Category: Enterprise

How to choose the right development partner?

Posted on by galaxy-admin

The need for digital products and services is on the rise and will keep on going up. A good development partner can make the journey of digital transformation smooth for you. In this blog, you’ll discover how aligning the project expectations and organizational ethos is the key to finding the perfect development partner.

Project Alignment

There are four parameters within which you can achieve project alignment with your development partner. Those parameters are Budget, Technology, Timeline and Implementation, and Future state of the product. 

Budget

First and foremost, the client and the vendor need to agree on a budget that the project requires. If a client thinks that it’s a $15000 gig vs the partner’s estimate of $30,000, then there is a misalignment of expectations. As a best practice, the client must disclose the budget from the very beginning. 

If you don’t know how much your project should cost, a ballpark range would help set expectations right for the budgets and scale of the project.

Technology

Technological alignment is all about ensuring that your partners know what existing infrastructure you have in place and what compatible technologies they can utilize for your new project. For example, your application might be a better fit when built on React and deployed on AWS as determined by your IT team. Convey the same to your partner before starting your development.

Timeline & Implementation

Well-planned timelines with space for unavoidable setbacks can significantly reduce overheads. Understand and communicate your terms of timelines with your potential partner. Hard deadlines, desirable launch dates, and tolerance are important discussions to be had before you proceed. If you can’t get on the same page regarding timelines, consider it a red flag.  

Besides timeline discussions, you will also need to align on the implementation part of the project. If you have limited and well-defined requirements along with a strictly allocated budget then a Waterfall shop is your best friend. On the other hand, if you’re treading into the unknown with dynamic requirements and a flexible budget then an Agile partner might be a better bet.

The Future State

A lot of development and handover depends on the future of your project. Answer questions like is it a launch and leave a one-off thing or a multi-year engagement? Will your in-house team take over or you’re going to seek further support for patches and new features? 

Aligning on the future state of the product will ensure that you’re in a good position concerning your project in the future as well. As it’s difficult to find the right expertise and resources on short notice when something breaks down, deprecates, or needs to scale. 

Organizational Alignment

In contrast to project alignment, organizational alignment is more interpersonal and can be pivotal for long-term relationships and success. When looking for a development partner you’d want them to be a perfect cultural fit for you. Apart from that, you’d also want them to share your values and ideology. 

Organizational Alignment can be achieved across these segments: Core Values, Organizational maturity, People fit, Expertise, and Strengths

Core Values

These are the fundamental principles your organization swears by and essentially guides and influences all the decisions. Your potential partner need not be a perfect match for your organization’s values but complement them.

Organizational Maturity

The potential partner that you’re looking for should be at least on the same plane of your growth phase, if they’re way smaller or bigger than you then it’s going to be problematic. Take an early-stage startup’s example. If it approaches a well-established branding firm, there may be a mismatch in costs, approach, and perception of value. 

You can identify the right level of maturity with how your potential partner approaches data security, the depth of engineering solution, and the complexity of the proposed solution—is it over or under-engineered? Alignment in these areas is a good sign of organizational maturity.  

People Fit

In most of the engagements, the declaration of organizational alignment happens too early on when only the sales and procurement people have met. Whereas a partner should be declared fit only after your teams have met with the implementation team. After all, they are the ones who are going to be working together on the project, if they are not on the same page, it’s a red flag. 

Expertise & Past Successes

Lastly, this goes without saying that expertise and past projects are influential for organizational alignment. Your potential partner should have relevant experience in your industry or another industry with similar scope. Go through their projects and judge if it’s on par with your standards. 

While looking for the right development partner you might also have questions regarding offshore design/development and costs. Here are a couple of blogs to curb your doubts: 

Moving Ahead

Let this alignment guide be a blueprint for you to make the right choice and not a pursuit of something perfect. In case there are some manageable gaps to fill, you can try the following solutions:

  • Subcontracting technical requirements (In case of a technological gap)
  • If your vendor fits all requirements but lacks relevant experience, we recommend that you give them an opportunity after a thorough risk analysis. 
  • Control for the future state – If you’re not on the same page concerning the future state of the software, you can rectify that through detailed requirements specification, repository access, code commenting, a handoff plan.

Some partnerships might be worth working for while some might feel like an outright misfit due to huge alignment gaps. Steer clear of those and keep looking for better options. 

And when you’ve evaluated a potential partner on the project and organizational grounds and found them to be in alignment with almost everything mentioned here in this blog, then proceed with small engagements, and see if it is working for you. 

Wrapping up

When looking for potential development partners, it’s natural to have multiple options. Having them evaluated based on the alignment principles mentioned here you’ll be able to choose partners that are motivated by mutual growth and success. Contact us for a free consultation of your technical requirements.

About Galaxy Weblinks

We specialize in delivering end-to-end software design & development services and have hands-on experience with mobile app and site design in agile development environments. Our designers, engineers, and developers help improve security, reliability and features to make sure your business application and IT structure scale and remain secure.

3 Ways Microservices Save you From Drawbacks of Centralized Data

Posted on by galaxy-admin

The microservices approach is made possible in large part by favoring decentralization of software components and data — specifically, by breaking up “monolithic” elements into smaller, easier to change pieces and deploying those pieces on the network.

Their goal, in organizational design terms, is to decentralize decision authority. Instead of having a few people make architectural and software decisions for everyone in the organization, decentralization allows them to distribute decision-making power amongst the people who do the work.

When it comes to data, companies that create individual services for specific business logic frequently feel compelled to consolidate all application data into a single, centralized datastore. Their goal is to make sure that all the data is available for any service that may require it. Managing a single datastore is simple and convenient, and data modeling can be consistent for the entire application to use, regardless of the service that uses it. 

However, we would recommend that you avoid doing this. Here are three reasons why centralizing your data is a bad idea and how microservices help in checking the drawbacks.

