Tag: development

Reshoring and Nearshoring Software Development to the Silicon Bayou

Posted on by Calvin Fabre

Reshoring vs. Nearshoring vs. Offshoring

In the ever-evolving world of software development, choosing the right team to bring your project to life is crucial. Many companies have turned to offshoring, attracted by the promise of cost savings. However, the reality often falls short, with numerous risks and past failures highlighting the pitfalls. At Envoc, based in Baton Rouge and Hammond, Louisiana, we advocate for “reshoring,” bringing it back from overseas, and “nearshoring” within the United States as the superior choice for any software project. Here’s why nearshoring with Envoc is your best bet for success.

Understanding the Risks of Offshoring

Offshoring might seem like a cost-effective solution initially, but it often comes with hidden costs and significant risks. Time zone differences can lead to communication delays, making project management challenging. Cultural and language barriers can result in misunderstandings and misalignment of expectations. For instance, idioms, figures of speech, and cultural nuances can be easily lost, leading to confusion and miscommunication. Moreover, varying quality standards and lack of direct oversight can lead to subpar deliverables and increased project timelines. Due to these offshoring challenges, many companies have faced project failures, extended timelines, and inflated budgets.

Nearshoring: A Better Alternative

Nearshoring, on the other hand, mitigates these risks by keeping your project within the same or similar time zones and cultural contexts. Working with a team in the United States ensures more accessible and more effective communication, aligned work hours, and a better understanding of business practices and legal standards. This results in a more collaborative and agile development process, ensuring your project stays on track and meets your quality expectations. Nearshored firms are more likely to be familiar with and comply with HIPAA, PCI, SOC2, and GAAP. Further, a local firm is more accountable to non-disclosure agreements, copyrights, and intellectual property expectations.

Louisiana: The Silicon Bayou

Choosing Envoc as your nearshoring partner brings additional benefits. Our Baton Rouge and Hammond-based team is composed of highly skilled professionals with expertise in various technologies, including .NET, SQL Server, Node.js, and more. We pride ourselves on our disciplined approach to software development, ensuring that each project is executed precisely and excellently. Our local talent alleviates the confusion in communication by understanding local idioms, figures of speech, and cultural elements absent in offshoring engagements. Our proximity allows regular in-person meetings, fostering a closer working relationship and better project outcomes.

Evening Scrum Meeting with Offshore Team

The Human Factor: Work-Rest Balance at Dinner Time

Another critical advantage of nearshoring is the alignment of work schedules. Offshore engagements often require managing teams across varied time zones, which can interrupt personal and family time. Imagine dreading a 7pm stand-up meeting with a remote team before a family dinner. Such scheduling conflicts can impede relaxation and upset family dynamics. Nearshoring with Envoc eliminates these disruptions, as our team works within the same or similar time zones, allowing for a healthier work-life balance and more productive collaboration.

Conclusion

Offshoring may promise savings, but the risks often outweigh the benefits. Nearshoring with Envoc ensures effective communication, cultural alignment, and high-quality deliverables. Our Baton Rouge and Hammond teams are ready to bring your software projects to life with the expertise, reliability, and dedication you deserve. Choose Envoc for a partnership that goes beyond just development—choose a team committed to your success and well-being.

Get the Conversation Started

Modernizing your internal technology stack is vital for driving innovation, staying competitive, and enhancing operational efficiency. By understanding software modernization approaches and carefully considering strategic alignment, technology stack evaluation, organizational preparedness, and security, you can make informed decisions that enable your organization to thrive in the digital era.

Tell our chatbot you have an idea to get started or contact me directly to get started with your project or modernization. 

 

Using the Design Patterns Methodology for Creatives

Posted on by admin

Who is this for?

UX/UI Designers, Front-end Developers, Web Developers, Web Designers, Graphic Designers, Back-end Developers

What is the Design Pattern Methodology?

The Design Patterns methodology is simply the reuse of general solutions to solve common problems. This same methodology can also be seen in use in Atomic Design. This methodology has provided a systematic approach to design in which the components, or patterns, we use to solve common problems in design can be reused to solve common interface problems.

Frameworks like Bootstrap and Foundation provide reusable sets of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that are put together to create patterns. These patterns can be further extended using technologies like LESS or SASS and React to create fully functional UI patterns like the ones that are used in the browser that can then be individually included and combined within a full solution and adjusted as needed between projects.

How can I use this as a Creative?

Creatives seem to be placed in a box using templates, widgets, and components. That box has been used to standardize design and, in some cases, replace it entirely. However, by changing the way designers and developers work together within the design pattern methodology, we can use those created patterns and functionalities not only to continue thinking outside the box but also push our design and development possibilities further by improving the accepted functionality.

Designers and developers reuse patterns built into the browser (links, drop-downs, inputs, etc.) that allow us to interact with the websites we visit daily. Some solutions have already been created and are now an accepted standard for using the Internet (accordions, tabs, navigation drop-downs, etc.). These patterns were designed to meet the needs of users, and by thinking of these patterns within this methodology, we can look for ways to expand them and create new, better solutions for users.

Why solve the problems that are already solved?

Think about what you’re designing and developing, and try to create solutions for the problems that have not been solved yet. Push yourself past solving the same issues over and over again. Instead, take the problems you can solve and expand them past what is expected. When you push the norm, you can bring new ideas into the world of creative standards. Never be satisfied with what is — be an innovator.

