Software Development Archives – Page 6 of 8

18 Aug 2009

Continuous Improvement

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:25:11-06:00August 18th, 2009|Categories: Current Events, Doug's Blog, Software Development, Technology|

Web Site Update

Thought about it some more… need to just get things done so new Sunwapta Web Site version one will focus on content and not so much on being an unusual tech site. Just not enough time to do everything.

However, we have a product launch scheduled for September and I will be creating a brand new site for that. That is where I will focus my creative energies.

Convention over Configuration

This evening I went to a Calgary .NET User Group meeting and presentation by James Kovacs (MVP) on "Convention over Configuration". Another passionate presentation by a very talented developer covering a […]

17 Aug 2009

Build Versus Buy (Software)

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:25:15-06:00August 17th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Software Development, Technology|

There are two main reasons to build your own software versus buy an existing software product:

A preexisting software product does not exist; and
Competitive Advantage.

The impact of competitive advantage through software and automation is underestimated by most small and mid-sized companies (and many large corporations too).

Non-Existent

Despite the vast amount of software out there in the cloud and available to be run in your own enterprise, there are still a number of business problems that cannot be solved by off-the-shelf or preexisting software.

And even if that software exists, it may have been tooled to be too specific to one environment and the cost […]

14 Aug 2009

A Failure to Communicate

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:25:27-06:00August 14th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Software Development|

Ever play that game where you take a secret statement, pass it on through a subsequent chain of people. The person at the end says the statement out loud and everyone laughs at how it different it is from what it started out as.

Now add in not just memory of what was said, but include an understanding of what was said, especially if the problem is complex.

The meaning and details are both important and if either aspect is lost, good communications have not happened.

This means that in any development project where there is more than one person involved, there is […]

21 Jul 2009

Clean Code (a la Mode)

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:26:27-06:00July 21st, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Software Development|

Clean Code

Our team recently wrote some code for a client of ours to handle user authentication through Silverlight. It was largely from scratch and implemented a lot of business logic both in Silverlight and on the server.

The nice parts: clean code with lots of unit tests… and a very happy client. Good work team.

Silverlight

Microsoft's Silverlight platform is starting to mature quite well with Version 3.0. Our developers are getting quite good working with it… so much so we are seriously considering switching from an AJAX web browser application to Silverlight part way into a project. If it will speed up future development the […]

29 Jun 2009

Sharing Code Between Silverlight and WPF

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:27:14-06:00June 29th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development|

I recently saw an advertisement for a webinar on the subject of this post in a newsletter. The seminar looks at the feasibility and some of the limitations.

For us this is a been there done that subject. We worked with one of our clients (partners) to develop a framework of tools, etc. for them to quickly build out applications that would work in both WPF desktop and web via Silverlight.

That is not to say there were no limitations or gotchas involved. The XAML is not 100% compatible between the environments and similarly the with the .NET framework… essentially Silverlight is a subset of […]

27 May 2009

Development Updates

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:28:04-06:00May 27th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development|

Sean Feldman spent the day at Sunwapta on Monday. The visit was highly appreciated by our team and especially me.

I think what is most important now after all the visits and training is to just do it; take action. We have a perfect (greenfield) project that is starting up from scratch and we will be using all the latest and greatest we can manage:

The MVC pattern on top of a layered architecture (.NET),
Fluent nHibernate,
Automated Builds and Continuous Integration automation using Hudson and a slew of other tools,
BDD/TDD on top of domain driven design,
Etc.

In this project I am representing the customer but […]

22 May 2009

Development Skills Sprint

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-06T12:20:26-06:00May 22nd, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development|

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am now much more focused on business development. For me this means being an agile business (I’ll come to this later in a new post). As a piece of this I need a development team that is both agile and leading edge skills-wise.

It is interesting how things sometimes come together. JP moved back to Alberta and ran his Nothing But .NET course again here in Calgary and we sent one of our developers.

Sean Feldman, a Nothing But .NET and Sunwapta Solutions alumni, offered to come back and share with us what he has […]

20 May 2009

Developing with Passion @ Sunwapta

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:28:47-06:00May 20th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development|

With my personal focus on business development I am swinging heavily back into a focus on software product development.

I am more the product manager/architect type and leave the developing to the experts, but I have a passion for building great software nevertheless. This includes everything around encouraging our developers to further learn and master the latest agile processes and tools, from the foundation of solid Object Oriented Design to the latest in development tools.

The last week and a bit have been pretty consumed with the JPBoodhoo show. For those of you who don't know Jean-Paul Boodhoo, he is considered to be […]

25 Apr 2009

Thanks Team!

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:30:12-06:00April 25th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development|

I like to acknowledge things that are done right.

On Friday, one of our good clients came to us with an unexpected problem. Their client had changed the infrastructure specifications and the application we had helped them build would not run in the new configuration. They had spent a fair amount of effort over two days trying to get it working and then reached out to us.

Of course these things always happen when your most experienced developer on the team is away. Well we managed to connect with him via phone but he was unable to remotely offer a working solution and […]

8 Apr 2009

Web Site Redesign

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:31:37-06:00April 8th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales, Software Development, Technology|

I have spent the last year or so thinking about redesigning our corporate website. I'll be the first to admit our company's website is dated and the content is a bit stale. It has been kind of the story of the shoemaker and his kids… too busy working on other people's stuff.

I could just take the existing content, update it a bit and put a new front on it. But that didn't really feel right.

Sure there are lots of static and dynamic brochure style websites out there to emulate. This is who we are, these are our products, these […]