1. Centralized data is hard to scale

When the data for your entire application is in a single centralized datastore, then as your application grows you must scale the entire datastore to meet the needs of all the services in your application. This is depicted in the diagram below (Figure 1). If you use a separate data store for each service, only the services that have increased demand need to scale, and the database being scaled is smaller. This is shown on the right side of Figure 1.

Centralized data

It’s a lot easier to scale a small database bigger than it is to scale a large database even larger.

How microservices help in scaling?

Scaling is the process of dividing software into smaller units. Scalability refers to the application’s ability to implement more advanced features. It contributes to the application’s security, durability, and maintainability. In the industries, three types of scaling procedures are used. The microservice scaling methodologies include x-axis, y-axis, and z-axis scaling; below is one of the methods along with the corresponding real-world example.

Scaling on the Y-Axis:

Vertical scaling, which includes any resource level scaling, is also referred to as Y-axis scaling. Any DBaaS or Hadoop system can be thought of as Y-axis scaled. The user’s request is redirected and restricted in this type of scaling by implementing some logic.

As an example, consider Facebook. Facebook must handle 1.79 million users every second, so traffic control is a major responsibility for Facebook network engineers. To avoid any danger, they use Y-axis scaling, which entails running multiple servers with the same application at the same time. To control this massive amount of traffic, Facebook redirects all traffic from one region to a specific server, as shown in the image. In architectural terms, this transferring of traffic based on region is known as load balancing.

2. Centralized data is hard to partition later

A common thought that pops up in the mind of every app developer is, “I don’t need to worry about scaling now; I can worry about it later.” As your application grows in popularity, you must consider rethinking architectural decisions to meet increased traffic. 

Distributing your datastore into smaller datastores is one of the common architectural changes. It is much more convenient to do at the beginning of the application’s life cycle than it is later. When the application has been around for a few years and all parts of the application have access to all parts of the data, determining which parts of the dataset can be split into a separate datastore without requiring a major rewrite of the code that uses the data becomes extremely difficult. Even simple questions become difficult to answer. What services are making use of the Profiles table? Is there a service that requires both the Systems and Projects tables?

The longer a dataset remains in a single datastore, the more difficult it is to later divide that datastore into smaller segments.

How microservices help in data storing and partition?

A microservice may use one, two, or more databases. Some of the data stored by the microservice may fit well in one type of database while others may fit better in another. There are numerous viable database technologies available today, and I will not compare them here. However, there are some broad database categories to consider when making a decision, such as relational databases, key/value stores, document databases, column stores, and graph databases.

By separating data into separate datastores based on functionality, you avoid issues associated with separating data from joined tables later, and you reduce the possibility of unexpected data correlations in your code.

3. Centralized data makes data ownership impossible

The ability to divide application ownership into distinct and separable pieces is one of the major benefits of dividing data into multiple services. Individual development teams owning applications is a core tenet of modern application development that promotes better organizational scaling and faster response to problems when they arise. The Single Team Oriented Service Architecture (STOSA) development model discusses this ownership model.

This model works well when you have a large number of development teams all contributing to a large application, but it also works well for smaller applications with smaller teams.

The issue is that for a team to own service, they must own both the code and the data for the service. This means that one service (Service A) should not have direct access to the data of another service (Service B). If Service A requires something from Service B, it must call a service entry point for Service B rather than directly accessing the data.

ownership

This gives Service B complete control over its data, how it is stored, and how it is maintained.

So, what are your options? Each service in your service-oriented architecture (SOA) should have its data. The data is a component of the service and is incorporated into it.

Designing Microservices: Best Practices

The design of microservices must ensure a weak coupling for services to be modified independently and to operate autonomously. Services that are weakly coupled will benefit fully from the microservice architecture, such as fault tolerance, load adaptation, implementation ease, and so on.

Furthermore, it must be highly cohesive to ensure that exchanges between these services are as coherent as possible via the following rules:

  • Design simple microservices that can be composed or linked to others according to the modularity and composability rule.
  • Engine interfaces must be isolated according to the separability rule. Internal microservices are not structured, whereas interfaces are.
  • Representation rule: design data-controlled microservices that have a simpler operation, are more robust and have better scalability.
  • Generation rule: avoid encoding repetitive and trivial things and encode using programs rather than WSDL files to generate code for the interfaces.
  • Make the necessary technological and methodological decisions based on the problem to be solved, not on a software catalog or a stack certified by a corporate guru.

Here is how Galaxy can help you

When release cycles take months rather than weeks, your company is frequently unable to deliver modern online experiences. Development bottlenecks impede your ability to update applications, preventing you from innovating and iterating. And an out-of-date or clumsy user experience prevents you from retaining and winning over customers.

Galaxy’s experts will assist you in implementing an end-to-end vision by developing a modern development stack for building enterprise applications with the necessary frontend and microservice technologies for your business. We will help your team quickly build, design, and launch applications based on microservices.

Learn about Galaxy’s Microservices, Frontend, Backend, and DevOps capabilities, which can help your organization build better and faster apps, sites, and portals.

About Galaxy Weblinks

We specialize in providing end-to-end software design and development services and have firsthand knowledge of backend and frontend technologies. Our engineers, DevOps experts, and UX/UI specialists work to improve security, reliability, and features to ensure that your business application and IT structure scale and remain secure.

How to Ensure Success in Your Next Software Release?

Posted on by galaxy-admin

The release of a new upgrade is typically a stressful time for software companies. It is all too easy to overlook some of the necessary steps or to fail to communicate something to another department. Developing an effective plan is a critical component of any release.

A successful plan integrates all departments, including engineering, quality assurance, marketing, sales, technical support, and training. Everyone must have a common goal and be moving in the same direction. In addition to developing the next release strategy, you must also plan for backward compatibility, effectively communicating with your customers ahead of time, minimizing and controlling bugs, ensuring users can install your product, and much more.

In our article, you will learn about:

  • Why is it sometimes important to curb your enthusiasm and wait for the right time before your next software release?
  • Our list of 4 major tips for planning a successful next software release.

When the software release rush isn’t in your favor?

