Category Archives: Blog

In today’s crisis period, every project get budget cuts. As the statistic says, every 5th small business calls off a new project due to the financial situation. For us, it’s like a little tragedy when we first discuss with the client his brand new idea for a product and then postpone it because of financial issues. So in this article, we would like to help you with reducing your product development time.

In IT development, there is hourly pay, and it will be better to save money by saving time than by hiring less-qualified staff.

How to reduce the development time:

• To begin with, development starts when you know exactly what you want to have in the result. We often face clients who wanted firstly one thing and then totally another and as you understand it takes more time to change it. In the end, if there are a lot of things you are not sure about, the team will need more time to do it. The recommendation is to write down every single detail it should have or ask for advice about questions you are not competent on the consultation.
  
• After that, there should be created a scoop of work with you involved. Since the team has a basic understanding of what work should be done, they expect from the client additional information about which specific features he wants to have in this product. So, be attentive at this moment and check if everything you need is added to the scoop of work, in case not to lose something important. Work out of scoop will cost you extra money. To learn more about a scoop of work and estimation, read our previous post about Estimation.
• Also, you need to define design criteria. Before the clock starts ticking, establish written brand design criteria for your team. Design criteria should be prioritized and labelled “required” or “desired” appropriately. That will help you to avoid redos during the process of development.
• Choose simple solutions. It will save you many additional hours if you choose a simple solution instead of a difficult and unstable one. While difficult to achieve, simple, elegant solutions are essential to highly compressed product development programs.

• Last but not least, always stay in touch. During the development process, the team will regularly ask you essential questions concerning the product. It is crucial to answering asap because developers can’t make decisions without you. As a result, they will pause that task and wait for you.

All in all, we hope that you won’t stop developing your amazing product because of financial reasons. The world is waiting for it. Let’s create something wonderful together.

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Have you ever had a bad experience with Web Development? When something went wrong, or you forgot important features you wanted to have during this long process. In our team, it’s unacceptable since we have defined each step through the Web development lifecycle.

Here, at OporaSolutions, we are improving all our processes from year to year. We follow each development step, focusing on important issues and don’t forget about additional. All of this is to make you sure that we will implement every thought you have about your project.

Project steps during web development:

If you’ve ever wondered how this works in our team, this information will be useful to you. Each process has its steps during the life cycle of the project.

1.  Requirement Process

• Project Analysis & Consultation
• Requirement Gathering
• Project Budget
• Contract Acceptance

2. Planning Process

• Resource Planning
• Project Timeline Planning
• Functional Specification Documentation

3. Prototyping

• User Experience Design
• Front-end
• UI/UX Testing
• MVP

4. Development Process

• Back-end
• Source Code
• Database
• Third Party Integrations
• Deployment on Staging Server
• Unit Tests

5. Release & Evolution Process

• Change Requests
• Final Delivery
• Deployment on Live Server
• Client Training & Documentation
• Maintenance & Support

In case you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask us. We will be glad to answer all.

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Not so long ago, the majority of infobusinessmen immediately offered a potential customer to buy without giving anything to test. In recent years, the situation has changed, and almost everyone has heard about the need for a free product.

Why do we spend our strength and time on what we do not get money for? It is important to understand that a free infoproject is a long-term investment whose purpose:

• Raise customer loyalty – when a person gets something valuable for free, it gets bored and leaves a feeling that he should. This sensation remains unconscious until it can pay back the same. As they say, nothing is given for nothing. You do not have to pay for anything. In the context of infobusiness – it’s money for a paid product. Everything is as simple and logical as possible.
• Collect subscription base – if you simply invite “to subscribe to the newsletter with interesting and important information”, then there are hardly any willing ones. And a completely different situation awaits you if you offer to exchange e-mail to a specific and necessary product to the potential customer.
• On focus – a free product should focus on the customer in the desired area. He must mirror the client’s problem and outline his options for her solution, show the path and charge energy to overcome it. You do not need to impose problems on the client – it is important to show the pain that is already deeply in place, and to induce action.
• Spread the name – a free product can be placed on various resources, and thus, make its name recognizable in a certain environment.

Before you begin to create your free product, try to start from the end and consider the typical mistakes associated with the offer of free products:

• Irregular work with the base – a system of regular communication with clients must be built up. At least once a week they must “meet” you, otherwise all your other actions are completely useless. Many infobusinessmen write letters irregularly, in vain. As a result, potential customers quickly lose interest and simply forget about the author.

