The most awaited event of the year at InfoBeans is mega outing in which entire InfoBeans team along with their families come together for 4 days holiday. This is when all offices across geographies are not operational.

This year also InfoBeans Pune team along with their families went for Mega Outing to land of beaches Goa often called as "Pearl of the Orient" and a "Tourist Paradise".InfoBeans Pune team had a scintillating time there and enjoyed the holidays at the fullest.

Check out some photos of our Mega Outing 2011.

At InfoBeans, CSR is considered as not a responsibility but an ideology that got imbedded in the culture of InfoBeans. The founders are strong believers of the concept and motivate the entire team to participate in various initiatives at organization and society level.

InfoBeans team participated in AMITY CSR Conclave 2011 and it gives me great pleasure to announce that we have won the award for CSR Excellence (Small  Scale category).

Kudos to the entire IB Care team and all of us for making conscious effort to give back to society.

The most awaited event of the year at InfoBeans is mega outing in which entire InfoBeans team along with their families come together for 4 days holiday. This is when all offices across geographies are not operational.

This year also InfoBeans team along with their families went for Mega Outing to Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan. Check out some photos of our Mega Outing 2011.

Quality is simply an obsession. An obsession to deliver nothing but the best. Obsessively and compulsively engaged in delivering what is required without deviating even a small pixel.

Only with this spirit will one see great results, great products, great success. 

If you see software development as a cost center, you need to rethink that entire department. If it is technically a cost center, then you are not in the business of software. That is when you need to seriously think about outsourcing it to someone who thinks of it as a profit center. Those are the folks who would treat their team well. And that would result in great solutions and great software for your company.

Writing software is hard. It is not trivial and there will be no magic formula anytime soon that would create great software with just a click of a button.

One needs to realize that when writing software, bugs are always a part of the package. There just cannot be a chunk of software that is written that would be totally bug free. I am not saying that one should ship with bugs. NO!

What is important is the management of these bugs.

If developers and indeed the quality folks can find, manage and then fix those bugs, the end result will be great software exceeding expectations of everyone involved.

Managing the bugs involves first acknowledging that there will be bugs. Most developers refuse to believe that their software can ever have bugs. Let that go. Every piece of code ever written has bugs. Accept it.

Then there needs to be concerted effort to find those bugs. First at the developer level, what some would say unit testing. But going beyond that, what stops the developer from running full blown test cases that apply to her code? Run them, and the unit tests and whatever other tests you can run. Don't leave that to the QA guys. After all you are proud of your code, you do not want them to think your code is a piece of junk. Give them your best and save yourself the blushes later on.

Then of course you fix those bugs. That is obvious.

But what is not obvious is that you have to test all over again. Assuming that you have fixed everything and it will run fine after you have fixed a bug is hazardous. You are just undoing all the hard work that you have put in.

Once you ship to QA, don't disown the code. Be in touch with them and find out what is going on with the testing, in particular your own stuff, but also with the entire software that your code is integrating into. You can catch things they will not catch.

Ask the testing folks to break your code. Then take pride in the fact that they were not able to.

Another aspect of bug management is tracking your bugs. Make sure you understand the bugs that are assigned to you, you fix them, understand the fix and then track them right back to the QA guys so that you know what is going on with your bug.

Last, but not the least important is something that is really always overlooked. Expectation management. Managing expectations of the quality team, and the user. If you can tell them before hand that there is a certain issue with the software, there is a lot of time, energy and heartbreak that you can save.

Telling the QA folks that there is a certain or to expect a non conforming behavior is a sure shot way of making friends out of your sworn enemies. They will be eternally grateful to you for not wasting their time.

Telling your customers up front about the issues will delight them. Not antagonize them. Be brave, honest and up front.

Know that you cannot kill all your bugs. Manage them well and you can sleep well.

 

Siri is purported to change everything. Even challenge Google. And I believe so myself.

Question is, why just on mobile? Can Siri not change everything everywhere - desktops, laptops, even servers? 

Word processors, might become obsolete in their current forms very soon. Soon, many people might need a keyboard. Mice are dead already.

Application developers need to keep a close eye on this. This can be a truly disruptive technology.

When you are looking to outsource anything, not just software development or maintenance, anything at all, you are not looking to get the best technology solution. That is a given. That is by default. That is a requirement. Without that there is no outsourcing happening.

What you are looking beyond that is a solid team that shares your passion and zeal. Somone who can stand right next to you in turbulent times. A bunch of people who share your vision, are willing to work towards fulfilling your vision. You are looking for someone who can help you look good in front of your customers, management etc.

IT Application outsourcing is not just head count replacement by cheaper alternative (offshore, outsource, whatever). It has to be more strategic than that. The skin in the game needs to be there for a complex outsourcing deal to work out.

Delivering complex enterprise solutions require a deep understanding of not only the technology but also the business, the impact (both positive and negative) and long term ROI.

Considering app development outsourcing as a simple transaction would be foolish. 

In a continued effort towards propagating environment friendly initiatives and Go Green activities , InfoBeans IB Care organized a Tree plantation event in Shankar Nagar, Indore. IB Care committee took the first steps in transforming a garbage strewn piece of  Public land in Shankar Nagar (Near Rafael Tower, Indore office) in to a Community Garden. The event was organized in cooperation with the local community members.

The committee went to each and every household distributing pamphlets and inviting the community members to be part of this event. The aim was to drive home the message of working towards a Greener tomorrow starting  at home and in our local community. The garbage was cleaned out and the garden has a proper fence now, with trees and plants planted along the periphery.

The initiative bought the local community together in a bigway and many of them have vowed individually to  adopt at least one plant and keep on planting more and more trees. It has also motivated them to work on other community based initiatives as well.

Hopefully it will continue to flourish with the community while being a symbol that small steps can lead to big changes.