Software update for the Nest ‘smart’ thermostat (owned by Google) went wrong in 2016 and left users in the cold. When the software update went wrong, it forced the device’s batteries to drain out, which led to dropping in the temperature. Customers were unable to heat their homes or use any amenities as a result.

Nest claimed that the problem was caused by a firmware update in December 4.0 and other issues such as old air filters or incompatible boilers. Later, it issued a 4.0.1 software release, which resolved the problem for 99.5 percent of the affected customers.

Each new release carries a high risk of failure or detection of serious defects by the end-user. These may cost us the trust of our customers. So, how can you avoid the losses that may result from the poor quality of a new version of your product?

#1 Automate the processes with CI/CD

Continuous Integration (CI) comes in handy here. It is a DevOps tool that starts the compilation process, unit tests, and any static analysis tools used after each commit/merge process. Any other quality-related tests that are automatable are also carried out. Whereas, Continuous Delivery (CD) allows you to automate the entire process from the development environment to the production environment. Learn about the best CI/CD practices here.

But what if you don’t have an experienced person on hand and/or don’t have enough budget or time to implement the entire CI and CD process?

Then you should put your money on people who will look after the quality of our product and will not be afraid to obstruct the next issue.

Working in an agile environment, the Product Owner always makes the final decision on the release of a new version. The individual should have a complete picture of the current situation in terms of work progress and product quality.

#2 Prioritize bug fixing list

As the product manager, go over the outstanding bug list with the testing team regularly. Examine the status of each open (unresolved) bug and comprehend the scenarios that led to their discovery.

If you find high-level bugs that need to be fixed, you can choose to postpone the release date. In the case of low-level/cosmetic bugs, you may wish to address them in a later release.

As an example, suppose you have the following bug list:

  • There are no show-stopping bugs
  • There are no high-level bugs
  • Two moderate-level bugs
  • The user is unable to access the address book without receiving an error message
  • When a user imports an address, the “country” field is filled with unreadable characters
  • 10 cosmetic/low-level bugs

In this case, you may decide that unreadable characters in the country field are an acceptable bug because the user can easily delete them. However, you acknowledge that you do not want to alert the user with an error message when they access the address book.

Place bugs in priority order, just as you did when you prioritize your product requirements, and make trade-offs as needed.

#3 Explain your test strategy

How will you carry out these tests? Go into as much detail as possible.

  • What rules will your tests adhere to?
  • What metrics will you collect and at what level?
  • How many different configurations or environments are you going to put through their paces?
  • Are there any special requirements or procedures that you must put to the test?

You must also be aware of the results of your test. To put it another way, what are the pass/fail criteria for each test? 

Thus, lack of access to the test environment may cause issues with the release infrastructure. It is critical, paradoxically, to be able to roll back our changes and restore the previous version of the system. Sometimes the test environment, in which the system performed flawlessly, differs significantly from the production environment, where undesirable effects may occur, necessitating a rollback to the previous version of the system.

#4 Introduce and test new functionalities

Critical paths are equally important because they serve as the foundation for the entire process that our users will follow, and they should not encounter any gaps or problems along the way. It is also a significant risk to release a new version without thoroughly testing the functionality associated with this path. 

Similarly, failure to provide end-users and the maintenance team with sufficient knowledge about new functionalities. Remember to notify stakeholders about the new functionalities that will be included in the next version so that they are not caught off guard by changes in the processes.

Conclusion

There are numerous reasons why your software should not be released as soon as possible and at any cost. It’s a good idea to weigh the “pros and cons.” Nonetheless, the development team must inform the Product Owner whether it is reasonable to proceed with the most recent software release launch. As a result, if you notice that something isn’t working properly, take the call to block a release. Also, proceed with the release when the Quality Assurance team approves the release as well.

What is design thinking, and how do we apply it?

Posted on by galaxy-admin

While dealing with complex problems that are poorly defined or unknown, design thinking comes to the rescue. By understanding the human needs involved, this design methodology provides a solution-based approach to problem-solving. Understanding the five stages of design thinking will enable anyone to apply these methods to solve complex problems, regardless of the issue’s scale, industry, or context.

Industries are actively adopting the human-centric approach to evolve existing products and generate new ideas to better serve their customers. Let’s look more closely at what design thinking is and how to apply it to your organization.

What is design thinking and why is it important?

Design thinking is an ideology as well as a process for solving complex problems in a user-centric manner. Its emphasis is on achieving practical outcomes and solutions that:

– Are technically feasible and can be developed into functional products or processes

– Are economically viable, the company can afford to develop them

– Meets a genuine human need, thereby making it desirable for the users

According to the design thinking ideology, to come up with innovative solutions, one must adopt a designer’s mindset and approach the problem from the user’s perspective. Simultaneously, design thinking is all about getting your hands dirty; the goal is to turn your ideas into tangible, testable products or processes as soon as possible.

Five actionable steps in the design thinking process

#1 Empathize

What? You will interact with and observe your target audience during the empathize phase.

Why? The goal of this step is to create a clear picture of who your end users are, the challenges they face, and the needs and expectations they have.

How? You will conduct surveys, interviews, and observation sessions to develop user empathy.

For instance, you want to address the issue of employee retention and ask each employee to complete an anonymous survey. You then conduct user interviews with as many employees as possible to learn how they feel about the organization. 

#2 Define

What? The next step is to define a clear problem statement based on what you learned during the empathize phase.

Why? Your problem statement identifies the specific issue you will address. It will guide the entire design process from this point forward, providing you with a fixed goal to focus on and assisting you in keeping the user in mind at all times.

How? While framing your problem statement, you will prioritize the needs of the user over the needs of the business. A good problem statement is human-centered, broad enough to accommodate creativity, while also providing guidance and direction.

For example, “My employees must be able to maintain a healthy lifestyle while working in the office”, is far more user-centric than “I must keep my employees healthy and happy to boost retention.”

#3 Ideate 

What? With a clear problem statement in mind, you should now try to generate as many ideas and potential solutions as possible.

