And we go again…say ‘hi’ to Dewang!
We’re on a roll, as we now introduce you to another new team mate, Dewang.
Dewang joined the Oval team last week, bringing with him some solid commercial application development skills. Adept in .NET, and Angular – amongst other things – he’ll be adding his expertise to one of our key projects, working with the client in developing a digital platform that seeks to improve the lives of those in fragile and conflicted countries.
Once again, we’re making full use of online platforms to get to know him (and vice versa!), and to provide a good insight into our work. Accept our big Oval welcome, Dewang, we’re delighted to have you on board 🙂
No platform is an island
If you’re here, reading this, you probably already know that we’re in the business of software development. No ordinary software development, of course; bespoke software development.
We develop all sorts of software, in all sorts of coding languages, across all sorts of sectors.
Sounds frightfully generic, doesn’t it? Why don’t we back one horse, and just specialise?
There are many specialist software developers in this rich and diverse world who focus specifically on one technology: one framework or one coding language. For example, there are companies just doing Laravel, just doing .NET, or just doing Ruby on Rails. There are very successful businesses focused exclusively on AWS, or even just on WordPress. They have a much easier job of marketing themselves than we do. Arguably, it’s easier for potential clients to rule them in or rule them out. If you’ve decided to build, say, a Ruby application and you find a supplier who says ‘we’re so into Ruby that we only do Ruby’, then you’ll immediately get the sense they’re a good fit.
But here’s the thing: software development isn’t that simple. It’s actually a bit of a web, as you might expect. So, any single project will very often call for a whole range of disparate – but interconnected – skills and technologies.
No technology is an island.
Your application developer will need to be adept at understanding how to engineer a great front-end experience for your users. They will also need the experience to create comprehensive and robust database architecture. They will need to know how to build – or at least use – APIs to connect your applications, and enable them to share data. Their knowledge of hosting options, resilience and security must stand up to close scrutiny. Make no mistake though, you don’t need a jack of all trades, but you do need a digital partner that has mastered a curated handful of core trades.
So, yes, we DO specialise! We specialise in carefully selecting and implementing the right blend of technologies and techniques to deliver your solution. All of which allows you and your teams to be more productive, by using the right digital tools. Still scratching your head about it all, and whether you really need to go down this route? Then drop us a line and we can help you decide.
And finally, if you’re thinking about diving into commissioning any kind of browser-based business system, you might want to check out our simple guide to bespoke systems versus off-the-shelf-systems.
A big Oval welcome to Niall
We’re delighted to extend a very warm welcome to a new developer in our midst, Niall.
Niall will be joining the Oval team, to help us continue the ambitious growth and improvement plan we have for our successful AwardStage platform, as well as getting stuck in to a number of meaty Oval projects.
Despite these challenging times, we have successfully navigated the recruitment process remotely, and (poor) Niall is now embarking on a series of (lots of) web meetings to bring him up to speed with how each of our projects works from a technical point of view. With an impressive track record in both front and back end development, we’re super excited to see the expertise he will bring to the team – and we know that our clients will see the benefits too 🙂
Don’t forget to look out for you.
As we all know, a large proportion of the workforce is now into the swing of getting their job done at home. For many, this won’t be anything new and, for others, it could be a whole different way of life – particularly if you’re throwing other factors into the mix, such as home schooling, or caring for vulnerable relatives. Either way, nothing is normal at the moment. Staying at home is no longer a choice, but a moral obligation, and that – alongside all the other factors – can have a massive impact on our overall wellbeing, both mental and physical. We’ve put our heads together to come up with our top ‘self care’ tips to help keep things a little more in balance.
1. Keep checking in with your team
This one is particularly poignant if you’re more used to working within yelling distance of your colleagues. Keep those regular team meetings in the diary, and use one of the many web tools available to retain the structure that you use in the office.
2. Stay social
Related to point 1 above; if you hang out and chat at work in the comfy seating area, the kitchen, or at the water cooler, then you’ll want to (or even need to) do the same when you’re working remotely. Schedule virtual tea breaks to shoot the breeze. Set up a WhatsApp group or a Slack channel. Just keep talking, and retaining that sense of team spirit (read ‘banter’!!).
