Category Archives: Thoughts

3 points of worry in Off-shore Software Development

Thoughts

Recently, I connected to a prospective client on LinkedIn, and he shared some concerns:

“I was referred to you by a friend who has worked with Mindfire and highly recommended your services. I was impressed by the technical competence of my emails and discussion with your group. However, (and I’m sure you know this), I have been “warned” by people in the SaaS business I know over here, that subcontracting to some offshore firms can be “a nightmare” and that work, though much less expensive, can take three or four times as long. Some even say the quality of the coding is poor.”

This summarized some top points of apprehension for anyone about to start a relationship for off-shore software development. All 3 problems and points of apprehension are true in general, but at Mindfire we have these points covered . Although working with us is the only way to get a real impression of things, let me share thoughts about these as they relate to Mindfire.

1. Quality of code is poor: yes, in many cases.

Most IT/software companies in India do everything – from programming to design to graphics to SEO to data-entry to marketing and so on. You cannot be the best at everything. Often you end up being mediocre in each. We do only one thing – “off-shore small-team software development” – and we do it very well. Starting from hiring to testing to reviews to environment to training to culture, we are focused on being the rock-stars of software development – only.

2. Takes longer: yes, in many cases.

Sometimes it is due to incompetence (related to first point above) and sometimes it is intentional over-reporting for financial reasons. We have neither problem. Money has never been a driver – we want to earn with pride and only want money that we deserve. We have been around for 13 years now and want to be around for much more than that – you cannot violate Truth and Integrity, and last that long.

3. A nightmare: yes, in many cases.

Sometimes it is due to communication issues, sometimes it is due to clients expecting magical solutions to unexpressed desires (our people may weave technical magic, but no other types!). Sometimes it is due to lack of mutual respect, sometimes it is due to plain old incompetence or inexperience. In any case, we offer a pleasant experience to our clients. We have selfish reasons – when our clients can relax about work, they can focus more on growing their business, which will create more work for us! When you are focused on the long run, things are quite simple actually.

 

This small exchange has not touched upon even more issues in off-shore software development! Those related to communication, culture, engineering replication, understanding, attrition – the list goes on.

It is sad to have to accept these points, but often they are, indeed, true. At Mindfire, we are building an organization that accepts and addresses problems in off-shore software development, rather than denying problems. Every day we find ways of doing things better, and each of them adds up.

Author – Chinmoy Panda

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Srikanta

Experience @ MS SharePoint Conference 2012, Las Vegas

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Srikanta As a SharePoint developer, attending SharePoint Conference 2012 in Las Vegas from 12-15Nov 2012, was a unique opportunity to hear from experts from Microsoft and around the world, share their experience and knowledge on various aspects SharePoint 2013. . There were around 10,000 people from 85 countries attending the conference. As a Microsoft partner and one of the earliest companies to offer SharePoint development solutions, Mindfire Solutions made sure that we attend the conference and arranged for everything we needed. I really had a good time and an unforgettable Vegas experience.

Continue reading Experience @ MS SharePoint Conference 2012, Las Vegas →

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Managing social media is easy during busy office hours

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There has been a sudden rise in the number of social sites recently. The reason being, it’s acceptance by individuals as well as businesses and the fact that people are getting social. Most of the readers must have registered at multiple sites. But, the usage would be restricted to a limited number of sites. This is solely because of the fact that people do not get enough time to visit every site and update the same status everywhere. Taking time out from busy schedules and updating every site looks like a tedious task to them. Hence, most people update their Facebook page only and leave the rest. The status update is effective when it reaches to people worldwide. Continue reading Managing social media is easy during busy office hours →

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Social Mindfire

Mindfire + Social Media = Success for everyone!

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Social MindfireHow important is Social Media for a business? This is a question that business owners ask themselves before barging in to any of the social media platforms.

In today’s world Social Media is the heart and soul of any business. It does not mean that other things are not important but, businesses which have presence in social media platforms have an edge over others.  Therefore, every website you find on the web has some or the other social media icon on their pages as everyone wants to be at top of the race.

