Last week Wework Labs invited me to give a talk to some of their members – tech. startup founders, CEOs and CTOs – based at Wework buildings in London. We planned this with Wework Labs to share how best to recruit, manage, motivate and retain remote software development teams. Q&A surfaced some of the issues […]
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Condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in the air crash a week ago today. So called “faulty” flight control software is now blamed for that crash and for another crash, also involving Boeing’s 737 Max, five months ago. Boeing has been around for over 100 years and like many large organisations […]
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The iPhone was launched just over ten years ago and I bought my first tablet (Samsung, running Android Froyo) around the same time. App stores already had some very useful mobile apps but our expectations, and the availability of apps – taxi hailing, delivery tracking, product configuration, medical AI and more – has changed and […]
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Millions of people across the world don’t have legal registered titles for their homes, land and businesses. They can’t be certain that their ownership rights will be protected by law. If they had registered titles, according to Hernando De Soto, it would unlock $9.3 trillion in assets (Soto, 2000). Uncertainty breeds disputes and makes it […]
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Carillion’s collapse wiped out tens of thousands of jobs and may bankrupt thousands of subcontractors. Early reports confirm that many of their large public sector contracts were unprofitable. However, their demise could also be traced back to the use of outdated project management practices. Carillion’s collapse is a reminder that rigid and sequential plans, as […]
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Outsourcing the development of your organisation’s App, AI or other software could significantly lower your development costs and reduce project delivery times. However, outsourcing is not appropriate for every organisation, product or project – you still need the right leadership, a robust service level agreement (SLA) and you need to follow the Golden Rule to deliver […]
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Business needs should drive the choice of technology for your mobile app which will in turn influence the selection of the ideal development team, upfront development costs, ongoing maintenance costs, product performance and its expected useful life. Programming languages, platforms, frameworks, databases, containers, etc. is the stuff your mobile app depends on. This short post explains why technology […]
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It’s Not The Economy, Stupid The UK Government effectively bans the building of native apps. In their service manual, they explain why they favour progressive web apps, and clearly state that other solutions are unlikely to be approved. Although not as explicit as the UK, U.S. federal agency policy favours a similar design approach. […]
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By the end of 2017, market demand for mobile app development services will grow at least five times faster than internal IT organizations can deliver them, according to Gartner. They forecast 2.1 billion mobile device units by 2019, which will fuel demand for enterprise apps. Gartner analyst Adrian Leow said enterprises find it a challenge to […]
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High Level, Easy Access As outlined in my last post, Gartner says there will be 2.1 billion mobile devices by the end of 2019, which will fuel demand for scarce development skills and drive up costs. I outlined how using remote development teams could make mobile app development more affordable, if you have the […]
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No sacred cows The uncertainty surrounding the government’s likely decisions around Brexit certainly makes forecasting and planning difficult, especially for those businesses with a direct or indirect dependency on the EU for customers, suppliers or labour. However, despite the fact that the post Brexit business environment is full of risks, there are also ample opportunities. Now could be the […]
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About 60 percent of software development produces ineffective or substandard results. Circa 25 percent fail outright. Traditional RFPs, especially those driven by IT leaders with little understanding of the business or user needs, are especially prone to failure. By failing to properly investigate and diagnose business requirements software development (especially Apps) are developed around assumptions about users’ […]
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Our Story Back in 2007 we realised that we needed fairly sophisticated and complex technology to run businessbuyguide, a sister brand to G2Guide. With a very small budget and limited time I knew there would be challenges – one option was to hire developers in a lower cost geography. I also knew that the total […]
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In an earlier post we discussed the key advantages, and also some of the hidden costs, of outsourcing to remote teams via upwork, freelancer and similar job boards. As mentioned, you can achieve project success via remote teams if you align your budget with the Total Cost of Delivery. In a nutshell, this is about making sure […]
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Against the backdrop of global economic turmoil, proxy world wars, and the refugee and border crisis in Europe, the Brexit debate could not be happening at a worse time. Migration, especially from war torn Syria, is a political hot potato, with various EU countries erecting new physical barriers to halt migration, and Turkey offering to […]
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The advance of digital has already radically transformed the business environment – a digital wave is sweeping through every industry, organization and culture. Customers and staff expect businesses to be digital by default and there is a race to recruit the talent needed to transform and evolve processes, people management and business models. One role, the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) […]
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Any business can access a vast global pool of talented and specialist workers from anywhere in the World. The proliferation of high speed Internet allows firms to find, and work with, the best people, wherever they are. Very large companies first started to harness “global knowledge workers” on a grand scale, 15 to 20 years ago, to reduce project durations and costs, without compromising quality. The […]
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According to Gartner, in 2014 market leader Salesforce grew their share of the CRM market by an incredible 28% whilst Oracle grew theirs by just 3%. Microsoft achieved an impressive 22% and SAP just 7%. Other CRM vendors, as a group, achieved 10%. Market Share Growth Rate Others 50.4 11.5 Salesforce 18.4 28.2 SAP 12.1 […]
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Gartner predicts a $36n market The global market for CRM will total $36bn by 2017 and in 2014 we saw a 13.3% increase in sales, up from $20.5bn in 2013, according to Gartner, a research firm. Our Market Quadrant positions the global CRM vendors that are driving this growth, in terms of their market dominance […]
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The Market Quadrant (MQ) is a two dimensional matrix that highlights key differences between vendors. Each vendor’s positioning is determined mainly by their market dominance and how well they address users’ needs. Methodology The inclusion and relative positioning of each firm is based only on publicly available information such as company size, financial and social status, functionality […]
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