3. Don’t leave anyone out
It might sound obvious, but ensure the whole team knows about points 1 and 2 – when and where everything’s being held. There will naturally be differing levels of sociability amongst you, but everyone will benefit from seeing and hearing from people.
4. Show your face, when you can
One thing we’ve really noticed that makes a positive difference, is switching on those webcams, and actually seeing people. A voice call will suffice if that’s all that’s available, but the connection (and the benefits reaped from that) is made much stronger when we can involve sight and sound.
5. Compare coping strategies
If you’re running out of things to do (or your kids are), swap ideas with your colleagues. Found a great online art workshop recently? Share the link. Discovered an awesome free fitness app? Refer a friend. Having said that, it can also be strangely comforting to compare mundanities too – you are not alone in your boredom, anxieties, and potential cabin fever.
6. Switch up your workplace
You may not have the luxury of a home office but, even if you do, swap your scenery from time to time. Work from the sofa for an hour if you’re usually at the kitchen table. Hell, be luxurious and base yourself in bed for a morning (although perhaps not advisable for video calls!). Either way, a change is as good as a holiday, and it’ll help keep things a bit more interesting.
7. Don’t forget to move
We’re always told we should do this, even if we’re usually based in an office, and the same holds true for when you’re working from home. Make sure you take regular breaks to stretch, walk around, go into the garden if you have one. Sitting still for too long in one place won’t do anything to help your motivation levels, or your spine alignment.
8. Try and stick to a routine
We never quite get over being babies in this respect; most humans work best when there’s some kind of routine in place. It’s WAY too easy to float back towards your laptop after your working day is done, when it’s sitting in your kitchen/living room/home office – don’t do it. Try and stick to your usual core hours (albeit you may need to build in a bit of float if other things – in my case, children! – take up some of your attention during the day). Equally, it can be helpful to try and draw some distinction between things like what you wear on working and non-working days; mentally, your mindset is likely to subconsciously shift from one to the other too.
We’d love to hear what you’ve discovered that works for you along the way, so please do drop us a line and let us know! It could be productivity related, or simply that you’ve discovered an awesome new board game…tell us about it!
We *heart* Podio
We talk about Podio a lot – we are a Citrix Partner, and we use Podio at work to manage everything from projects and CRM, to annual leave and team outings. It’s safe to say that we are big fans, and would be lost without it.
Many of us have ‘favourite’ features that make our lives infinitely easier and, for some, the love and appreciation extends beyond the workplace. We thought you might like an insight into why the love affair continues….
“The ability to tag people in comments and items is brilliant, and then being able to keep an ensuing conversation in one place (the comments stream), has made life so much easier than when we simply received millions of emails. There is no way I want to go back to those days!” Doug, software developer
“I like being able to @ mention a whole workspace in one hit. It’s the quickest way to get everyone’s attention.” Adam, software developer
“Managing projects, progress and everything else in-between centrally, it’s an excellent tool for a disparate workforce to enable engagement and encourage teamwork and a feeling of being part of something. All that and it still manages to eliminate 90% of email.” Katie, Business Development Director
“I like the collaboration (or ‘togetherness’) it provides to groups who do not necessarily work with, or even live near, each other. Outside of work, I use Podio as part of a charity group so we can discuss and plan events, and the running of the charity, which reduces the frequency of when we need to meet in person, and also reduces the likelihood of someone being left off an email chain. The comprehensive API also really helps when you want to show data to external users via, for example, the charity’s website. And to top it all, the simple layout and ease of app building is great even for the less computer literate users.” Alex, software tester
“I’d never used anything like Podio before I joined Oval, but I’m a complete convert. Honestly, I’ve reached a point of being unable to think of a group, organisation or company that wouldn’t benefit from using it. Obviously I use it day-to-day in the office, but I’ve also set up a workspace to organise my home life. I’ve got all my contacts’ addresses and birthdays in there, I have an app for holiday planning, one that I share with some friends where we leave book reviews, another one for financials….I could go on. The fact it’s so easy to view – on my phone or iPad – wherever I am (yes, I check my phone a lot, I’m one of ‘those’!), is another massive plus.” Victoria, Marketing Manager
“I love the way photos work via the mobile app. If you take a photo it appears instantly in your Podio item or status update with no need to sync, plug anything in, or faff around. Very clever.” Adrian, Managing Director
“In my opinion, the app builder is Podio’s best feature. I can set something up exactly as I want it, and it takes me minutes to do it. The outcome is that I have complete control over my work. As well as that, I like being able to keep track of collaborative projects that I’m working on with colleagues based in our other offices; not just progress, but outstanding tasks, even when that person isn’t in the office.” Martin, Technical Director
Bringing shadow IT out of the shadows and into the light
As businesses, we all have a need to get things done; to deliver a service, to manufacture goods, to achieve whatever delivers on our raison d’etre. As such, each business needs a set of well-structured and efficient systems and processes that help operational teams to do their jobs, right?