Continue reading Mindfire + Social Media = Success for everyone! →

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Achieving Excellence through Innovation

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A common myth is that innovation can’t happen on a day-in-day-out basis. However, innovation does not necessarily mean inventing groundbreaking stuff. It essentially means improvising ways and means of doing the same tasks, so as to do it better, in a ‘smarter’ way.

Achieving Excellence through Innovation
Excellence and innovation can be used not just in a professional context by the CXO level executives but also by everyone of us in our daily lives. If you have moved to a new locality and drive to work, the road to your office might seem convoluted. However, in a week or so, you experiment and you find out not just the shortest but the less crowded yet shortest path. This is innovation. You may have opted to learn about a new platform or technology and would be facing hiccups with the code, new syntax and so on. As you keep working on it, you devise new ways of storing data, syntax or just lookups which make your task easier. This is innovation. And when you and the entire organisation along with you, starts making smaller innovations in their work, that rolls up to a much larger drive. And that becomes the effort of an organisation towards achieving innovation at workplace. Innovation which leads to excellence in everything we do. Innovation which leads to excellence in client relationships, intra and inter-team dynamics.

If we refer to any write-up on business productivity, business improvements and innovation, it is clearly seen that contact points are the ones where most of our innovations happen. What exactly are contact points? They are the points of contact with the client. Think of a retail store which you last visited. You roll the cart towards the checkout counter – That is where you meet the customer service representative. That is a contact point for the retail store. You should not be surprised to see most of the innovations around that contact point – For example, the billboards just above the point of sale, the feedback kiosk with a box of candies, the growing variety of quick merchandise stocked near the counter or even the ever changing self-checkout kiosks.

Think of an airline. Starting from the point when you queue-up at the check-in counter, to when you board the flight to the time you get down from the flight, each is a contact point with limitless ways of attaining excellence. The airlines understand this. As a result, you see a smile being worn on each of the cabin crew. Your feedback about the airline is taken seriously and changes made. The airline industry actually takes pride in innovating around their touch points.

Financial institutions, banks, insurance companies all of them rely on these contact point opportunities to serve customers better, smarter and that is what gives way to innovation. As organisations mature, they perfect the art of innovation. And it starts with contact points.

For software organisations like ourselves, we have over 700+ software programmers working for clients. In a day, over 200+ discussions happen with clients. That rolled up over a month gives us over 40,000 opportunities to showcase our quest for excellence, our drive for innovation. It can start with improvisation of communication skills, taking notes and circulating minutes of the meeting religiously or it can just be responding to an email promptly or it can even be sending off an email as soon as a job is done and it can be anything else as well. It is said that the best ideas are generated from people directly in touch with the clients on a day to day basis.  Harnessing these ideas, nurturing them and leading them to execution would set the stage for newer levels of innovation.

Alternatively, innovation is best initiated at the periphery of organizations as it will be relevant to clients and not just by CXOs in an organisation. I believe that for businesses to excel, the client-facing staff need to open up and share their ideas and feedback with the team. These ideas, if effectively harnessed, ensures client satisfaction and delight. And isn’t that what we are in for?

The question we need to constantly ask ourselves is:  Have we done enough to share the idea which can help me innovate around my contact point?

Author – Subhendu Pattnaik

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Delighting Clients starts with a simple step

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Delighting Clients with Responsiveness
Delighting Clients with Responsiveness

It is a known fact that positive feedback, appreciation infuses adrenalin into your veins which charges you up.  With this surge, you tend to do things faster and things tend to become smoother, almost all the time. For all this to happen or more specifically, for that positive note of appreciation to trickle, you need to have happy clients.

That brings us next to the core issue of making clients happy, exceeding their expectations, delighting them. And this for sure would seem like a very daunting uphill task. Should i say herculean?

No. It might just be much simpler.

To understand client psychology, we would need to step into their shoes first and then try looking at the situation. Imagine yourself working on something important. Dozens of webpages are opened up, you are frantically doing google searches and compiling information and then suddenly your laptop breaks down! Everything gets dark.. Hours of work has been lost and you have no idea if you could recover it or not.  The next thing you do is to take it to the laptop service center. You expect someone to give you a warm welcome, put you at ease regarding the work, give you a rough idea on what needs to get fixed and then keeps you updated while he is fixing it. Right?

