Computers

Well, to start, Microsoft doesn’t make computers, but there are many others that make computers that are compatible with Windows. There are many products that range in quality, features, performance and price. You can get a decent machine for quite cheap nowadays. Apple, on the other hand, makes computers and they do a great job with them. Apple hardware is excellent. You can even run Windows on them these days. The problem is that they have NO economical options. If you want to run Apple’s OS, you have to have Apple hardware. So, if you want a good product at a high price point, go ahead, go for the Apple hardware. That being said, it is probably a bit overkill to run your business on.

Operating Systems

Microsoft is obviously well  known in the OS world with it’s Windows line. They have come a long way since the days of MS-DOS. Sure, they have made their mistakes, often in their marketing. However, everyone knows how to use Windows. The OS is intuitive and is getting better and better. In addition, you can run Windows on pretty much any hardware. As for software available for Windows, pretty much everything is available for Windows. It is the platform of choice for most developers, especially those who develop applications to help you run your business. What about Apple? Well, some say that there are no viruses and it’s hack proof. Well, that is ridiculous. OS X simply does not have a big enough market presence for hackers to care enough. People generally do not run their businesses on Macs. As for intuitiveness, I find it really awkward to use. Folders are not arranged well, the system tools are awkward, I can never find what I am looking for, and when I close my windows, my apps still run. In addition, if you want to run OS X, you are subject to purchasing Apple’s expensive hardware. What about software availability? Well, it is getting better, but it isn’t even on the same playing field as Windows. This will get better over time as apps start to move to the web and become OS independent. This, however, is still a long way off.

MP3 Players

Apple’s MP3 players rock. Microsoft’s are mediocre. However, if you want to “rent” your music from services such as Rhapsody, you have no Apple options.

Relevant Tangent – I should point out that there is a reason I am mentioning MP3 players. When employees are allowed to listen to music of their choice while they work, studies show that their performance is significantly improved. MP3 players are cheap and are much better to have around than having your employees streaming music over the internet. In addition, they will love you for it! Take a look at the investment for a second. Let’s say that you give your employees a $100 MP3 player every year and purchase a monthly Rhapsody subscription for them. That is less than $300 a year per employee, if you buy them a new MP3 player each year! Your employees will love you for it and you will get better performance from them!

Smart Phones

Let’s be honest here, the iPhone is pretty awesome and the Windows phones are… well… not as good. However, Microsoft has finally realized that they are loosing the game and they are totally redesigning their mobile OS and it looks sweet. The problem is that Microsoft is late into the game here and the iPhone is extremely popular. However, if you want to use the iPhone platform for your business, whether internally or externally, you have to write your code on a Mac and purchase a developer license.  This is why I have a Mac and am writing this post on it. If you want to do anything with the iPhone, you are stuck with Apple’s way. Oh yeah, they are also changing their rules as of OS 4. You must now code using an approved language and without the help of 3rd party APIs.

Tablets

Okay, the iPad isn’t as spectacular as some make it out to be. However, it is also not as bad as others make it out to be. Will it have business applications? Sure. Btw…. the PC world also has tablets and has for a long time and they have a lot of nice features.

Conclusion

It all comes down to one thing: total cost of ownership. Microsoft is going to win in this arena. Apple policies keep changing and they are a very exclusive company, trying to push out others with their ridiculousness. With Apple, you never know whether you will be in trouble with your current tool-set when the next revision of something comes out, which happens frequently. For example, look at what they are doing with the iPhone and development. If you are running a business, Microsoft is the way to go. They have made a killing on making things work. In addition, if something goes wrong, there are a lot more people familiar with Microsoft and you are more likely to run into someone who has had the same problem as you are having. With Apple, you never know what the future is going to hold.

So what is the solution? Well, there is no one right solution. But, to arrive at the solution, we have to look at what the problem is. First, the problem described is a problem with estimating accurately. This seems kind of an odd statement because an estimate is inherently inaccurate. If you are looking for accurate estimates, and not getting them, you need to try something different. First of all, one of the most important things to do is keep historical information. Track what original estimates were and what the actuals were. Burn-down charts are priceless. What you need to look for is consistency. The simplest solution, and a good starting place to getting better is to look at how far estimates are off of their actuals. Do you have one person who is off a lot, but is CONSISTENTLY off by a certain percentage? Have estimators that are not consistent and not accurate? Try different methods of estimation such as estimating based upon indicators (size, complexity, etc…).

The point is, if you really want USEFUL estimation, it is going to take some extra effort. Are you willing to put in the effort? Oh, and btw… if you are constantly over time and budget, publicize to your development team that you want a certain schedule X, but plan for X + Y. Figuring out what Y is can best be figured out by historical analysis of projects.

• We need more staff.
• Our staff is overworked.
• We’re making great sales on X.
• Our clients love/hate us.
• We need more clients like X.
• Client X is costing us too much money.
• The problem in the code is because of X.

This is just a sample of the kind of statements that I’m sure you’ve heard in meetings. You cannot let these kinds of statements dictate decisions by themselves. You must ask the question “How Do You Know?” Okay, say it with me….. “How Do You Know?”. Good. Make people back up the information that they give you with something that is authoritative.

Let’s take the problem of “Our staff is overworked.” The first question is…. “how do you know?” Don’t accept the answer “because they are complaining” or any other similar answer. Let’s say the answer is a little bit better such as “50% of our staff are working late into the night 5 days a week and I know because I am there with them.” With this kind of answer, you at least have some kind of data that you can work off of. But before you can make an intelligent decision, you must ask one more question…”why?”

The problem is that if you are not collecting good data, you get into a tragically infinite loop of “How Do You Know?” – “Why?” – “How Do You Know?” – “Why?”…etc…etc…etc… You’ll get answers like “because they have too many accounts.” Again, you have to ask the question “Why?”