But, in a demanding business environment, what happens when those systems and processes fail to keep pace with the needs of each team?
Typically, this is where the IT department builds up a backlog while they search for a new solution, and the business teams naturally start to find their own workarounds.
This is an inevitability. It’s driven by necessity more than a burning inclination toward mutiny!
So what does shadow IT look like? How do you recognise it?
The ‘shadow’ label, by definition, means we’re dealing with behaviours and initiatives that may be hard to spot, especially if one is somewhat removed from the team in question; but typical examples might include…
- circumventing existing systems, reverting to email and spreadsheets instead
- introducing new collaboration tools such as Slack or Hangout, without central approval
- adopting a new, lightweight project management platform, such as Basecamp or Trello, again, without approval
- connecting systems together, using workflow automation tools such as Zapier
- signing up to multiple services from one month to the next; doing their own haphazard IT research and development.
As you can see from these examples, very often people know enough to roll up their sleeves and put together some sort of solution, and often their workarounds are effective and inventive. These well-intentioned proponents of the so-called ‘shadow IT’ department have the honourable goal of getting their jobs done and moving things forward, when nobody else is able to help.
…and what’s wrong with that?
Well, ultimately, these short-term workarounds do come at a price and something important will be compromised, knowingly or otherwise. You cannot rely on serendipity to achieve the requisite levels of compliance, security or cohesion.
Typically, the downsides might be…
- the ‘real’ IT department will lose track of what applications are in use by the business
- the business will lose track of where its data is
- security will get compromised (dare we even write ‘gee-dee-pee-are’?)
- multiple people or sub-teams will simultaneously be attempting to carve their own solutions, creating further inefficiency
- frustrations will bubble to the surface and manifest, one way or another, into something ugly or catastrophic.
So, what are the solutions?
If IT departments and CTOs are genuinely searching for the right digital solutions to support business processes, it will necessarily take time.
In our view, one very compelling solution is to bring shadow IT out of the shadows and into the light, by equipping all business teams with a platform to build their own tools, within a legitimate, transparent and controlled environment. Like a sandpit, but where the solutions can quickly become real, working applications.
What you then have, is an empowered army of legitimised ‘citizen developers’, rather than a subversive shadow IT department working against you.
This is effectively what Podio (by Citrix) gives you. It’s a platform whereby any team can create its own workspaces, apps and solutions, but within a unified environment. Therefore, empowered business users never need to go wildly off-track, espousing entirely separate systems (thereby putting company data in places it shouldn’t be).
Also, because it has a consistent and predetermined interface, the focus is on getting the right structure and workflows in place, rather than tinkering too much with layout, styling or colours. Furthermore, any app can be connected to any other app in any other workspace. So, when you do need to consolidate, join or centralise data, it’s easy to do so.
Of course, no enterprise really wants a boundless free-for-all, so proper governance and guidelines should be introduced as you see fit. But, in principle, providing the platform to empower citizen developers with access to low code (or mostly no code) custom applications, is a smart move. ‘Freedom within a framework’ would sum it up.
And remember, if you or any of your teams get stuck, cost-effective help is available!
