Software Reviews

Best practices for software development projects

Keeping software development projects on track is harder than you might think. Overall, more than a third of all ventures fall apart before they are completed. Reasons for this include poor planning, not staying within the budget and missed deadlines. Following these tips will help you alleviate software development issues by applying good engineering principles.

Provide Good Leadership

A good project manager knows and understands the project and has the skills and knowledge to make it happen. Equally important is their ability to guide and motivate team members. That means they have to have good communication and listening skills, as well as an understanding of people in general. A good example of this is the importance a good coach makes to a football team; they can make or break the team. Unfortunately, the characteristics needed are not that common in project managers.

Plan the Project Properly

The planning stage involves breaking down the work into sections and assigning them to the programmers. It is also necessary to create a deadline for each phase of the project. Consultations with the software engineers will be necessary for setting deadlines and learning other needs for the project.

Everything that needs to be done and every step should be laid out precisely, as well as who is doing each task. Write these things in a formal plan and track them. Additionally, the planning should contain a backup plan in case something goes wrong.

Determine the Cost of the Project

All expenses need to be determined for the project. These include but are not limited to:

• Rent or lease for office space
• Electricity and other utilities
• Employee wages and other benefits
• Training expenses for developers
• Training expenses for customers
• Hardware, software and other development tools needed for the project Possible travel expenses

All of those things need to be determined before the project even begins. You can get software today that assists in determining the potential cost of a project. It is not foolproof, but it can give you a good idea of where the project stands financially.

Risk Management

Weigh all potential risks. Predicting, avoiding and controlling risk is crucial to the project.

This will require meetings and brainstorming sessions. Each potential situation needs to have a solution. Solving little things early prevents the failure of the project in the long run. It is impossible to anticipate all possible problems, but the more you can plan for, the better off the project will be.

Some things to consider when doing risk management include:

* Availability of the technology to do the project

* The hiring and loss of engineers – there are no guarantees because they may not be available, or they may not stay

* Test failures – what will you do if the tests fail? Have you allotted more time, money and resources for more testing?

Get User Feedback

After everything comes together and everything has passed the test, it is time to get user feedback. There are always bugs that developers do not catch and users seem to find them right away. Try to get feedback as the project is in progress. This will solve the issue of thinking you have a completed project only to have to go back to the proverbial drawing board.

If you are a designer interested in getting feedback on your design, InVision is a very useful resource.

There you can present apps, site demos, mock ups and wireframes and turn them into functional prototypes. This will give you the opportunity to present them to your clients for feedback.

Casing Design Program by an independant reviewer

The Casing Design Program is intended to cater to a wide variety of potential users for different types of casing design and like the other programs offered by this firm it is based on the MS Excel framework which means it is not only eminently usable but also entirely compatible with most systems on which you might want to use it. Casing design is of significant importance to all drilling operations so getting it right and adapting to your environment requires the right software tools and I believe that this particular program ticks all of the boxes.

Before you get started with the software it is obviously helpful to consult the user manual, even if you feel that you are fairly certain of what to expect from the casing design program having used similar packages in the past. Alternatively a good introduction to this software is provided on the developer`s site in the form of an instructional video presentation. This will help to train up those who are entirely new to the system and is also accompanied by a comprehensive video which instructs on how to import the data from a separate survey, a feature which will definitely come into play once you have been shown the ropes.

When you first start to design your casing you will have to choose from a number of options available under the menu bar. Here you will have the opportunity to pick between the different sizes, weights and grades of casings. With more than 4000 joints contained within the database included with this software it is easy to build a custom setup from scratch. Anything you choose will be placed onto the design sheet and you can alter parameters further using the tools arrayed along the menu bar. Safety considerations are integrated in to the core operation of the program and it will automatically identify any errors which it detects, saving you the time it would take to check by hand.

One of the other good things about this particular software package is that the after sale support is exemplary. This is particularly useful since the way in which you use and benefit from the software can have real world ramifications and if you are in any way unsure as how best to harness its potential it is easy to get in touch with an expert who can guide you through and iron out any kinks. You can be sure that this software comes with plenty of tried and tested international approvals as it is from a firm that sells products to many of the world`s leading producers of oil. You will definitely benefit from casing design software like this.

This independant review is by www.software.com