Software Maintenance, Home Inspections, and Boosting Valuations
Creating a new software application is exciting – similar to building a new home. As the designs take shape, you already picture yourself admiring the views from the balcony, or in the case of an app, imagine the users navigating their way around to solve important problems.
Once the house is built (our analogy for building a software platform), the initial excitement dwindles, but the work is far from done. Just like your new home needs ongoing maintenance to ensure it stays in a good condition, your software – particularly if it’s a software-as-a-service product – needs the same upkeep to ensure it remains functional and relevant to users.
Hiring a Chief Technology Officer? Read This First…
At some point during the lifetime of a new software company, every founder considers appointing a Chief Technology Officer (CTO). When is the right time, and do you really need one?
Perhaps you’ve built the first version or MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of an application or platform with a sweat equity team or via outsourced developers and things are going well.
As the viability of the business becomes more certain and in order to move to the next phase, you may consider broadening the internal skills base by hiring an experienced CTO.
You may even think it’s essential.
NASA Space Missions: Lessons for Today’s Virtual Team Managers
Virtual team management has come into sharp focus during COVID but managing teams remotely is not new. Sending a rocket into space is arguably one of the most complex endeavors imaginable – yet NASA teams scattered across different locations have been using virtual tools to execute groundbreaking missions for years.
REEA CPO Alan Schunemann, whose former roles included a stint at NASA’s space program, explores the early development of online sharing tools and how their application laid the foundations for virtual world management processes today.
How Should You Measure Experience?
When shopping for a software development or analytics partner, the depth and type of experience they have is one of the most critical factors in determining success.
Beyond technical expertise – which in itself is rarely enough to guarantee success – what should leaders and founders look for in a technology partner? A true partner in the broader sense is not just a technology partner, it is a business partner who brings additional dimensions of capabilities and perspectives that drive better planning, decisions, and execution. For this reason, it is important to consider a partner who has built products, teams, and companies by navigating the real world, with all of its inevitable surprises, challenges, and imperfections. In essence, the best technology partners are “technology business partners” who really understand the bigger picture.
How to Use Sentiment Analysis to Boost Your Business
Sentiment analysis is an increasingly valuable tool that enables businesses of all sizes to use machine learning to save time and money.
Given that this is a rapidly evolving technology, we decided to shed some light on how it works in practice and if it can really make a meaningful difference in your business?
When Do You Scrap The MVP and Rewrite The Platform?
(This is the third in a series of three posts examining the startup journey from MVP to full-scale product, with real-life examples). Also read:
The Startup Guide to the MVP and Beyond When is the MVP not enough and what does that mean?
The ideal scenario in the startup journey is that the MVP or MDP stages lead to the building of a full, mature stable product. But that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?
The reality is that the process is not as linear as that and an MVP is a process that you repeat over and over again, as John Madea explains in his book “How to Speak Machine.” He reveals how companies such as Google have heightened what users expect from products. Continue reading
When is the MVP not enough and what does that mean?
(This is the second in a series of three posts by REEA Global examining the startup journey from MVP to full-scale product, with real-life examples). Also read our first article: The Startup Guide to the MVP and Beyond.)
Since MVP became a startup must-have, the market for software products has changed dramatically. Digitally savvy customers are no longer prepared to accept poorly designed products and expect great functionality from new applications. There is a lot more pressure on startups to make a good impression the first time around.
What this means is that the focus, particularly when it comes to consumer apps and digital products, has shifted more towards UX – and tech companies have to pull out all the stops to present early adopters with a “wow factor” even in the very first versions of their products.
An MVP by definition does not include the UX element, because it is limited to the minimum viable product and as such, clearly isn’t aimed at blowing customers away. The conundrum for entrepreneurs in the tech space is that the traditional MVP approach could sometimes simply not be good enough because end-users expect a great experience right from the outset. You don’t delight customers with product development, but with a great product. Continue reading
How to Achieve Product Development Success via the MVP
(This is the first in a series of three posts examining the startup journey from MVP to full-scale product, with real-life examples).
One of the main reasons so many tech startups fail is because they neglect to check whether there is a need for their “brilliant” service or product in the first place.
As many as 42% of startups fail because they hadn’t verified that there was a market need for their product. They may spend months or even years developing a product, which turns out to be of no relevance to anyone. The only way to avoid this is by testing your product in front of real users as quickly as possible before forking out a lot of money on product development.
Many successful companies – including legendary startups such as Airbnb, Dropbox, Facebook and Amazon – have avoided this pitfall by adopting what is known as the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach.
The lean startup methodology has become a powerful, if not pivotal, concept for product development, particularly in the IT world.
Why Data Science is Not Just Glorified Data Analytics
Big data and how businesses can learn from it is one of the key elements of business intelligence and has led to an explosion in the need for the right skills to help enterprises comb through large datasets and identify actionable insights.
In this context, terms such as data analytics and data science are often used interchangeably, leaving companies uncertain as to which functions and tools they need to get the best results from their data. For example, data science is often dismissed as glorified data analytics, which can’t be further from the truth. You’ll also find many articles entitled “data science vs data analytics”, which don’t make sense as the one can’t replace the other, and neither one is more important. It is essential to understand that although the two fields are very much interconnected and there is definitely some overlap, they are unique and each approach brings a very different value to your business.
Enterprise Data Warehouses EDW: The Future of Business Intelligence
By now, there can be little doubt that all enterprises can benefit from data-driven insights to allow owners and managers to unlock the organization’s full potential.
These days a company’s data is one of its key resources and the insights derived from data, also known as business intelligence or BI, lead to a better understanding of customers, improved competitiveness, and the ability to better navigate market and industry fluctuations.
Business intelligence, BI data, or business analytics can be defined as a process for analyzing data to discover insights that help business leaders make better decisions. One of the top five business intelligence trends of 2021, highlighted in a survey of over 2000 professionals, identified the need for organizations to manage their own data and to make good use of it as a top priority. What’s evident from this survey is that organizations nowadays want to go beyond the collection of as much data as possible, to actually using the data at their disposal intelligently to boost business. Continue reading