Why? The ideation phase encourages you to think outside the box and investigate new possibilities. By focusing on quantity rather than the quality of ideas, you will be more likely to free your mind and stumble upon innovation!

How? During dedicated ideation sessions, you will employ a variety of ideation techniques such as bodystorming, reverse thinking, and the worst possible idea.

To illustrate – Based on what you discovered during the empathize phase, you hold several ideation sessions with various stakeholders. With your problem statement in hand, you brainstorm as many ideas as you can for how you can make your employees happier and retain them. 

#4 Prototype

What? After you’ve narrowed your ideas down to a few, you’ll create prototypes—or “scaled-down” versions of the product or concept you want to test.

Why? The prototyping stage provides you with something tangible that you can test on real users. This is critical to maintaining a user-centric approach.

How? Prototypes can range from simple paper models to interactive, digital prototypes, depending on what you’re testing. Have a clear goal in mind when creating your prototypes; know exactly what you want your prototype to represent and thus test.

Example – During the ideation phase, one suggestion was to provide free yoga classes. You set up a dedicated yoga room in the office, complete with mats, water bottles, and hand towels, to test this idea.

#5 Test

What? In the fifth step of the design thinking process, you will test your prototypes on real or representative users.

Why? During the testing phase, you can see where your prototype works well and where it needs to be improved. You can make changes and improvements based on user feedback before investing time and money in developing and/or implementing your solution.

How? You will conduct user testing sessions in which you will observe your target users interacting with your prototype. You can also solicit verbal feedback. You’ll make changes to your design or come up with an entirely new idea based on everything you learn during the testing phase!

For example, suppose you decide to put the yoga idea to the test for two months to see how employees react. People enjoy the yoga classes, but they are put off by the fact that they are in the middle of the day and there is no place to shower. You decide to move the yoga classes to the evening based on this feedback.

Success stories in design thinking

The most obvious contexts to benefit from design thinking are product and service design. However, the design thinking framework can be applied to a wide range of problems outside the realm of design!

Design thinking is increasingly being used in business to promote innovation and teamwork. IBM created the Enterprise Design Thinking framework to “help multidisciplinary teams align around the real needs of their users,” claiming that businesses that use the framework are twice as quick to market, 75 percent more efficient in terms of teamwork, and enjoy a 300 percent return on investment.

The insurance company MassMutual used design thinking to solve the problem of getting young adults to buy life insurance. Over two years, they conducted extensive user research in collaboration with IDEO. They then spent another two years prototyping and testing based on what they had learned. The result was the Society of Grownups, a set of digital tools designed to teach young people how to make wise financial decisions.


We hope that our blog has helped you understand the design thinking process. Contact us for a professional consultation on how to put a design thinking approach in action for your product idea to create a trending product.

10 Tips to Improve Your Website Accessibility

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Have you ensured to follow WCAG 2.1 guidelines before building your website? You may be in for a rude awakening if your beautiful, meticulously planned website is inaccessible to people with disabilities.

You can begin by identifying your most pressing and easily remedied accessibility issues. This will reduce your risk of lawsuits and make an immediate difference for your disabled customers. Of course, this is only the first step in the process.

Consider this blog as an accessibility triage.

Why Web Accessibility is Vital

The first web accessibility ADA lawsuit occurred in 2017, and it went all the way to federal court. Everything because a website was incompatible with screen reading software.

Consider how inconvenient it can be for a visually impaired person to be unable to order a product they require from a website. Especially during a pandemic, when online shopping is the only option to shop safely.

Making your website accessible to people with disabilities is important not only for avoiding lawsuits, but also for better serving your customers. Here are a few quick tips for testing and improving the accessibility of your website.

#1 Take Stock of all Digital Experiences 

The first step is to examine your entire digital profile, just as you would an inventory of your store.

  • Take your time and carefully review all websites (including content behind gateways), mobile apps, videos (on all platforms), and PDFs that are available for download. 
  • Make a list of every digital access point your company has for both internal and external customers.

#2 Test Your Website

You should begin by selecting strategic samples of what to test and focus on. This is important to quickly assess the current state of your site’s accessibility. This also helps identify major issues that your customers are likely to encounter, 

This should include your most popular and valuable pages, such as the following:

  • Your website’s home page
  • The header and footer of your page
  • Your desktop and mobile navigation menus (as well as general navigation)
  • The most important user tasks
  • Forms and templates are frequently used
  • Core business functions that customers may require.

The goal here is to quickly test these high-value pages so that you can triage and address high-risk issues.

ProTip – 

A good place to start is with the Google Lighthouse tool, which allows you to run a free website audit. It checks for website accessibility, among many other things. You can also use the WAVE tool or the aCe accessibility tool, which are designed specifically for testing the accessibility of websites.

#3 Initial Accessibility Tests

After you’ve established your sample, you should put it through these three tests.

  • Allow a screen reader user to read through each page. Request that they attempt to complete basic tasks such as logging in, navigating to different features, and filling out forms.
  • Experiment with only keyboard navigation. 
  • Make use of an automated testing tool to identify easily flaggable issues. However, it is critical to continue running manual tests because automated tests can help but do not catch all issues.

#4 Create Alt-Image Text and Video Captions

This is an easy-to-implement, easy-to-overlook step toward accessibility that you should not overlook.

If your images don’t have alt-text and your videos don’t have either transcripts or closed captions (or both), you’re putting yourself at risk of an accessibility lawsuit. These are extremely simple for automated software to locate, and they also prevent major accessibility issues.

#5 Label Forms and Keep Them Readable

Always use the label tag to associate each field description with its field, as this provides more context about each field to screen readers and other accessibility systems.

The use of placeholder text in form fields is another potential accessibility issue in forms. Placeholder text—the text suggestions that appear by default when no text is entered into a field—is frequently useful.

