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The fear of having an IT project fail can be a strong deterrent for many, despite the expected business advantages to be gained. 

With the digital transformation well underway, IT projects are what set's many businesses apart of their competitors. Whether it be for internal efficiencies through streamlined business processes, or establishing a desirable point of difference in the customers eye.  

If it's your first time taking on an IT project, or you have been doing this for years, in this article we offer our 4 tried and tested methods for ensuring a successful outcome. 

A critical component of any team, is communication. 

And when it comes to developing customised software applications, middleware integrations, apps or anything in the software development world, it is critical to be able to communicate with your team effectively, to ensure the desired outcome is reached, in the shortest timeframe possible.  

Known for being less vocal, developers will often rely on stakeholders to ensure an effective communication process in a project or ongoing relationship. This is where the challenge comes in. Often, stakeholders won’t necessarily know or take for granted “obvious” information that developers may not be aware of, adding complexity and mutual frustrations to a project – which ultimately reads as cost. 

Over the last 5 years we have seen the rise of technology integrations with our businesses, with it amalgamating into what we see today: a world driven by software.  

For those looking forward, there is leverage to be had at the forefront of this shift, in the form of competitive advantage. 

If you're a frequent reader, you will know creating business value through technology is something we are very passionate about. So in this post we want discuss the top software development trends your competitors will be leveraging in 2018, and you should be too!  

These days, software is everywhere and just about every business relies on software developed specifically for that organisation. You might find yourself in a position where it’s necessary to commission and control the production of some code – a task which can appear Sisyphean because you don’t know much about the process.

There’s a lot of concern around the automation of work and the implication this process might have on employment… your employment, specifically. While the natural response might be to try and stop automation to save your job, we all know what happened with the Luddites. Sure, they may have won one or two battles (in unpleasant fashion – smashing ‘the machines’) but they most certainly did not win the war. That’s why we have mechanisation on a massive scale today – mechanisation which, truth be told, makes our lives enormously more convenient.

Instead of attempting the impossible and holding back the new tsunami of automation, a better way is to look at how automation can work for you, rather than against you.

In other words, it’s time to automate everything that can be automated; whatever remains is where you actually create value. It may be a generalisation, but those aspects of your work which are not easily done by a machine is probably where your competitive advantage lies.

In the good old days, software development involved the ‘arms-length’ interaction of business analysts, IT operations, programmers and testers. But the thing about the good old days is this: they weren’t all that good. Software routinely took ages to produce and then didn’t work very well. That, fundamentally, is what has given rise to the emergence of the new way of developing software called DevOps.

The word itself provides a very good clue into what it is. A contraction of Development and Operations, DevOps pulls together all the disciplines required to produce functional software. DevOps is about multidisciplinary teams working closely together, which is quite distinct from the tried, tested, and not-so-great idea of functionally separated organisations.

Looking for that X factor which sets your company apart from the competition? Chances are, it can be found in software and that’s why you should be thinking about your company’s next application.

Think of the by-now usual suspects: Uber, Airbnb, Facebook, Amazon. These companies have revolutionised industries which were once unassailable fortresses, protected by regulation or high cost of entry.

How did they do it?

Seems almost crazy, but the era of ‘serverless architecture’ is upon us. It’s a continuation of the availability of utility cloud computing and it matters to most businesses because it means you can develop and operate your services without ever worrying about operating systems or underlying hardware. All you need to do is produce the code and run it.

On what, you rightly ask? The short answer is ‘containers’.

Serverless computing is an execution model in which your cloud provider dynamically manages the allocation of machine resources (those machines would be the actual ‘servers’ – but they have nothing to do with you, certainly not in a physical sense: they are completely abstracted away from the end user). Pricing is based on the amount of resources consumed by your application, rather than on pre-purchased capacity. In other words, serverless consumption models are ‘on demand’ utility computing.

We see (and write!) a lot of articles about why you should create custom software applications, how to come up with app ideas, and the cost of developing software. But then when we think about how we interact with clients, the first thing we do is check if they should not be creating the app. 

Yes, we are aware of the contradiction! However, as you know we are all about creating leverage, and despite acknowledging custom software is the ultimate way to gain competitive advantage, if results are not generated as expected it can quickly turn into a pit of wasted resources. 

To make sure you've thought through your idea, here are instances where we suggest NOT to pursue custom software development: 

You would be right if you thought investing in an app would be a wise decision this year. You can probably name half a dozen apps off the top of your head that have helped to simplify your life, yet you probably have a few tasks in mind of what you wish you had an app for!

The rise of digital transformation has meant that, apps are now a “thing” for businesses too. Companies who realise this opportunity are able to come up with app ideas that help keep them in their consumers’ pockets, streamline business processes, or automate routine processes to save time (and money).

However, coming up with winning business app ideas can be tricky! So, we have compiled a list of six things you should consider before hitting the go button on a new business app: