurability acknowledges the fact that you are operating in an uncertain environment, which inherently makes its implementation uncertain. That being said, a good starting point is to measure its use and performance and then compare it to the other features you develop. This measurement and analysis can be done using trace or audit mechanisms, which, bonus, you should implement anyway to cater to security. A more robust approach would be to first select the metrics you want to measure for each software feature and have a dedicated module to implement measurability over those metrics. You may think it’s an overkill but with the advent of scalable and cheap storage, why not do it?

Beyond software development

Big Data, monitoring, analysis data science, all of these concepts are design to increase the world’s measurability, and they are definitely what everyone talks about now. And while the idea of being data driven in any aspect of our lives, from corporate management to personal fitness, it has yet to really make an impact within the realm of software development, or at least the tools dedicated to measurability only are scarce. That being said, making rational decisions does not seem to be as appealing to me as it is for the rest of the world, which could explain this scarcity.

On the simplicity of experts systems

Software

by paul on October 28, 2016 0 Comments

Today I want to share with you an unfinished thought. Perhaps because I have been working non stop all week, perhaps because people keep complaining about apple correct strategy of fleshing out their devices’ design (remember how everyone complained when they removed the CD player?), or perhaps because I’m not sure I ever will reach a satisfying definite answer on the matter. At any rate, here is the question: what’s the optimal ratio simplicity/features of experts software systems?

The state of the art

If you’ve ever been in contact with someone who has to use a computer system beyond browsing the web or desperately trying to string 1000 words together the night the essay is due, i.e. had to work with any software at all from point of sale retail, to graphic design passing by cloud CRMs, you will notice a common thread: that piece of software is awful. These complaints usually boil down to one of these three categories: the software is either buggy, too complicated to use or missing functionalities. Leaving aside the unstable aspect inherent to the current process of software development, the other categories seem to be two ends of the same spectrum. And this is what keeps me up at night. Probably for 30 seconds, then it’s my kids crying.

Developing software in a customer is king world

Having worked for years for B2B software providers, where sales cycles are long, requirements are complex and clients must be satisfied, I can tell you that most of these pieces of software require training in order to be used to their full potential (which in part drives the sales through maintenance and support costs). In this world, roadmaps always add functionalities, new modules and new ways to customize a product. Ultimately, this renders the sales, delivery and support extremely complex (and why I have a job).

A new era of software delivery

However, in the recent years we have seen a new development with Software As A Service. Companies are limited to the SaaS current version’s functionalities. Because of the effectiveness of the cloud sales model and the centralized maintenance of these pieces of software it is much easier for software publishers to prioritize, consolidate and even drop features according to what clients are actually using. With SaaS, customization is often out of the question. Yet, more and more companies are moving to software as a service and have clear initiatives to simplify their current eco-system.

My dilemma

First, since when did dilemma lose its ‘n’? I digress. In all seriousness, and as I argued before I do believe that simplicity is key to software success. Thus, when do you decide to add functionalities to your software to respond to market demand? How do you ensure that this addition is not only relevant but it also does not throw away your user experience, brand and sales process? Ultimately, I think that finding this balance is really more art than science. And this is always going to bug my extremely rational mind.

3 essential features of the perfect software

by paul on October 7, 2016 0 Comments

I have recently been thinking quite a bit about what make a piece of software successful. Very early in my career, I got to temper my idealistic view of computer science and the world in general, quite well captured by the saying “you don’t have to be the best to be the first”. As I progress in my professional journey, I have been trying to identify key aspects that make a software go head and shoulders above their competitors or see a exponential growth in a niche of the market not exploited at the time. While it is most likely impossible to find the 3 magic words you have to pronounce to make the perfect software appear, I am still going to pretend I did this, for web traffic purposes, because I have no integrity. All bad humor aside, and for the sake of readability, I did try to funnel my thinking into 3 major aspects which, combined, are a successful piece of software. Quick aside: the purpose of this piece is not to dive into what technical aspect of a piece of software is valuable, but rather to present the software features to which the market responds positively. With that out of the way, let me present you the current state of my cogitation: the perfect software is:

SIMPLE

Simplicity is essential for the end-user to open their eyes. While the algorithms, architecture and other under-the-hood building blocks can and will most likely be complex, the idea here is to present something that is simple to understand. Simplicity can be driven by multiple factors. It could be for instance the front end of your application. This is why UI/UX is such a sought-after skill, and while it is predominant in the B2C industry it is severely underused in the B2B world. It could also be driven by the product packaging. If building a platform with many potential uses, packaging them into specific solutions recognized by the industry is a fair way to achieve simplicity. It could also be targeted: focusing on solving the problems of one vertical for instance.

NON-INTRUSIVE

This characteristic is epitomized by the success of cloud computing. Software As A Service particularly is the perfect example of non-intrusiveness being a successful business model: end users do not want to have to install and maintain software. It is an obvious cost reduction feat for big enterprises, it is just as much a reality for consumers: no one wants to have to install a software on their computer, and the ones we do install are the ones we hate the most (he who had no complaint about Microsoft Word cast the first stone). Even more interesting, web software like appointment booking, ticket sales and so on are considered websites and not pieces of software, but I digress. That being said, and as I argued as early as last week, SaaS isn’t the only model and non-instrusiveness can be characterized by other traits. Backward compatibly or maintenance of current set of existing skills and application is a great way to ensure a non intrusive model. One of the reason why I think disruption is nonsense, see previous rant.

ACTIONABLE

Being simple and non-intrusive are essential qualities, but your software must actually do something in order to be valuable. The important question here is: what’s in it for your user? What is the value? And I don’t think that a value proposition such as “we are doing it better than the others” is enough, nor is “imagine what you could do with that”. You need to be able to be able to show tangible results right off the bat, drive your customer through a story of what they will be able to do now that they weren’t able to do before. This feature is in my opinion one of the hardest and most often forgotten feature for a software to possess, especially put in relation with the other two. Indeed, innovation while maintaining non-intrusiveness could be seen as an oxymoron. In reality, the perfect unique innovative actionable value that of which no one thought before does not exist. That being said, many tech companies today start by building technical prowesses instead of focusing on creating value. My recommendation is to think about the value first, then focus on making the solution simple and non-intrusive, which is ironically why this article is written in the opposite order.

Conclusion

Can a piece of software truly possess all these qualities fully? Probably not, but at I think it is at least an ideal to strive for. As mentioned awkwardly at the beginning of this article, this is also a very preliminary assessment of my thought process. I do believe that if a piece of software possess a good balance of theses 3 features, it is set for success. More importantly, I think that these features should drive the development of new softwares. I know that I have a few ideas about what to develop, and I’m going to make sure to keep that in mind.

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