As a software engineer, you likely have a lot on your plate. From deadlines to meetings, it can be challenging to balance your workload effectively and prioritize your non-work life. One of the most important skills you can develop as a software engineer is the ability to say 'no' professionally and tactfully.
Agile software development relies heavily on the use of user stories to ensure that software development projects meet the needs of end-users. User stories are a way of capturing what a user needs to do with the software, in a simple and concise way.
As a software developer, working remotely offers a lot of flexibility and freedom, but it can also be challenging to stay organized and productive. Without the structure of a traditional office environment, it's important to establish habits and routines that help you stay focused and organized.
One of the key practices in Agile development is to break down work into small chunks that can be completed in a short time frame with smaller effort. However, there are times when there is a need to explore and investigate a technical solution or a requirement that is not fully understood, and this is where Agile spikes come in.
It happens from time to time that the version of a dependency you need just isn't working anymore. Usually, this means updating something or making a small adjustment. Every once in a while, though, dependencies get out of date, and updating things just isn't an option. That's where we find ourselves today.
The process of building and maintaining positive relationships with clients can be the lifeblood of your business. A positive rapport with your clients will help build your brand through public reviews and, hopefully, referrals.
With the sudden popularity of CHATGPT, a language model developed by Open AI, professionals everywhere are trying to figure out if it's a useful tool for their use case. So, naturally, we did too.
Every software development team needs a great leader. Typically, software leadership comes in more than one role like engineering managers, lead developers, or product owners. While every leadership role has its purpose and goals, none is like that of an agile scrum master.
In an agile software development environment, work can effectively continue forever if the work is not clearly defined. The product owner has worked to put together a strategic roadmap, and the development team has split that into releases and sprints. But what defines the task and project completion? The definition of done.
As consulting or agency software developers and engineers, you always work toward the next project. This means, when one project ends, another (hopefully) starts up. Having a starting routine for each of your projects will greatly help you to stay organized and reach success with your applications.
While online learning was an essential part of several industries and higher education for almost a decade, the 2020 pandemic skyrocketed the need for virtual learning platforms. The need for fast, reliable software that is easy to maintain and easy to use.
In this post, we look to establish an understanding of the Importance/Difficulty Matrix used in agile/design thinking by briefly going through the vital steps involved in the process.
From connected refrigerators that can add to your Alexa shopping list to cars that remind you they need an oil change, IoT has crept into nearly every aspect of daily life. Yet in 2023 (and the years to come), I anticipate IoT will become a larger, more integrated part of our lives.
No matter what flavor of Agile your company embraces, planning is imperative to having a successful product build. Planning doesn’t just happen at the start of every Sprint evaluating the backlog. It should start before a developer receives the new project.
State management in React was originally a monolithic beast that needed to be tamed in Classical React. The introduction of Hooks introduced a paradigm shift that ushered in the age of micro state management in React.
As your company grows, you’re likely adding more custom software applications to your suite of products. Add a mobile application or complementary web application to your business profile that shows your customers, employees, and investors that you understand the market and are willing to do what it takes to maintain your position in it.
A recent study showed that wearable technology is going to grow and grow rapidly over the next eight years. They are predicting that the market will hit nearly $395 billion globally by 2030. But how are wearable devices going to go from tracking steps to be one of the largest industries in the world?
We comprehensively discussed the differences of rebase and merge within Git, but we didn’t quite hit on the challenges. When you’re working with a team of developers accessing the same master, you’re bound to have conflicts that need to be resolved.
No longer are we arguing about whether or not we should use version control. Instead, we are arguing about *how* we should use version control. Now, thanks to advancements in version control technology, many of us are on the other side of yet another large step forward, in which version control becomes less of a tool to control the source code, and more of a tool to help craft the source code into its best form.
The goal of the options class was to take _all_ the options and turn them into something useful. We essentially want a user to pass in as little information as needed to generate the correct markup, but we want to set some useful defaults. This post expands on the latest Ruby on Rails post on options and configurations.
The bootstrap helpers gem is starting to come together and be useful in projects. But not every project is alike. To make matters more interesting, not even uses inside the same project need the same options. This post dives into just that.
Imagine after months or even years of development, you have finally launched the perfect mobile application. While you plan to sit back, relax and watch it rise to the top, someone wakes you up that it was only a dream.