#6 Enable Font Size Adjustments

One disadvantage of allowing the user to zoom in and out to adjust element sizes is that it changes the size of everything on the page. A better solution would be to include plus and minus icons somewhere on the page that allows the user to change the size of the base text on the fly, and to save that setting on the client. This would be as simple as a JavaScript function that changes the size of the base font for the text styles in the document.

#7 Use Descriptive URLs 

A descriptive URL like https://magazino.com/article/ten-best-harrison-ford-films/2125451 tells us quite a bit at a glance about the destination

A descriptive URL reduces the amount of work a visitor must do to figure out what the article is about. As a result, a well-designed website will devote some of the URLs to a brief textual description of the contents, while the article ID is used by the server to determine which article to serve.

#8 Choose Color Blind-Friendly Visuals

It is something you should always keep in mind when selecting visuals for your website design. Everything from the contrast between the background and the content to the colors used in the images should be carefully chosen to make them accessible to people with various types of visual impairments.

Some websites, for example, use color to emphasize the importance of buttons and links. Those buttons will have completely different meanings for someone who is colorblind.

#9 Use a Content Management System

Web accessibility is also affected by the flexibility of your website. It is much easier to make the necessary changes to improve website accessibility with a more flexible website. Using a content management system (CMS) is an excellent way to accomplish this goal.

CMS software, for example, allows you to easily customize your website in any way you want. You can optimize your design for web accessibility with page builder plugins like Elementor without writing a single line of code.

#10 Document The Process

When working on accessibility, it is critical to meticulously document everything. This not only keeps your team focused, but also establishes that you are working to improve accessibility in the event of a lawsuit.

Here are some things to think about documenting:

  • Your accessibility policy and statement
  • An executive summary outlining your website’s and mobile apps’ budgeting and resource allocation.
  • The items that need to be repaired, organized by specific issues and components.
  • A collection of preliminary feedback from user testers on major barriers and accessibility issues, as well as preliminary audit results.

Conclusion

By making your website more accessible to a wider range of audiences, you will not only increase the number of people who can access your product or service, but you will also gain a competitive advantage over your competitors. You’ll also save a lot of time and money by avoiding potential lawsuits.

Aligning UX Strategy With Business Goals

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Businesses are ruled by customers and what they experience when they use your products or services. UX strategies help create coherent experiences across all the customer’s touchpoints. It comprises the plans and processes that would mold the design and development of your products. 

Here are some tried and tested key steps for aligning your UX design with your business goals and, ultimately, building a strong UX portfolio and a successful company.

Define business goals and objectives

Your design team should be aware of the business goals and a perspective on the various requirements and needs that your product is going to address. By sharing this information with the design team, they would give due diligence to the business goals while developing the product. 

To align UX strategy with the business, you need to understand and make everyone aware that UX is not a single person’s responsibility; everybody involved in product development is responsible. This implies that every team member will have ownership of the product. 

Keeping it simple helps in almost all the scenarios. When you are communicating business objectives to UX designers, try and do the same. Involve everyone from product leaders, stakeholders, designers and possibly, developers.

Start by answering these for clarity:

  • Users – Who are the users? Who do you target?
  • User needs – What are the problems that you want to solve through the product?
  • Product goals – What do we want to achieve? Be specific 

Introducing a framework can streamline your process and improve collaboration. We suggest you go with the User-Centered Business framework. It is very detailed and thorough. It is designed to highlight every important aspect of the product, business, and its users.

Here we have used a Nutrition and Workout app for example to showcase how the framework looks like. You can clearly see traits of users, what are their motivations, fears, and problems. And also how the app aims to solve problems and what is its unique offering.

Aligning

This framework focuses on –

  • Existing solutions – Initial research of what you’re competing against
  • Early adopters – Enthusiasts who test your products and do interviews about it
  • User fears – Addressing user fears with communication before it becomes a major pain point

Creating user personas

While building a product you need to find out what your users need. Once you find out what those needs are, then release features fulfilling that need. 

Personas are based on assumptions. However, you can identify and validate these assumptions with research and ensure that your personas fit the description of your target users.

A UX designer can take the help of these personas while designing for a paying user. They will know what benefits to talk about and what fears to address based on the persona’s fears, motivation, and goals. But everyone in the team must truly understand the product and its users to accomplish this. 

Aligning user needs with business goals

There is often a disconnect between user needs and business goals. And it’s no single person’s fault. Designers are just executing and the Product team is just building what stakeholders need. But in this vicious cycle, user needs remain unaddressed. 

When you start working within a framework–like User-Centered Business Canvas– and according to identified user personas, the business needs to start to follow suit. You just need to ensure that you define the business goal behind it with every stage of the framework. Like if the stage is Onboarding, you would have to define your business goals for onboarding and your expectations from users.

Here are some essentials to align business goals with user needs:

  • Test everything
  • Conduct interviews to validate the assumption 
  • Sort and prioritize features

Conducting design reviews

Feedback is a crucial part of any design process. It’s the only way to know if there’s any room for improvement. Design Review is an exercise to provide meaningful feedback to designers. All the attendees get a role assigned to them so that every individual can observe the design from a different perspective.

Here’s how to get started:

Invite everyone in the team, designers, developers, and stakeholders. Here is what we recommend- 

  • Assign roles
  • Present the designs
  • Work individually and collect remarks
  • Discuss and prioritize

For example – 

Person 1– looks at the facts

Person 2 – looks for problems and potential risks 

Person 3 – looks at what is good in the designs

Person 4 – looks for ways to improve the product

Wrapping up

Knowing your product and its users is essential for striking a balance between a usable product that users desire and a product that meets stakeholders’ business goals.

Our process will help you make beautiful-looking products that users like and stakeholders love.

About Galaxy

We specialize in delivering end-to-end software design & development services and have hands-on experience with app UI/UX design in agile development environments. Our designers, engineers, and developers help improve security, reliability, and features to make sure your business application and IT structure scale and remain secure.

7 Business Benefits of Choosing an Enterprise CMS

Posted on by galaxy-admin

An enterprise content management system is the beating heart of your organization’s digital presence. CMS users can avail themselves of a variety of document types and content on a website, then modify and expand the information posted without the need for a web programmer to set up the site and make updates.

