Estimating Software Projects in an Agile World
Calavista boasts an impressive 90+% on-time, in-budget track record. As I pointed out in an earlier blog, I consider this SEVEN times better than the industry average of 30%. And yet, Calavista is very firmly an agile shop — we know the folly of waterfall methodology, especially for greenfield projects. It doesn’t really work for real […]
Web App Jump Start Comparison: Generated UI
This is the third in the author’s blog series comparing two “jump start” tools for making Java-based Web Applications: JHipster Cuba Framework Both of these platforms create for you an application with a ton of functionality. There is a tremendous value just to starting with a completely working application, so you can actually get to […]
Web App Jump Start Comparison: Setup and Start
This is the second in the author’s blog series comparing two “jump start” tools for making Java-based Web Apps: Jhipster Cuba Framework To the amusement of my colleagues at Calavista, I am constantly saying how much I hate computers. I don’t, of course, but what I hate are how hard they are to do […]
Using Alba to Test ASP.NET Services
One of our projects at Calavista right now is helping a client modernize and optimize a large .Net application, with the end goal of being everything running on .Net 5 and an order of magnitude improvement in system throughput. As part of the effort to upgrade the web services, I took on a task to […]
Web App Jump Start Comparison
One thing Calavista does very well as a company is building Web Applications from scratch. If you have a great idea for an application and you plan to bet your life savings on building a company around it, a smart move would be to find a development organization with a on-time, within-budget record of […]
Yes, Virginia, Continuous Deployment Does Have Controls and Approvals: Part 3
In my last two blogs, I went over the specifics of Continuous Deployment and gave some examples of how you can enforce quality and controls even though you are releasing at breakneck speeds. To finish off my series, we will dive into Dark Launches and Feature Toggling. These mechanisms allow our teams to deploy software […]
Software and Sourdough
My non-computer hobby since quarantine started has been making sourdough bread. I created my own starter and I’ve been making bread almost every weekend since last March. I’ve gotten pretty good at it, such that commercial bread now is unacceptable to anyone in my family. (In other words, I’m not allowed to stop making it […]
What Can The IRS Do For You?
As you start the new year and set your goals, I suggest looking into how the IRS can actually help you. I’ve seen many cases where it has improved the user experience for key customers, built product capability beyond your team’s capacity and accomplished so much more. As we are at the beginning of “tax season” in the […]
Shopping for Quality- How to Ensure You’re Hiring a Company That Can Deliver
I’ve written before that most people who are looking for a software development firm to deliver code for them tend to really care about 3 things. Those things are: 1) Price2) Quality3) Speed of delivery There’s no surprise there – those are the things we all care a lot about in most purchases. No one […]
Software on a Budget- Charting the Least Expensive Path to a Successful Delivery
I’ve a friend who’s a software architect for a large (Fortune-100ish) financial institution. If you ask him what his company’s priorities are when working on a software project, it’s simple. The number one priority is security. Scalability is a distant 2nd. Everything else is noise. If it’s going to cost $10 million to patch a […]