In a fast-paced world where new programming languages, frameworks, coding strategies, libraries, and technologies are being introduced every day, software engineers must go through extensive measures to keep their software development knowledge up-to-date.
Whether you are a mid-level developer, a senior designer, a junior quality assurance officer, or even a team leader, if you don’t know how to be a good team member, there is a high chance that you won’t succeed professionally. Here, we will teach you everything you need to know about becoming a great team member.
Bootstrap also has an icon package. It's great to use because, at the start of many projects, many clients haven't really decided on an icon pack yet, and while the bootstrap icons are nothing fantastical, they are, like the bootstrap CSS a workhorse.
When it comes to hiring a software development company, effective and efficient communication is the key to success. To do this, you must ensure that the project requirements are clearly communicated before the design development stage.
Consumers use emails, websites, phone calls, messaging apps, and other channels to communicate with businesses. These customer touchpoints create a complex user journey map, making it difficult for developers to ensure a smooth user experience.
During a sprint review meeting, the entire scrum team can sit and work together with the stakeholders to decide the best way forward. Even though the agile sprint review is an informal meeting, it is primarily conducted to inspect product increments and adapt product backlog items if required.
Entrision is pleased to report that its team was included in the “The 2022 Best Software Development Companies In Education” list published annually by the leading consumer education website, OnlineDegree.com.
Whether you are a business owner, salesperson, manager, engineer, or designer, client meetings allow you to build credibility and trust with prospects, current customers, and leads. Learning how to plan, mediate and prepare for an effective client meeting is a great way to set yourself apart from others, create a strong impression, and initiate an excellent working relationship.
One of Entrision’s application developers explains the history of accessibility in bootstrap. Yes, you’ll see what it was like to code tables in the ‘90s. And then he’ll take you on a journey to update your coding skills to the 21st century with a grid system.
Held after every sprint or project, a sprint retrospective meeting is an excellent way for your team to reflect on the successes and failures of the previous sprint, including the goals achieved, the work that was done, and the ideas to improve future performance or generate better outcomes.
Mobile app monetization methods help you generate sustainable revenue from an app without charging any money for it. Not only this, but it also helps keep the user experiences relatively intact. Let’s discuss the three expert-advised ways to monetize your app.
Companies need to have software development teams that can create a product using the latest tech solutions. However, the quality and efficiency of the product directly depend upon two things: the dev team leader and the team interaction.
Heroku has announced they are shutting down the free hosting tier. These are some of Derek's thoughts on the move, and reflections on what Heroku has done for Entrision and for the community. Also, what now? I incldue some recomendations for heroku alternatives that will still meet your needs.
With over 3 million iOS and Android apps worldwide and 3.8 million smartphone users, the competition is getting fiercer by the minute. To ensure that your app stands out, you need to offer a flawless user experience that can only be possible by tracking the performance of your application using mobile app analytics tools.
The bootstrap framework offers us alert components that are easy to drop-in, but there are ways we can use them more efficiently within the ruby on rails framework. Here are some helper classes that I use in many of my projects that DRY up my code and allow me to use bootstrap helpers in many different formats and circumstances with a single line of code.
Software development is currently one of the most important niches in the corporate world. With new and different types of software being launched almost every day, it is no wonder that more and more people have decided to work in this booming industry. If the teams aren’t nurtured, it can often lead to burnout, resulting in software development teams losing their motivation and productivity.
Having some helpers for bootstrap code isn't new. Others have done it. This is just one take on the problem. Also, this isn't a project where we know the ending and so we can skip all the dirty traveling we have to do to get there.
The best way to know what your consumers think about your product or service is by collecting user feedback directly from them. So whether you are designing a new product or improving an old one, understanding the user perspective is one of the easiest and most efficient ways to achieve success for your application.
A daily scrum allows agile software development teams to address the complexity of a project with regularity. Every person from the scrum master to the product owner to the team members must attend the daily scrum meeting to track the progress of sprints and ensure that everything is on track.
Every software development team will have its own style of the development process, even if they are also using an Agile process. Agile can look different to each team that employs it. That’s why it’s so important to be clear and upfront with your clients when they start working with you.
The complexity of the software development industry can be daunting. Despite the awareness of technology and accessibility of unlimited information and online learning tools, many software engineering companies are still investing in internal mentoring programs to help both junior and senior developers grow and learn professionally. They believe that mentoring new software developers helps them develop new skills, deliver high-quality products, and retain their best talent, and we agree.