When evaluating a content management system, managers need to contemplate numerous factors, including: 

  • How is what you have now compared to what is available in the market? 
  • What is the longevity of the solution you have chosen?
  • If you decide to invest in something different, how do you know it will be worth your while?

In this guide, we’ll help you learn everything you need to know about modern enterprise CMS, including:

  • Why an enterprise CMS specifically is key
  • What are the benefits of choosing a solution for enterprise CMS
  • Important factors to consider when you’re choosing an enterprise CMS

What is Enterprise CMS?

A content management system (CMS) is a software system that allows businesses to create, manage, and publish content for their websites, apps, and other digital assets.

As a central hub and publishing engine for marketing content, the CMS is critical to the success of any company’s marketing team. This is why it is critical for enterprise marketing leaders to select a specific enterprise CMS.

An enterprise CMS is a content management system that provides enterprise marketing departments with the features and capabilities they require to engage prospects and ultimately drive revenue.

Why go for Modern Enterprise CMS?

A content management system is used by more than 60% of websites. The following advantages demonstrate why choosing the right CMS is important to most businesses with an online presence – and why it should be important to you.

#1 Increase Your Website’s Functionality With Plugins

Most CMS provides a standard set of features and functions that are sufficient for the majority of users to have a basic platform. It is very likely that your requirements are different or that you require additional functionality. A plugin can fill this void and provide features that aren’t included with the standard CMS.

There are thousands of free and paid plugins available for almost any job or feature you can think of. There is an active community that develops software plugins that can extend the functionality of popular CMS platforms. Some are paid, while others are free to use.

#2 Omnichannel Selling Support

Omnichannel selling is another important advantage of using a CMS platform. Organizations frequently need to entice customers to visit their websites by marketing through various channels with different content that provides each user with insight into their brand. Marketing on each channel necessitates entering all of the brand’s information on each channel separately.

#3 Control Over Your Website Design

One of the most significant advantages of CMS over traditional websites is complete control over your website’s design. The main advantage of using CMS platforms is that they make website design and customization very easy and simple.

With a traditional website, you or your web development agency will need to scrap your old website in order to redesign a new one from scratch. The existing content will also need to be manually transferred to the new website design. This is inefficient and complicates and prolongs the website design or redesign process when compared to using a CMS.

#4 Multi-language Capabilities

Personalization is becoming increasingly important for brands that operate in more than one country to engage customers in meaningful ways. Having an enterprise CMS that can handle multi-language content, including translation and localization tools, helps ensure that you can deliver the right content in the right context no matter where it is needed in the world.

#5 Mobile Readiness

Over 90% of websites now report that mobile devices generate more unique visitors than desktop computers. According to Google, mobile visitors are 5X more likely to abandon a website that hasn’t been optimized for mobile use. According to Google, “mobile-friendly sites rank higher in search results.” At this point, an enterprise CMS capable of delivering content to your mobile apps and experiences is required.

#6 Automation Through Integration

As your business expands, so will your content workload, which is a great reason to use automation to do more of the heavy lifting. Through integrations with artificial intelligence-enabled tools, an enterprise CMS can enable content teams to leverage technology to automate routine tasks that would otherwise take humans a long time to complete.

#7 Easy Website Maintenance 

CMS websites make it simple for you to manage your site’s upkeep. If you believe you should have control over your site or if you want an in-house team member to maintain it, CMS makes it simple and quick. A CMS’s template-based structure makes it simple and quick to create pages and posts.

Wrapping Up

If you’re looking for a CMS that can help automate the many manual tasks associated with content management, enable efficient team-wide collaboration, facilitate content delivery that improves customer experience, and make the most of all your content assets and data, look no further. It’s time to implement an enterprise CMS.

If you aren’t quite ready to abandon your current traditional CMS, this in-depth guide will help you learn about 3 Things To Know Before Switching To A New CMS. Want to see what an enterprise CMS looks like in action? Contact our CMS team today.

About Galaxy Weblinks

We are your offshore CMS development partner and have state-of-art infrastructure, and development expertise on the latest CMS technology trends. We have hands-on experience in customizing websites using multiple platforms, be it Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, catering to different business needs. We offer assistance from building custom CMS websites to website migration and maintenance processes.

Choosing the best Software Architecture for your Enterprise App

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Planning on starting a greenfield software project? Or ever wondered how large enterprise systems are designed? Before major software development starts, we have to choose the right architecture that will offer us the desired functionality and quality attributes. 

Choosing the latest or most popular technology in the market will not always mean that it would bring the best results. However, this does not imply that you opt for legacy technologies.

For example, if there is a project that involves building a regular data capturing form (with less than 15 fields) for a survey, which will be used only once by less than 100 users, then it will be an utter disaster if you will be using highly complex architecture patterns like Microservices. 

Thorough planning must be done when selecting an architecture pattern and the following features must be taken into account:

  • Cost
  • Time to Market
  • Number of users (current and future)
  • Level of isolation (ie: integration with other platforms/systems)
  • Toleration time for system unavailability

What is a Software Architecture Pattern?

Software structures are composed of software elements that function as a blueprint, and design teams depend on these software architectural patterns to a great extent.

“An architectural pattern is a general, reusable approach to commonly appearing problems in software architecture. Whereas, software architecture is the process of converting software characteristics such as flexibility, scalability, etc. into a structured solution that meets the business and the technical expectations.”

For example, when a product owner says they are competing in a rapidly changing market, and they should adapt their business model quickly. The software should be scalable, modular, and maintainable if a business deals with urgent requests that need to be completed successfully in a matter of time. A software architect would then note that the performance and low fault tolerance, reliability, and scalability will be the key characteristics.

What happens with a system without any architecture pattern? 