User Experience vs. User Interface

Posted on by admin

With the rise of User Interface design, there has been some confusion about the difference between it and User Experience design. Both are important when designing an application or website, but each brings a different aspect to the finished product.

User Interface: how the user and a computer system interact, particularly the use of input devices, visual controls, gestures, and software.1

User Experience: the overall experience of a person using a product such as a website or computer application, especially in terms of how easy or pleasing it is to use.2

Many times, User Experience design is confused with User Interface design because of how closely they work together, so to explain both and the differences between the two, I’m going to tell a story.

The Journey to the Door

Once upon a time, there was a small town in the shadow of a mountain. The land was used up and desolate, so the people of the town had to travel to their neighboring towns to get food each week. This was a special town because in the mountain that shadowed the town was a door. This door was the entryway to a magical world that was rumored to have a magical power to grow things that were planted in the ground with a snap of a finger. Everyone wanted to explore the world but the door was high on the edge of a cliff and there was no path to get to the door. One day three people decided they would try everything they could to get to the door, so they gathered all their plans and ideas, and each began his or her journey to the door.

The first person decided to climb the mountain from the bottom up to the door, but on the first day had to turn back because he got a hole in his shoe.

The second person decided to take the long path on the far side of the mountain and repel down the cliff to the door. When he made it halfway down the cliff, he realized he didn’t pack enough rope so he had to turn back.

The third person decided to build a beautiful staircase up to the door so he could come and go as he needed, so he hired a team to come help him build his staircase to the door. When he made it through he found a place in the magical land to plant his garden. As soon as the seeds were planted – SNAP – all the seeds instantly grew into full plants covered with fruit and vegetables. The town rejoiced and never had to leave town for food again.

Journey to the Door: Explained

This is a story about the different experiences of three other people.

The first person never checked his gear, so he wasn’t prepared for the journey and had a bad experience.

The second person checked his gear but didn’t know how much rope he would need, so the gear was right, but his lack of planning negatively affected his experience.

The third person took his time and built a way to get to the top without interacting with the mountain. This provided a better experience not only for himself but also for anyone who wanted to get up to the door.

All three deserve credit for designing a trip; each had a user experience and developed a user interface to help them accomplish the journey. Two of them failed because the user interface (shoes, rope, etc.) didn’t fit the task at hand, which made them have a poor user experience and caused them to give up. The third not only considered the user interface (mountain, stairs, etc.) but considered the future users’ experience and came up with a good user experience for the town’s people to easily make the trip to the door without having to take long journeys each week.

Simply put, User Interfaces are the tools a person uses to accomplish a task or set of tasks, and User Experience is how a person feels when using those tools.

Wrap Up

Simply put, User Interfaces are the tools a person uses to accomplish a task or set of functions, and User Experience is how a person feels when using those tools. Based on this definition and the story, we can see that anyone can design a trip (an interface and an experience). However, only the design that accomplishes the goals and considers all aspects will let the user experience something magical.

Are you in need of the proverbial staircase to the magical door?  

 

1“Google Definitions: User Interface.” Google Search. 3 March, 2015.

2“Google Definitions: User Experience.” Google Search. 3 March, 2015.

Late: Technical Debt Interest Payment

Posted on by Calvin Fabre

Your Technical Interest Payment is due.

If you have ever been involved in the development of something as simple as a Microsoft Excel macro, as normal as a public-facing website or portal, or been a part of a full-blown enterprise software application, you are most-probably guilty of ringing up “technical debt” which must be serviced. While national and state spending, deficits, and debts are the first things we hear about when we rise and shine, your technical debt may be accruing in quiet solitude.

What is Technical Debt?

“It is the extra effort technical people will need to make in the future in order to pay for quick-and-dirty design choices of the past.”

Who is responsible for this charge?

Remember the hot-shot programmer’s code that your team is constantly going back to fix? Remember the programming from the low-cost, overseas shop who didn’t code to your company standards, language or dialect? Remember the boss that “needed the project no matter what” who made you cut corners and who promised you could go back later and “do it right?”

Principle and Interest – Where is Dave Ramsey?

In this metaphor, “interest payments” are the countless fixes made and support calls taken to service the debt of a production system. With a large technical debt there is so much time spent “supporting and fixing” that there is no time for adding new features. If you think this frustrating, try getting approval from your client or boss for budget money or time to “go back” and improve the design by paying down some of the interest or principle. Be sure to explain that there will be no real difference the customer or user sees .

I thought some debt was good

One could argue that, in business, you might incur some debt to get to the market quickly, race to a trade show, or beat some deadline in order to grow your business. If you agree with this, you have to agree that very debt will someday come due. The same is true with technical debt – it will come due, with interest.

What can I do? I have Technical Debt!

With any problem, the first thing you need to do is acknowledge you have one.

Second, you need to include time and money in your budget for paying it down. How much depends upon how deep in debt you are. Third, set debt ceilings on future projects by committing to standards, procedures, and the absolute best people you can find. Lastly, manage your debt with periodic reviews logging them into a “debt backlog” and use a “debt snowball” to pay them down with any item over 90-days treated as “critical.”

Debt Assessment

You would not believe some of the projects we have been asked to fix for clients. To protect the guilty, we will not name names. We will however, give you a 30-minute, remote assessment of your technical debt and identify short and long-term risks. Why not schedule at 30-minute discussion with me, Calvin to see how we can help you? You can book me using this booking link. Or, give us a call at +1 225 384 5549.