Understanding the Dynamics of Custom Software Development

Many organizations find themselves looking for software solutions that simply do not exist on the market today. After endless searching, they finally decide to seek out a software development company, like BairesDev, to turn their ideas into a reality.

The process of custom software development is the designing, creation, deployment, and maintenance of software built for a specific user, function, or organization as a whole. Compared to commercial off-the-shelf software products (COTS), custom-developed software is built to meet a narrow, specific set of requirements. Commercial off-the-shelf products are obviously designed to appeal to the masses as they are commercially marketed and distributed.

Custom software development is typically performed by a third-party outsourced team for maximum efficiency or handled by in-house development teams when resources are available. The same methodologies and processes apply to this process as with other types of development projects. A timeline of gathering requirements, writing of the code, testing, and deployment are used in a methodology such as Agile, Waterfall, or DevOps.

Why Choose Custom Software Development?

When compared to the cost of purchasing, maintaining, and modifying commercial off-the-shelf software products, custom software development is a competitive choice in terms of cost for meeting a company’s needs. It also offers a number of benefits, including:

• Efficiency: Custom-built software is designed around a purpose while supporting processes as productively and efficiently as possible. This eliminates timely problems such as the need to adjust commercial off-the-shelf products or reworking them to meet the specifications of the need.
• Lower Cost of Integration: When working with commercial software products, the issue of compatibility with existing and legacy systems is always a major concern. If the software doesn’t work with these systems, organizations must invest even more money into the product and purchase additional commercial software to allow for communication between the systems while operating within their existing infrastructure. Custom software solutions are buildable by software development companies to integrate with existing systems without future issues.
• Scalability: Businesses are constantly expanding and changing over time, and their software solutions must keep up with this growth as well. In the process of custom software development, designers and developers work together with customers to assess the potential needs of the future for their company as part of the initial gathering of requirements. This information is then incorporated into the plans for the project so that additional licenses, programs, or subscriptions are not needed in the future.
• Profitability: Depending on the terms and conditions of the project at hand, it is actually possible for companies to make money with custom software development. Businesses that develop their own software and fully own the product are able to sell licenses for use of the product or sell it in whole to other organizations with similar needs.
• Autonomy: Being free of commercial software products and vendors helps organizations avoid expensive ongoing license renewals, support costs, and price increases for said licenses. Companies with custom software can also rest assured that their software is not abandoned should the vendor go out of business or the product is taken off the market, which is a common problem when using a commercial off-the-shelf solution.

Successful Custom Software Development

There are a few helpful tips and tricks to keep in mind when preparing to have a custom product developed and going through the process itself:

• Before jumping into a custom development project, ensure that the product is actually needed. There needs to be a good reason for custom development instead of buying an existing packaged solution.
• Ensure that collaboration is going to be a top priority throughout the custom development process. Key participants in the project should be aware that their input is required throughout its duration. These participants can include users, developers, end-users, and other important figures within the organization. Collaborating helps to identify potential future issues, gives input on decisions throughout the development cycle, and feedback helps developers tailor the solution to the exact needs of the customer.
• The customer must understand their own importance throughout the development process. Their requirements are the roadmap that the developers need to follow in order to arrive at the necessary endpoint. If the developers are not made aware of details due to inadequate planning or a lack of communication from the client, things may go awry.
• A realistic plan with milestones needs to be in place for each and every software development project. Milestones help the development team stay on track while keeping the customer in the loop of the status of their project. These various stages require defining in terms of both time and cost. These milestones are then available for review at the next meeting to let both the dev team and client know where everything stands, if the project is going to be complete on time, and if things are staying within the budget.

Custom software development allows companies to use technology to solve specific problems within their organization. When these solutions are correctly developed for these problems, they can support enduring growth and success for all parties involved.

The post Understanding the Dynamics of Custom Software Development appeared first on The Crazy Programmer.