Whenever you will change the behavior or structure of one class, a ripple effect would follow where multiple other classes would break. Is your software like this? The best way to find out is by using a software design reverse engineering tool like hex-ray that studies your class/component structures. On the other hand, if we are not using a pattern, then we will end up putting in the effort in solving the problems that can be easily solved with one of the patterns.

To help you, we will skim through the fundamentals of a few main software architectural patterns along with the pros and cons of each pattern. Besides, we will explain what architecture pattern would be the best fit for a given scenario.

1. Layered Architecture

One of the most efficient and common models deployed by enterprises is the Layered Architecture. The layers of this model are not interdependent, yet interconnected to each other. This is the conventional approach to designing most software.

For example, if you’d want to switch from an Oracle database to an SQL. This switch may cause you to excel in the database layer but will not have a domino effect on any other layer, hence avoiding any crashes.

What does it solve?


It allows the software to be segmented in such a way that the modules can be evolved and developed separately with little dependencies among the parts, supporting reuse, modifiability, and portability. The layered pattern divides the software into units called layers. Each layer is a grouping of modules that provides a cohesive set of services.

Benefits

  • This architecture helps those enterprises that don’t want to go overboard with experimenting and want to stick to the conventional software architecture design patterns. 
  • Testing components become relatively easier as inter-dependencies are negligible in this format of software development engineering.

Caveats:

  • Larger applications tend to be resource-intensive if based on this format, therefore for such projects, it’s advised to overlook the layered pattern. 
  • The entire version of the software is installed as a single unit irrespective of independent layers. So, you will have to re-install the entire device all over again, even if you update a single layer. 

Best for:

  • New applications that need to be built quickly.
  • General desktop applications.
  • Teams with less experienced developers who don’t understand other architectures yet.
  • Applications needing strict testability and maintainability standards.

2. Event-driven Architecture

The event-driven architecture helps in building a central unit that accepts all data and then assigns it to the separate modules that handle the particular type. This handoff is said to generate an “event,” and is assigned to the code delegated to that type.

Take an example of this pattern from a web page:

When a user clicks a button, the browser interprets the event and surfaces the programmed action, such as video playback, matching the input with the right output. Contrary to the layered architecture where the code must flow top-down and filter through all the layers, event-driven architectures implement modules that are activated only when there is a generation of an event connected to them.

What does it solve?


Sometimes it’s hard for many enterprises to build distributed systems that can service asynchronous arriving messages associated with an event, and that can scale from simple and small to complex and large. This architecture helps in building such systems as it is very adaptable to real-time changes and is suited to asynchronous systems that run on asymmetric data flow. 

Benefits

  • This architecture is suited to applications that tend to scale. It improves the response time of an application, eventually leading to better business outcomes. 
  • It plays a huge role in defining how IoT works. This architecture is widely applicable across networks and applications where devices are part of the IoT and requires exchanging information between even consumers and producers in real-time.

Caveats:

  • If the modules can affect each other then testing can be complex. While individual modules can be tested independently, the interactions between them can only be tested in a fully functioning system. 
  • Sometimes it is harder to understand the architecture due to its high complexity.

Best for:

  • Asynchronous systems with the asynchronous data flow.
  • Building applications with few modules to interact with the individual data blocks.
  • User interfaces.
  • IoT-based applications.

3. Microservices Architecture

Microservices are an independent and self-regulating codebase that can be written and maintained even by a small team of developers. Microservices architecture consists of independent services with each service responsible for the implementation of its related business logic. 

These independent services are separated from each other based on the nature of their domains and belong to a mini-microservice pool. Enterprise mobile app developers leverage the capabilities of this architecture, especially for complex applications. 

What does it solve?

Monolithic applications become too complex and large for efficient support and deployment for a distributed resource utilization such as in cloud environments.

Microservices help in building applications as suites of services. Each service is independently scalable and deployable and has its API layer. Different services can be developed by different teams, manage their database, and written in different programming languages.

Benefits

  • This architecture design pattern makes the system highly fault-tolerant as the services are segmented into pools. In other words, the whole software won’t crash on its end even if some microservices stop functioning. 
  • It allows applications to scale. The independent services lead to scale individually rather than overloading the entire system with the need to expand. 
  • Services can be merged into any application depending upon the work scope. 

Caveats

  • Harder to understand due to its complex logic. Requires deep analysis in service decomposition.

Best For

  • Websites with small components.
  • Corporate data centers with well-defined boundaries.
  • Rapidly developing new businesses, e-commerce, and web applications.

Conclusion

While the above-enlisted architectures signify the most favored design choices for organizational software development, there are plenty of others, equally interesting and perhaps more befitting to your project.

It’s always important to understand the pattern clearly, as applying the wrong pattern can lead to a lot of problems like inappropriate designs and implementations. A development expert would have a sound judgment that would help you understand when a pattern is not appropriate in a particular business scenario. 

Contact us if you need a team of such developers, engineers, technical architects, and PMs who can understand the ramifications of software design and the future growth of the product.

About Galaxy Weblinks

We specialize in delivering end-to-end software design & development services and have hands-on experience with large, medium, and startup business development requirements. Our engineers also help in improving security, reliability, and features to make sure your business application scale and remain secure.

DevOps For Enhanced Business Growth

Posted on by galaxy-admin

DevOps has been around for a good number of years now. Thanks to the promise of streamlined business and growth operations, it has gained a lot of popularity as well. However, many organizations when faced with numerous implementation challenges, are unable to make a complete transition.

Everyone needs to up their game to thrive in such a highly competitive business world. DevOps will help you in fulfilling many customer expectations like:

  • Prompt bug fixes
  • Fast release of new features and functionalities
  • Responsive feedback system
  • Storage of customer data and its safekeeping

So let’s see how you can leverage DevOps to minimize implementation challenges and provide an enhanced user experience.

Continuous Iteration and Continuous Delivery

The essential rule here is to keep iterating the code numerous times for removing any errors and bugs. CI and CD help you in getting real-time feedback from your website and iterate accordingly. When your program code is entered into a repository, it will be assembled and tested (more on this below) before it goes live. This will create a streamlined CI/CD pipeline, assisting you in numerous ways.

