Deconstructing Agile
By Jessica Wilson on Monday May 13, 2013
When you hear the word Agile, what do you think of? Maybe smooth, quick and effective movement. Now apply that to software, apps and the IT world. Here we have a methodology that breaks down projects, making them more doable, while allowing for constant testing. Despite all of this, Agile has garnered criticism, especially from large companies. According to them there are just too many limitations to make it a worthwhile approach. Still, as a business that actually employs Agile, we at Parthenon have seen its benefits.
Posted in Techniques
Like any Software QA (Quality Assurance) Department, here at Parthenon Software we face the challenge of proving our software will run correctly while also meeting the customer's requirements. A tool that helps us manage the repetitive tasks of software testing is Selenium. Selenium allows us to automate the tasks, run regression tests on websites and to assist in testing new bugs and features.
When it comes to marketing the biggest considerations are the cost and the return on investment. Most people don't mind spending money for advertising if they have a good chance of making sells. Sells are what drive the revenue which makes advertising an affordable commodity. So, if you have a chance to reach potential clients for less than a penny per lead, would you consider it? Well you do.
Project management best practices remind us that if we successfully initiate, plan, execute and close out all our projects, our metrics will illustrate greater results. While such a statement highlights the end goal, there’s much more to project management than simple methodology.
Big data has always been away to grow your business. With automated systems serving your customers, tracking and analyzing how they use your software can play a huge role in serving your customers more effectively. However multiple problems may stand in your way when organizing and running queries on such large quantities of data. Getting quality results fast enough to act on can be difficult, even on the newest computers. The solution, proponents and analysts say, is In-Memory Computing.
Parthenon Software Group is a data-oriented custom software company. In layman's terms, this means that we write software you can't get off the shelf. For any industry custom software involves storing, retrieving, and transforming data and/or moving it between other programs or computers. This is not a niche industry. Many businesses need this kind of software, and it's not usually the easiest thing to do. We are uniquely suited to do this because we are composed of top programmers who are data-oriented generalists.
Project management is an important part of any company, regardless of the type, source or outcome. It's a lot to do, and time is always limited. Any project is a short-term action that has a time frame and seldom lasts for longer than two years. It stands to reason that they must make the most of what have to work with. If you look at it in terms of sports, the role of a project manager is very much like that of a soccer coach. They are given a team to shape into an effective force with rules to follow and limited resources. Everyone would like a dream team, but the best coach is one who can make champions.
Gone are the days of an ordinary pen and paper. Years ago, a pen was released to the public, which could record anything written on specialized paper and could even read it back to you. Launched just a year after the original iPhone, it never seemed to catch on. So they made them even better. Now, they're smarter than ever.
If you use your computer on a regular basis, chances are you've run into problems with slow websites. A common problem with websites is when images and web pages are coming from the same server, bringing speed down. The good news, there’s a quick and easy solution. As our clients experience an increase in traffic, we use Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Server) for images and other large media files.