Zero-Day Warning: It's Possible to Hack iPhones Just by Sending Emails

Watch out Apple users! The default mail app pre-installed on millions of iPhone and iPad has been found vulnerable to two critical flaws that could let remote hackers secretly take complete control over Apple devices just by sending an email to targeted individuals. According to cybersecurity researchers at ZecOps, the vulnerabilities in question are out-of-bounds write and remote heap

Cloud Backups Aren’t Always Safe Against Ransomware Attacks

Ransomware attacks have inflicted billions of dollars of damage on internet users and companies. And that’s only during the last

Cloud Backups Aren’t Always Safe Against Ransomware Attacks on Latest Hacking News.

Chinese Hackers Using New iPhone Hack to Spy On Uyghurs Muslims

A Chinese hacking group has been found leveraging a new exploit chain in iOS devices to install a spyware implant targeting the Uyghur Muslim minority in China's autonomous region of Xinjiang. The findings, published by digital forensics firm Volexity, reveal that the exploit — named "Insomnia" — works against iOS versions 12.3, 12.3.1, and 12.3.2 using a flaw in WebKit that was patched by

How to Boost Your Developer Career with a Personal Brand

Personal branding is one the most (in)famous trends of the last decade.

In this article, I’ll talk about what a personal brand is and how building one can help boost your career. I’ll show you how to stake your claim in the online space as well as three paths you can follow to level up your brand. That’s plenty to talk about, so let’s get this started.

The argument for a personal brand as a developer

Our first stop is Wikipedia, where we can find the following definition:

Personal branding is the practice of marketing people and their careers as brands. It is an ongoing process of developing and maintaining a reputation and impression of an individual, group, or organization.

That’s the part most of people have in mind when they think about personal branding. They think about the current diva of the day. About famous media celebrities. About publicity stunts that are meant to push you into the limelight. About presenting a fake facade in order to obtain undeserved rewards. And many other less-than-pleasant examples.

However, there’s another aspect to personal branding — the other side of the coin, so to speak. Right after the definition above, the Wikipedia article has the following phrase:

In Be Your Own Brand, first published in 1999, marketers David McNally and Karl Speak wrote: “Your brand is a perception or emotion, maintained by somebody other than you, that describes the total experience of having a relationship with you.”

In other words, your personal brand includes what other people say about you when you’re not there. It includes your reputation, your body of work, the testimonials other people give about you. Nowadays it includes your tweets and your posts on Facebook. To many people, your pictures on Instagram matter just as much (if not more) as your contributions to open-source software. Want to travel in the USA? Be prepared to let them know all your social media accounts for the last five years. (Sources: Sophos and BBC). And the examples can continue.

Everything you say and do affects your public image and your reputation. And that can have devastating impact on your career. Remember the Aria Richards case back in 2013? She was a developer taking part in a conference where she published a tweet about some male developers making sexual jokes behind her, including their picture. In the fallout, one of the guys was fired, but Aria lost her job as well, because her action was deemed to be damaging to the reputation of the company employing her. (Sources: ArsTechnica and CBSNews).

Fortunately, it’s not just about mitigating possible damage. A great personal brand can increase your leverage at a level you wouldn’t dream about it. It can put you in a better light when applying to a new job, and you’ll have better negotiating power when discussing the salary and the perks of the position. If you have your own business, it can bring you more and better clients and projects. What’s not to like about it?

But there’s one caveat in all this: be authentic. Don’t do it to project something you aren’t, or as a money-grabbing move or, worse, to cover negative aspects. That’s the main reason people react badly when hearing about personal branding.

This subject alone (the pros and cons of personal branding) can fill a whole book and goes beyond the scope of this article. So, stop letting others write your story and take control of your narrative. All this being said, let’s push forward.

Stake your claim and establish your presence

The first phase in building your personal brand is staking your claim in the online space and laying down the foundations for further expansion. It is, in my opinion, the most important part of the process. If you do nothing else from the other things we’ll talk about later, but you work on this part, I’m confident you’ll get a lot further than many other people.

We’re currently living in the age of social media, so you might be surprised to hear that this foundation is actually your own website. Yes, a website. The old-fashioned kind, where you buy a domain name, arrange hosting and upload the files on the server for everyone else on the Internet to find.

“That’s the dumbest idea I’ve heard,” you might say. “I don’t need a website. I have my CV on LinkedIn, my pictures on Facebook and Instagram, my articles on Medium, my code on GitHub and I keep in touch with everyone on Twitter. Why would I waste time and effort with a website that I have to promote as well?”