Now, what if you were able to get insight into your information and you could get the following answer to “How Do You Know?” “I know that they are overworked because 80% of our staff is working an average of 60 hours per week with a median of 55 hours per week. I know this because the business intelligence system that insquare built for us told me so.” Now, you ask the great question “Why?” You get the following answer in reply, “We noticed that they are logging that they are spending 50% of their time doing process X which involves 20 steps each time that require a lot of care to ensure that they are done correctly.” Now, you can make an informed decision. You quickly respond, “Let’s call insquare and have them come in and automate that process for us. We can now reduce the workload and keep our highly talented staff happy and save ourselves from having to spend a lot of money on hiring more staff to compensate for this inefficient process.”

In all seriousness, you must constantly be asking the question “How Do You Know And Why Is It So?” This one question can help in so many ways besides the examples above. This is why so many people struggle with finding software problems; they make assumptions without backing up their assumptions with facts. Know the facts and make intelligent decisions!

Businesses do not consult or create software, people do. The people is where the ingenuity lies, not in the business. Business often gets in the way of that ingenuity, which is one of the reasons that you should want to bring in consultants. Keep in mind, I am not bashing processes, they are the thread that keeps everyone aligned and moving with each other to accomplish the common goal.

So, if software and consulting is about the people, how is insquare different than the big guys? Simply, the people. Well, as it stands right now, the person. Think about the type of person that works for a large consulting company. They are the type of person that gets assignments for projects to work on and then takes them on. They have no vested interest  in doing anything more than the minimum that is required. I am not bashing these people, nor am I saying that they do not do good work. What I am saying is that with insquare, everyone (okay, just me for now) has a vested interest in making sure that those that we work with are happy. We want repeat business. We want people to talk about us (in a good way). We want people to be excited about the services that we provide. It is the core essence of this company that things are done right. We are compelled to do well in anything that we do.

One of my personality traits could be described as obsessive or passionate. When I do something, if I cannot do it well, I do one of two things: stay away from it because I know I cannot be good at it (think basketball, which at 5’5″ I am doomed), or I pursue it with an obsessive nature until I conquer it. This is a good trait and can be a bad trait. It is a good trait when it comes to software and consulting, it is a bad trait when it comes to games.

So, are you interested in working with people that are obsessed with quality and passionate about making sure that you’re happy?

No matter which one of these that you pick, you will be able to easily add and update content. So, if your criteria is simply that it must be easy to add content to, then take a dart, close your eyes and throw. However, that is obviously not going to cut it. You need to take into consideration several other things.

I’ll walk through a quick example of how I chose wordpress for www.insquare.com. My initial thought was that I was going to use mojoPortal. I have used mojoPortal in the past and found it to be quite easy to use. mojoPortal is an ASP.NET application, which I have actually had to debug through before. It is also fairly easy to create and modify templates using technology that is right in my wheelhouse. Now, when I had used mojoPortal before, I had chosen it for all those reasons and also because it had forums built right in, and I needed them. However, the blogging pretty much stinks. It gets the job done, but it is not overly pretty. So, I thought about other options that were ASP.NET based and I was not overly excited. So, I went back and came up with my absolute must haves and they were:

• Must have excellent blogging capabilities
• Must be something that I can modify easily
• Must have a good community base with lots of plug-ins available
• It must be able to support more than just a blog, but other pages also, such as you see on www.insquare.com
• The blog must not be forced to the front page
• It must be able to run on a single Windows Server 2003 system

So, given those requirements, I took a small step back and looked at the systems from a different perspective. I wanted (all though not required) to be able to hand off my site to my branding company (wordswell) easily, if necessary. I knew they were familiar with WordPress and I have some experience with it also as my family’s blog is a WordPress site. So, I looked into WordPress to see if it would meet my needs.

I was able to quickly identify that it met most of the requirements. My concern was whether it would be able to be run on Windows 2003 Server easily or not and whether it was something that I can easily modify. I found that it did indeed run on Windows 2003 Server and easily. However, I am not a fan of the permalinks (the never-changing urls (links) of the blog pages). As long as I found it easy to modify, that problem would be moot because it fit all of my other criteria.

So, is it easy to modify? I took a look at the built in templates, read the manual and learned PHP. This took me a couple of hours (mostly perusing the WordPress manual and some random tutorials about wordpress templates). I realized that for me, it would be very easy to modify. It would be a no-brainer for me to use WordPress at this point. However, WordPress is not the right solution for every situation. If you don’t have an IT staff on site and you don’t like any of the templates that are out there, you would probably need to hire someone to do some php coding.

The quick summary: building a website (different from a web application) from scratch is hardly ever the right way to go. Look at the CMS/Blog/etc… systems that are out there and find the right one. If you need help figuring out which is the right one for you, contact us; we’ll help you figure it out.

If you are a follower of the Olympics, you might have seen Apollo Ohno skate in the 1500m short track races. During the qualifier, the right strategy for him was to relax in the back of the pack until the last 3 or 4 laps when he found his opening and took the lead and won by a landslide. Now, during the finals, the right strategy was much different as he jockeyed for position most of the race.

You need to consider several things when trying to determine the right solutions in business. Things to consider:

• What is the total cost of ownership?
• What is the initial cost?
• What is the planned longevity of the solution?
• Who is the intended user?
• What is the skill level of the intended user?
• What is the business problem that needs to be solved?
• Does it need to be flexible?
• When does it need to be in place?

These are only a sample of the things that you need to consider when determining the right solution. However, they are a good starting point. Remember, if you going from Baltimore to DC, you probably want to take a train or a car. If you are going from Baltimore to Paris in a car or a train, however, you’re sure to meet your demise along the way.