And if you enter the service center and you are lost in the crowd, no one pointing you to the right mechanic, no one listening to your exact problem situation – you would actually feel frustrated. On top of this, if you are told that this will take 2 hours to fix and you spend those painstaking 2 hours in the waiting room and no one updates you at the end of it about the status, you get so p.. off. And then if the mechanic updates you that it will take 8 hours more.. you feel like tearing the place up! I have been thru similar experiences and as a result my recommendations or warnings show up promptly in favor of or against service centers i have been to when people ask me. And if I was harassed too much, I go out online and pour out my angst. This is all but natural.

Our clients are exactly on the same boat. They have a situation. They need a solution for it. First they have done their part of research to reach out to us. Once they are with us, they should feel relaxed and at ease that we are handling their project. They should be able to know exactly what we are capable of doing from day 1.  And this is where responsiveness comes in. Being responsive to a client’s need ensures that he is updated about the progress of his project at all times and he is sure that he is at the right place. The final product does matter but the client would always remember the way he was treated and responded to.

This is what we call as a simple step – being responsive to what the client needs. And this sets the initial bonding and the start of a greater relationship with clients.

Do you agree that being responsive helps us gain client satisfaction and delight? What do you think?

Cheers

Author – Subhendu Pattnaik

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My Journey to Certification(a success story)

Thoughts

Every success carries a history behind it. No success is an accident. It always needs a regular disciplined effort and of course a good supporting environment. My Journey to certification goes as below.

Just like any other developer I was also very much afraid of exam pattern, questions and everything that is related to the certification exam. I have also skipped a couple of exam dates in this process. But yes at sometime and somewhere I was accumulating the confidence within myself to go for certification. Mindfire’s work culture has always helped me to tighten my grip on ColdFusion. In fact it allowed me to have knowledge in most of the areas of this technology. The wise decision by Sumit (my that time team lead) to get exam buster to test and get accustomed with the exam was very helpful. I was been continuously inspired by my team members to prepare the best for the exam. In the mean time Rabi (my current team lead) arranged one account in uCertify.com site to prepare more rigorously for the certification. This helped me increasing my confidence to go for certification. This is true that only practical experience in any technology does not help in total to get certified. You have also to go for study of help documents. As because when we work , it covers only some part of the entire technology. So to know and expertise  yourself, you have to go for study of entire documentation of the technology.

Because of the busy project schedules it was not easy to go for study in working hours. So after returning from office around 10 to 11 ‘o’ clock in the night, I was getting little refreshment and was sitting for studying till night 3 ‘o’ clock. In the previous night of my certification exam, almost everyone of my teammates wished me best of luck for the exam, especially Chandra, Smaranika, Preety and Rabi. They all inspired me to give my best in the exam. and get certified. But finally I may say that, though I tried for normal certification in ColdFusion 9 but it’s my god, who made me certified in Advanced ColdFusion. I scored 81% in the certification test. Which in a single go made me certified as an Adobe Certified Expert in ColdFusion and Adobe Certified Expert in Advanced ColdFusion, which is really a matter of pride for me, for my team and for my Company.

Thanks all for your help and support, without which it could have never been a success.

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Experience of Web & Database Testing Workshop

Software, Software Quality, Thoughts, , , , ,

Knowledge as we know is not limited. We cannot say we have gained all the knowledge that we had to . Each day is a learning process, each person we meet we learn something from them, each work we do we learn something and the list is endless. And when it comes to our career , we would always want to have the best of our knowledge be it through learning , through training , etc.

Recently I had the opportunity to attend the 2 day workshop on Web and Database testing. Since the trainer was a senior industry veteran, with almost 20 years of experience, everyone was looking forward to attend and learn something new from the training. It was a 2 days training session with 25 QAs attending. There were many interesting topics covered in this session .

Continue reading Experience of Web & Database Testing Workshop →

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