From a certain point of view, all that sounds quite reasonable. But all those options have one thing in common: they’re all third-party platforms, and you’re actually renting the right to use them. You might not pay with money, but they are gathering data about you and your habits that’s either used to target ads your way or it’s passed to third parties for the same reasons. Remember, if you’re not paying for something, then you are the product being sold.

It all comes down to a simple truth: you can’t build your home on rented land. You can lose access to social media at any moment. All these platforms have somewhere in their terms and conditions a clause that allows them to terminate their service to you at any time without having to provide an explanation. Or your account could get hacked or deleted. Your tens or hundreds of thousands of followers? All gone in a blink of an eye if you lose access to the platform.

That’s why you need something you own completely — a place to present yourself without being beholden to a platform that only cares about their own interests. You need a way to gather contacts, followers, connections and clients and be able to keep them. Yes, websites and servers do get hacked. But in that case, all you need to do is install the latest backup and you’re up and running again.

Let’s get down to the trinity of items needed to establish your online presence:

1. A domain name

You need your own custom domain name for multiple reasons. It gives you more legitimacy and it opens the gates for further options down the road. www.johnnydev.com is a lot better than johnnydev2335.github.io, don’t you think? We can have a very long discussion over whether it’s better to choose a “brand name” or your own given name for the domain. However, that’s a conversation for another time and place.

2. Hosting

There are plenty options of free hosting for developers: GitHub Pages, Netlify and many more. In many cases, that’s all you need to have a website up and running. For some of the more advanced options, though, it’s better to get some classic dedicated hosting.

3. Custom email address

This is the same story as with the domain name above. I think we can agree that johnny@johnnydev.com is more professional than johnnydev2335@gmail.com or some other email address you created when you were 16 years old.

Now all you have to do is upload your site and let everyone know about it. You can go from something as simple as a single static page to something complex like a WordPress blog or a static site generator like Gatsby or Hugo. Don’t despair if design isn’t your strong point. There are plenty of free themes and templates available.

Remember, you don’t have to code the website yourself. You get extra brownie points and bragging rights for writing as much code as possible yourself, but that’s not a requirement. If time’s at a premium for you, just grab a free template or theme and get started. Be sure to check the code for any hidden, unpleasant surprises, though, or use trusted sources, like curated collections and communities. All major players, like WordPress, Gatsby or Hugo, come with curated themes that you can choose from.

Once you have a website

Congratulations! You just became the proud owner of your own piece of online real estate. You how have a place where you can link all your social media profiles, upload your CV, write some blog posts or even articles. If you want to take it even further and remove further your dependency on other platforms, you can start your own email list. But that’s a topic for another time. For now, we’ll focus on three paths you can take to further increase your influence, your reputation and, ultimately, your personal brand. These are paths that other developers have taken before, and they got a lot of benefits out of that choice. They’re also not mutually exclusive. You can mix and match until you get the combination that works best for you.

Continue reading How to Boost Your Developer Career with a Personal Brand on SitePoint.

5 Features to Make Your Web Developer Portfolio Stand Out

This sponsored article was created by our content partner, BAW Media. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.

It’s not always easy to find and get new clients as a web developer.

First, there’s the obstacle of how to translate what you do into a language that clients will understand. If you start talking about things like PHP, APIs, and wireframes, your prospects’ eyes will glaze over. They want to see for their own eyes what you can do.

Secondly, how do you stand out from the crowd when most developers use the same tools and programming languages to build websites?

A well-crafted web developer portfolio site will solve both of these problems.

Below, I’m going to show you some web developer portfolios that are true standouts in the space. If you’re interested in building something as attractive and innovative as the sites below, I’ve also suggested some BeTheme pre-built sites you can use to easily create your own.

Let’s take a look.

Continue reading 5 Features to Make Your Web Developer Portfolio Stand Out on SitePoint.

How gamification can boost your cybersecurity training

Security is not a game, but learning about it could be – here’s why adding the fun factor can help employees become more cyber-aware

The post How gamification can boost your cybersecurity training appeared first on WeLiveSecurity