The work we do at Entrision wouldn’t be successful without the amazing, diverse team. It’s important to us to take a moment and shine a light on the bright minds that we have on the team. Join us in learning a bit more about them in our Employee Spotlight Series. We’re going to hear more from Jon Armour, a Client Delivery Manager.
One of the things about the bootstrap helpers gem that is a bit annoying is that every time you change a helper, you have to reload the rails server to see the changes. That's a bit annoying, takes time from developing, and can add time to a project timeline, so let’s try to fix that.
In this fast-paced and competitive world of digitalization, developing a mobile app isn’t enough. You need to provide regular maintenance (fix bugs, improve user experiences, and release regular updates) to ensure that the app stands its ground against your competitors. How do you know your app is competitive? Let us give you some guidelines.
When securing a web application there are two things that must be taken into consideration: Authentication and Authorization. At a high-level Authentication is “who are you?” and authorization is “are you allowed to be here?”. A while ago, we looked at pundit and cancan for Authorization. Today, we’ll look at a new feature in Rail 7.1 called authenticated_by (and has_secure_password).
From planning, prototyping, and testing your ideas to implementing them, the journey of developing a new product is a combination of different steps. The design thinking process comprises five steps; empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Being fourth in the line, after ideation sessions, the prototyping phase saves the design team’s time and money by revealing to them how the user would think and feel about their products or services while allowing them to address any uncertainties around the idea.
Companies are adapting to the purely remote or hybrid culture in today’s work culture. This is where pair programming saves the day. Not only because writing advanced code can be challenging and doing it alone can make the task even more daunting, but it has also been observed that programmers work best when they are empowered and inspired by one another, and pair programming makes that easier than ever.
Agile sprint planning gets a lot of things right. But most importantly, the sprint planning session helps turn your project goals into a step-by-step guide, making it easier for the scrum master to supervise and the product development teams to execute.
After you have observed and engaged with the users of your application in the Empathize Phase, you’ll pull all of the data together to define the problem. The end result of the Define Phase of Design Thinking should be a creative brief that allows the creative and development teams to ideate a solution.
Development teams are constantly changing, especially in today’s job market. When a change is made to a development team (or any type of team), they will probably enter a learning phase. There are several ways that teams can find themselves thrust into a learning phase.
Gems, not unique to Ruby on Rails, are external libraries that developers can use to add functionality to a software project quickly. It allows developers to become extremely time-efficient when coding components and features that show up frequently in their projects. In this post, I’m going to explain how to kick off a bootstrap helpers gem.
If you want to find a solution, you not only have to know the problem, but you need to understand why it is a problem in the first place. In the first phase of the process of Design Thinking, your team will gain an empathetic understanding of the problem you are tasked to solve.
A new-ish game owned by the New York Times, called "Wordle" has recently become very popular. In this game, your goal is to guess a five-letter word, in six guesses or less. The most interesting thing for us developers is how it can relate to password protection.
Every software development team will have its own style of the development process, even if they are also using an Agile process. Agile can look different to each team that employs it. That’s why it’s so important to be clear and upfront with your clients when they start working with you.
The basic use case for the Futurism gem is to “lazy-load” sections of a web page. You may want to do this for example if you have a complex application, and you want to load sections of the page after the main or important content has loaded.
Our team at Entrision is growing! We think it's important for us to take a moment and shine a light on the bright minds that we have on the team. Join us in learning a bit more about them in our Employee Spotlight Series.
The technology we use when we are developing is extremely important to us and our software clients. Which frameworks we choose can affect the efficiency of the project, the application, and the happiness of the client. When it comes to web applications - Ruby on Rails is our top pick.
The third phase of design thinking is ideation: where no idea is bad and all ideas are considered. How can you ensure your ideation phase moves you successfully to the prototype stage? We've got these tips for you.
When you work in the business of building custom software solutions for companies, you compete with other custom software development companies and with out-of-the-box SaaS solutions. However, we often are asked early on in the RFP process whether or not the company's decision to build custom software “makes sense” for their situation.
Techreviewer is excited to announce that Entrision has made its way onto the list of Top Software Development Companies in the USA in 2022. Techreviewer was impressed with Entrision's custom development services that are offered for both mobile and web applications. Entrision's team of developers is a great mix of experienced abd seasoned coders with innovative minds.
We get a lot of questions about user research and how it plays into our development process. We've pulled together the 5 top questions about user research that we truly love to be asked and love to answer.
