At AndPlus, we are firm believers in building a minimum viable product (MVP). One of the best ways to make sure your contract software developer is going in the right direction with your project is to see an early prototype—the earlier the better. A thoroughly documented requirements specification is important in end-to-end development, but it’s all rather abstract and conceptual until you can see something on-screen.
The term quant means a few different things; short for “self-quantifier,” or Quantitative, More commonly the latter. It is a relatively new buzzword that you will be hearing a lot of soon, if you haven’t already. Quants are people who measure all kinds of metrics about their given industry, from health to business trends. The quant movement has gained momentum recently, enabled by technological advances in smartphones and sensor devices such as exercise monitors, heart-rate monitors, sleep monitors, and other gadgets.
Your business is different. Even though you have competitors in the same industry, the way you do things makes you unique, and using off-the-shelf software simply isn’t the right option for everyone. When you’re facing the build-vs-buy decision, challenging questions arise that can often be answered only by fully exploring your options. If you decide custom software offers you the most efficient system, here’s how to go about choosing a software shop to develop a distinctive solution for your company that will take you to the top of your game.
The debate rages on, in the technical press, mass media, social media, and philosophical circles, as to whether computers will ever be considered “intelligent,” and whether it would be a good thing if they were. Much of the debate hinges on definitions of what it means to be intelligent and how human-like a machine would have to be before it was considered intelligent. Arguments aside, much progress has been made in recent years on two technologies that together bring us closer to the goal of “artificial intelligence” in general, and intelligent robotics in particular: machine learning and computer vision.
Modern product development in general, and software product development in particular, have adopted end-to-end development principles, in which the conceptualization, market analysis, requirements specification, design, building, testing, release, and post-release support and maintenance are managed as a single, well-documented, cross-functional project.
The first two stages—conceptualization and market analysis—are the most important, because together they define the scope of the solution and thus all of the subsequent steps. Perhaps even more important, they determine whether a project should be pursued at all.
“Big data” has generated quite a bit of excitement recently, largely because of its promised ability to solve large business and scientific problems. Organizations large and small are eager to use smart, analytical algorithms to make sense of their large data and obtain useful information about their customers, their competitors, climate change, financial markets, and a host of other topics.