  • Less number of bugs reach your production cycle and QA engineers
  • Iterative deployments cycles will help in releasing new features quickly
  • You are at a lesser risk of causing high disruption as the changes are done in smaller batches
  • Deployments are automated hence your time, especially in the smaller iteration done

Automated Testing

When customers see the 404 error, they may never return to your website. Automated testing can help you avoid such situations. It works on predefined conditions and removes any new bugs that may hamper your user experience. You will benefit in the following areas:

  • The system detects errors before they snowball into bigger problems and fix them with minimum human interventions
  • The right QA tools will decrease the possibility of human errors
  • Your teams can focus on building new test suites and kits

Cultural Shift

DevOps integrated with Agile methodology will result in a lot of changes within your organization. DevOps is driven by a responsible, responsive, and collaborative approach to change.

Automation in processes and tools will lead to a learning environment. Developers, designers, and testers should come together to solve issues before it hampers the user experience. There needs to be a balance among organizational, technology, and innovation goals. Developers and QA engineers can collaborate to create products that end-users demand.

Security 

Any misuse of your user’s data can cost you dearly. DevOps helps you build a secure website so that you can collect, process, and secure your customer’s sensitive data like personal information, payment modes, and banking data. All this can be ensured via:

  • Server updates to be automated
  • SSL/ TLS configurations to be done correctly
  • Code vulnerabilities especially from a security point of view to be checked regularly
  • 2-FA for an added level of security
  • Data encryption
  • Source control
  • Restriction on data access

All the points above are an integral part of DevOps. Its implementation will build a more secure environment for your customers. Given below are a few questions that we encourage our clients to think about before they go in for a complete change.

  • Is your current setup ready to handle faster updates and features?
  • How much transparency and visibility is there throughout your SDLC?
  • With no new cost, can your current infrastructure generate more revenue?
  • How receptive is your team for new changes and an everlasting optimization process?
  • Which processes are you ready to automate right away and the ones in near future?
  • In the current setup, how are you planning on increasing the stability and performance of your business?
  • How much financial liberty is available for future expansion plans?

All these questions are pretty intense but so will be the transformation that you wish to take on. Agile and DevOps go hand in hand. If you have any doubts or need to talk to a DevOps expert, contact us here and we will be happy to help you.

What Are the Best Practices to Build an Enterprise Software Application?

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Building an enterprise software application is a complex journey involving several team members with varied skill sets, requiring significant time involvement, and costing a lot of money. There are several phases during the enterprise software development life cycle – requirement gathering, analysis, design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance.

Due to the complexity of interacting with several team members and dependency of output from one phase to another, it is important to have a well defined process during the entire life cycle. In this article, we have compiled some of the key best practices while building an enterprise software application.

– Identifying the goal and formulating a plan

Each idea aims to solve a specific problem catering to the needs of its user base. So it is a crucial first step to identify the end objective and carry out a thorough research to know your market, understand the target audience, identify the market gap, research your competition, and differentiate your product offering. Better research leads to a better product application. If you don’t invest your time in research, you will end up with a lot of iterations which would mean increased manhours and capital. Hence it is important to carefully think out your product idea, define why and how you want to build the product.

– Choosing the right partners

Several phases during the enterprise software development life cycle require people with varied skills such as design, coding, QA, product management, etc. Building the entire team in-house can not only be expensive but can be a daunting task managing all the resources. Hence, it is important to identify the right technology partners that can help your team in building the application in the most efficient and cost-effective way.

However, choosing the right partners can be challenging and a crucial part of the overall development process. While selecting the right partners, keep in mind that the companies should be aligned with your organization as well as with the project requirements. The companies should have relevant expertise and experience, and this can be evaluated by looking at their portfolio, looking at the company’s reviews on Clutch/Dribble, as well as speaking to their references.

– Setting the scope at the start

The work scope should be established at the start of the project with clear deliverables and timelines. If you have outsourced design work, make sure that the deliverables such as user stories, information architecture, design, etc are well documented. These deliverables help the development team in writing the code adhering to the best standards.

Having a clear set of scope, deliverables and budget are crucial to a successful project. Not only will these help you monitor the progress, your partners can plan resources and allocate time accordingly. Not setting a scope at the start could lead to several iterations resulting in cost overrun and project delays.

– Identifying the most suited tech platform

Enterprise software applications are built-in specific coding languages such as Python, Java, C, JavaScript, etc. There are various pros and cons of each coding language depending on the business needs. Hence it is important to brainstorm with your team / partner and select the right programming language for your software application. It is also important to think about the platform (desktop, mobile) your software will run on.

– Outlining the features/functionalities clearly

Software application development is an iterative process. During the process, a lot of changes happen including adding/deleting/modifying features and functionalities. Frequent changes to these can slow down the project and will mostly impact the budget/timelines. Hence, it is important to identify the core features and functionalities clearly at the start. While minor modifications are acceptable, they are unlikely to have a major impact on the overall development life cycle.

– Setting up effective communication

Effective communication is a key factor in the success of software development. Working with partners across the globe with different time zones, different cultural/linguistic differences, etc requires effective project management tools like Asana, Jira, Basecamp, Trello, etc and communication channels such as Slack, Zoom, Teams, etc. These tools enable teams to work together throughout the development life cycle efficiently.

– Relaying timely feedback 

The output dependency from one phase to another makes the entire process dependent on timely feedback during all the phases. Any subsequent change to output from one phase due to lack of proper analysis and feedback results in multiple iterations across the life cycle, which is both time consuming and expensive. Hence it is important to have a frequent and open communication dialogue during each phase and evolve the product idea ahead of development.

Conclusion

Enterprise software application development is a complex and long decision involving many variables. For a successful execution, you need multiple partners that help you during the entire process. As we flagged above, it is important to have a well defined process during the entire development process. If you’ve any doubts related to software development and if you need assistance developing one then feel free talk to us here.