Design Thinking is a process of understanding a user's problem, challenging business assumptions, and redefining the problems to find the best solution for the user. When you employ Design Thinking in your organization, you are starting with the users' needs - what is desirable to them?
The agile methodology of software development is a project management style that allows software developers, stakeholders, and users to communicate clearly and create useful software. Unlike other strategies of product development, agile lets the development team learn and adapt through the development process, which often means the end result is slightly (or greatly) different from what was originally planned.
We understand the importance of software in the future of every industry - from online commerce to healthcare and all the businesses in between. That's why we are investing in the next generation of software developers, QA experts, and program managers through an academic scholarship.
So, you've got a new software development project coming up and you're considering your options for how to get it done. Outsourcing is an excellent option for any custom software project, even if you have an in-house development team.
At the end of the day, Rails 7 seems like a move in the right direction. There are some things that will be very disruptive and some things that may fail in the long run. But technology marches on, and we think Rails is pointed in the right direction. These features, and the others coming soon, show that Rails still has a relevant place in web programming.
We’ve pulled together our list of possible trends in mobile app development from our conversations with customers, listening to the experts, and our industry conversations around the Entrision break room. We are interested to know your thoughts on our list, too.
The work we do at Entrision wouldn’t be successful without the amazing, diverse team. It’s important to us to take a moment and shine a light on the bright minds that we have on the team. Join us in learning a bit more about them in our Employee Spotlight Series.
A date is a date is a date, right? Sure, but often we need to display them in different formats. September 27, 2019 looks a lot different than 9/27/19. Here's a handy reference for the options available if you're converting a date to a string using a function like strftime.
Your brand’s style guide takes your brand’s heart and soul - values, vision, and mission statement - and translates them into an eye-catching design. It is a rulebook containing specifications and regulations on everything including typography, imagery, color, and logos - and everyone including departments, partners, or agencies that play a significant role when it comes to your brand.
If you think of a custom software development project, having a senior developer on the product is typically associated with higher development costs, which most consumers don’t always understand or appreciate. However, if you think in terms of soft skills, valuable feedback, in-depth assessments, and improved long-term efficiency, a senior developer brings a lot more to the table than mid-level or junior developers.
With every custom project, there are unknown hurdles or needs that can pop up while you’re in the middle of development. While some of these can be easily navigated and the project can be kept on time and budget, some cannot. Whether your project is for an internal team or an external client, you’re going to need to communicate with the team and the stakeholders about the delay in a timely and respectful manner.
The term gamification was first coined by a British computer programmer and inventor, Nick Pelling, in 2003. Since then, many SMEs have integrated gamification into business models to drive successful results across platforms, but primarily mobile apps.
Are you looking into developing an iOS application? If you have some experience in coding, it's not hard to get into iOS development. Apple provides all the necessary tools. It's even possible to create a usable application without touching a programming language.
Seeing we are in the business of mobile applications, located in the heart of Milwaukee, and are dazzled by the sparkle of the Bucks championship trophy, we wanted to pause a moment and pay respects to the mobile app that (we assume) was pushed more times during this season than points Giannis Antetokounmpo has scored in his career (somewhere north of 12,000).
Node and Rails are two common choices for backend web frameworks - especially for open-source enthusiasts like ourselves. We explore the benefits and drawbacks of each, and conclude with our opinion of what our go-to choice is here at Entrision.
With every passing day, we grow more and more inclined to developing advancements in an effort to speed up digital transformation. Most companies have already integrated top-notch technologies into their businesses, applying new methods in order to satisfy their customers' requirements more effectively and efficiently.
None of our client projects would be successful without the amazing team here at Entrision. We want to take the time to honor the people that work so hard to make our clients’ visions from concept to production. Join us in learning a bit more about them in our Employee Spotlight Series.
Apple added support for dark mode with the iOS 13 release. Even though dark mode has been available for a while, it is still a common problem for applications to either not support dark mode or to have some display issues when a user switches to dark mode.
A software development company can improve a startup company's returns on investment and encourage consumers to engage directly with your company and its vision.Businesses today are increasingly adopting mobile apps and digital applications to communicate their products and services to digitally-centered consumers. But with the technological and social demands of mobile technology, digital entrepreneurship can be difficult to fully implement without software development expertise.
Is your software project one person away from coming to a halt? We examine how to calculate and increase your bus factor for your project.
