Author Archive

In the business of custom software development a lot of work comes in the form of people stuck with a technical need that they can’t figure their way around. This need is often unexpected. Often the people that are stuck are not technical.

In these situations the successful developer will quickly assess the need and write a proposal or estimate. To do this the developer needs to be able to ask the right questions, properly assess project scope, and quickly put together a team. The developer will also often need to speak with product vendors associated with the prospective client to learn the capabilities of sometimes unfamiliar systems.

As a developer, even if you have no experience with a specific tool, product, technology, API etc. you have to keep in mind that you still know more about how those sorts of things work than your non-techie client. This doesn’t make you an instant expert, but you are valuable because you can more easily and comfortably figure out how to use the troubling technology than your client.

The key to your value is making your clients seem to their client(s) as though they were as comfortable with solutions to the technical problem as you are. Your quick response is crucial so your client isn’t in the uncomfortable position of having to stall and dodge technical questions from his client while waiting for the solution.

In conclusion, dealing in custom solutions means dealing with the unexpected. Unexpected needs require quick fulfillment in order to prevent overall timelines from being thrown off.

So be responsive to your clients’ needs. They will come to depend on you and your business will grow because of it.

If you happen to be sifting through forum post after forum post trying to figure out what’s new (and very special) about release 3.5 of Microsoft’s .NET platform, let us save you some time.

Here’s everything you need to know about what’s new in .NET 3.5. It’s a long list chock full of new and powerful features such as LINQ, peer-to-peer networking, durable (aka stateful) services, RSS/Atom syndication and support for 9 more web-services interoperability standards.

3.5 is truly a milestone release. If you haven’t considered .NET as a platform in the past, it’s definitely worth a look.

GoodBarry is an amazingly good platform for any small business that wants to effectively manage an online presence. It provides you with everything you need to

• build and manage a web-site full of great content
• connect with current and potential customers both pro-actively and passively
• sell goods and services online using the merchant of your choice
• track and report on every contact you have with your user-base
• manage online marketing campaigns customized to your market

If you’re just getting your business online, or are frustrated with a cumbersome and ineffective web presence GoodBarry can help you get where you want to be.

ps. GoodBarry is built on the BusinessCatalyst platform. Evans Codeworks has agreed to provide customization and integration services for the Business Catalyst platform. So get started with BusinessCatalyst and email us when you’re ready to integrate with or move all of your current systems to BusinessCatalyst.

As a follow up to our post a few days ago titled “Task Tracker Redux“, here’s a list of an additional 36 web-based task trackers that we didn’t mention.

Here’s a recent article from CNN Money on the value of web-based software for managing a business.

Life at Basecamp - six months in - Jul. 8, 2008.

As great as Basecamp is though (we use it), it’s not a magic bullet.

But as you grow, listen up: Expect to either make a major investment in developing your own financial and tracking software that works with Basecamp to make it do what you need (37Signals provides an open applications development toolset, so this is certainly possible), or budget for integrating another, more traditional, and more complex project-management system with Basecamp - or plan on abandoning the software entirely.

This is exactly what make custom software development so valuable. It’s a smart move to get started with a best-of-breed tool that you can use right out of the box. But, as you depend on it more and more you’ll realize that it’s taking over your business. You’ll be forced to shape more and more of your business practices around the way the software works. Ultimately, that’s not a good thing.

When best-of-breed either isn’t good enough or just starts to get in your way, that’s when you need to call a custom software developer and system integrator like Evans Codeworks. They can integrate the existing package into a system which keeps the best and none or some of the rest. The resulting solution leverages all of the good from your existing investment and gives you the freedom to improve on the parts that don’t work so well for you.