MVP versus Prototype. What’s the difference?
How we use Podio and why we’d be lost without it!
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that we are long-term champions of Podio.
At Oval, we’ve been using it for almost seven years, and couldn’t be without it!
So, we thought it would be a nice idea to back up our claims, justify our singing-its-praises, and maybe give you some ideas of how you can use a collaboration platform, in ways that perhaps you hadn’t thought of before. A real life, this-is-how-we-do-it case study.
PROJECTS
We use Podio for projects before they even become projects. From initial enquiry, right up until practical completion, every stage is tracked. From collating proposal material, creating/tracking sprints for development, and invoicing status to task allocation, CRM, and associated file storage. We communicate on projects and their stages within the relevant comment stream, ridding ourselves of hideously long email trails. Ditto with documentation; we attach it all to the project item. In both these last two cases, the result is the knowledge that we are looking at comments in the order in which they were received, and the latest version of documentation.
This is particularly key for those projects where documents are constantly being updated; nobody wants to work off something which they then realise – far too late – has been superseded!!
CRM
Because Podio offers you the ability to build apps, and link them together via relationship fields if you want to, you can create a CRM system that works exactly as you need it to. In our case, we hold all information in one app, and use relationship fields to link to relevant projects/enquiries if appropriate. There’s a super simple export function if you want to pull out data for manipulation (in Excel, for example), and an email address associated with each record (enabling you to ‘email to item’).
SOCIAL
Whether it’s collating menu choices from the team for the Christmas party, or a ridiculous meme that we have to share, Podio is the quickest way to get in front of everyone. We have workspaces for projects and areas of work, but we also have one that’s dedicated to hanging out – virtually – with our teammates. We share recipes and favourite films, and we also use it as a place to high-five each other if someone has achieved something amazing! With a team that’s spread across multiple locations, it’s a simple way to stay in touch.
DOCUMENT SHARING
Arguably, this could be absorbed into any of the previous points, but it is such a standout feature for us, that we think it deserves its own mention. There is nothing worse – certainly as an organiser, facilitator, or project manager – than sending out a document for review by others, to then be on the receiving end of several, distinct, new versions. Are you looking at the latest version? Have you incorporated all changes? How many people have or have not had a chance to review it yet? Who made these changes again??!!
The wonder of Podio – particularly when used in conjunction with a service such as GoogleDocs, which updates and saves in progress – is the ability to track every single ‘movement’. So that covers when an attachment/document was last added or updated, and who instigated it; the life of that attachment is documented forever.
CLIENT SUPPORT + HELPDESK
We interact with clients via Podio in a variety of ways, but primarily using workspaces or helpdesk forms.
Workspaces: occasionally, we will create a specific project workspace within Oval’s Podio organisation set-up, and give access to external members, ie the client. This enables us to conduct conversations about timelines, features, sprints etc within Podio directly, rather than via email (which can result in a full-to-bursting inbox, and lack of clarity over who said what and when). It also means that we can store project-specific attachments, against the relevant items in the relevant apps, and everyone knows they’re viewing the most up-to-date information.
Helpdesk: For those projects which require support by both clients and other end-users, we create helpdesk apps within workspaces. By creating a Podio webform with its own URL, users can get in touch with us outlining their details, with the form then creating an item within the relevant app. This is perfect for giving all members of the development team visibility of issues, ensuring we can respond to queries as quickly as possible, and reducing ‘silo-ing’.
So, having read a little about how we use Podio, and you think you’d like to explore the idea of a collaboration system (while we’ve mentioned Podio, we also have experience in other, similar platforms), then just give us a shout for a totally-informal-with-no-obligation chat; we’re here to help!
R.I.P Email
Kill off internal email and attachments in favour of transparent, logical and mindful collaboration.
Group emails lose their context too easily; they get buried in a pile of competing emails and never end up where they truly belong. As for attachments – remind me, which version of the spreadsheet should I be looking at?
Pro tip: Forward emails to the activity stream, app or item of your choice using Podio’s ‘Email to…’ feature – or set up a mail rule to do it for you!