The healthcare industry is at the forefront of technological advancements. Here are some healthcare tech trends as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Having your code reviewed by a team or person outside your organization can yield some valuable feedback. Here are some of the reasons you might consider having your project looked at by someone with a fresh perspective.
Pull Request review doesn't have to be a painful experience. Done right, it's a process that leads to stronger team collaboration and a better software product. Here are some tips that can help teams better perform PR reviews.
This is a question we often hear when building apps that collect a payment. In-app purchases are convenient, but Apple takes a hefty cut. Using a third-party processor usually takes a little more work, but you don't have to give away nearly as big of pie slice to "the man". The truth though is that it's not worth weighing the pros/cons, because in reality it's not a choice we even get to make. Apple has clear guidelines that dictate when each payment strategy must be used, and in order for our app to be distributed on the app store, those guidelines must be respected.
Entrision was recently given the title as one of the top software development companies in the greater Milwaukee area, in a study performed by Expertise.com, which evaluated over 40 local agencies in coming to their decision.
Programmers have to decide what paradigm they’ll adopt and then use it to develop web pages and applications. So is it better to choose a bigger, more established framework? Or a smaller, niche one? In this article, we’ll outline a few of the advantages of both an established and indie framework
At Entrision, our app development team builds mobile applications with varying feature sets of all different sizes for all different industries. So our team here in Milwaukee is constantly exploring technical decisions when it comes to the best way to build those apps.
Buying software can be a lot like buying anything else. So it should be treated that way. Would you buy adult-sized shoes for your child, in anticipation of them becoming an adult? It wouldn’t be advisable. So why do we so often do this when building custom software?
Migrating a monolith to a microservice architecture will assist a development team with the amount of churn, speed to delivery, and debugging quickly and efficiently. That being said - it may not be right for every business.
When is the right time to adopt SwiftUI in your iOS apps? There's little doubt that it's going to be come the new standard. We look into some of the pros and cons of opting to use it in your next project.
Everything has gone digital, and businesses are succeeding or failing according to their ability to utilize modern software. Whether it's communication, project management, or the ability to deliver value to your customers, we must adapt.
Meetings have all gone remote and it's a much different environment than an in-person conference room. Here are some extra tips our team has incorporated that we've found have helped to keep our virtual meetings productive and efficient.
Software projects fail often - way too often. In 2014 the Standish Group, an IT research firm, conducted a study that surveyed 365 people representing over 8,000 software development projects. The results were, in a word, bleak. For example, over 30 percent of projects get canceled before completion. At large companies, according to their results, less than 10 percent of projects are “successful.”
Ask anybody and they’ll tell you how important communication is to the successful running of a business. How, then, does one breach the divide between engineers and management? The technical barriers may always be there, but there are simple, good-faith ways of speaking with developers that will help any project run just a little bit smoother.
This is a question developers often face with older software - especially when taking over someone else's codebase. Is it worth it to start over? Often the idea is attractive, but sometimes it is not in your best interest.
Domino’s pizza has, frankly, never been accused of being any good. And yet, they’ve recently become one of the highest-growth companies in fast food. One of the primary factors fueling their growth and success has been their embrace of technology and innovation.
You’ve spent a lot of time and possibly money building your iOS application and now you’re ready to release it to the world. First, you will need to get it approved by Apple to release it on the App Store. In order to get your mobile app listed and available in the Apple App Store, you’ll first need to go through a review process. This can often seem intimidating, but most of the time the reasons that apps get rejected are fairly straightforward and easy to avoid.
We take for granted the creative freedom that comes with running a business. You can pick the type of business you want to run, where you run it, who you run it with, and so on. But what if the world didn’t work that way?
Rails makes it very easy to build web apps that perform basic CRUD operations, which can be enough to handle the requirements of many applications. Although outside the pattern, one common use case is when the application needs to perform a soft delete, making records appear to be deleted while retaining the actual database record.
There’s no shortage of options to choose from when you’re looking for a partner to create your custom software solution. In fact, there are so many companies in the market, that it’s often hard to know who to work with. Truth be told, there’s a lot of great companies with skilled teams who produce impressive software. The problem is, there���s an equal number of really poor software companies disguised as customer-centric experts.
Access control is a key part of any web application, and when building a rails app today, developers have a few options to choose from. In this post, we dive into two of the primary libraries that handle this and talk about the benefits of each.