• Full comprehensive information in a free product – this is, as you see, the other extreme. And this was precisely my problem: I plowed, had a large base of active clients, but did not get a financial result until I realized that my free webinars are quite enough to solve the tasks that are facing the target audience. They do not need anything else – everything, Gestalt is closed.

• Offer a low quality free product – absolutely normal, that all the most valuable to give away at all at all it would not be desirable. But will it encourage a free product to buy, if it is a compilation of other people’s texts, a collection of trivialities and evidence?

You see how important it is to catch this line, this balance between “give value”, but “do not overdo it.” Creating a free product that will work for you, and not just attract freebies – this is a delicate work. And let it be “free” at the initial stage, but it is the basis without which it is simply not possible to build a successful business in our time. The offer to give up money always causes unconscious resistance. This is a barrier that can and must be overcome with a free product.

Imagine having one standalone app that contains small and lightweight components. Each item is unique and performs a specific function. Each component acts out as a microservice that operates independently. Let’s have a close look at them and see what’s hidden inside.

How does microservice architecture differ from the ordinary software that we all are used to? A standard project is a single unit that processes requests, executes some commands and renders some data. A huge drawback here is a complicated way to update something or add new features or components to the project. Microapp development shines bright like diamonds from this point of view.

Why you need a microservice architecture for your business

MVP launch speed and agility attract more and more companies to start using this technology to get more profit. Scroll down to see why you should choose microservices for web application development.

Fast project release & update

You have a series of services that go in one box. If you need to make a change in any of the components of an item, you don’t deal with other items of the box. What do you get in real life? You don’t have to downtime your website to fix something. You don’t have to pause online sales to update the payment system and so on.

What if you don’t use microservices? You’ve probably heard about Netflix. They use a monolithic architecture (opposite to microservices). The site goes offline in case there’s a need to change the login component of a web page. This may lead to a significant profit reduction.

Scalability

If you have a startup or an enterprise, you suppose that you may grow up. Here we mean that the number of customers will grow and the number of incoming requests will also become bigger. Scalability allows you to be flexible and respond to the changes right away.

What if you don’t use microservices? The cost of scaling the monolith software is higher as it requires more human resources, working hours and machine power. Time and money matter to any company.

A free choice of stacks

One service can be crafted with Angular.js. Another one can be built with React. You don’t have to use one stack for the whole application that you plan to develop. It gives you maximum flexibility and high product quality. You pick up the best suiting technology for every task and complete it with the maximum efficiency.

What if you don’t use microservices? If you build an app with the use of only one single technology, you are limited to the number of possible solutions that are available online. You cannot use other stacks or earlier versions of the frameworks as it may cause dependency conflicts.

How to use microservice architecture in your projects

Not to leave you with the feeling that everything seems too good to be true, we will tell you about a few drawbacks of the microservices. Your company and your employees should be ready for learning and implementing new tools in practice.

It takes time and resources to change the habitual workflow. If you and your employees are ready for the changes and you allow flexibility, you will prosper from integrating microservices into your workflow. Outsourcing software development can be a good way out here.

You can hire a remote dedicated team that has a big talent pool and experience in building similar projects. OporaSolutions team helps organizations achieve their goals, all while staying ahead (or keeping up) with their competitors. We know how to use microservice architecture to help each partner reach their business goals.

Choosing the right framework for a new project may be a true challenge. But there comes the point when you have to decide and pick up the best option. We can help you with this task and guide you through the five most popular JavaScript frameworks for today.

State of JavaScript gives us an understanding of what frameworks are popular, the number of developers and their average salaries. React and Vue are not pure frameworks – they are libraries. However, they are mostly treated as JS frameworks and we will consider them to be the ones.

React

To see a real power of React, you can have a look at Facebook or Instagram. This framework makes the process of UI creation painless. All you have to do is to design the views in an app and React will update and render the components in real-time. One more thing that you may like about React – you have predictable and easy-to-debug code thanks to declarative views.

You can combine React with Node for the server-side part of the app. The code can be reused in the future without the need to rewrite everything to add a few new features. The component logic lets you create complex user interfaces.

Major pros:

• Virtual DOM makes performance efficient
• The isomorphic approach makes data rendering fast
• Search engines index sites (built with React) better
• A big number of developers

Vue

This framework takes second place. It’s not a monolithic framework and it aims to be highly adaptable. It’s good for building single-page applications and you can integrate it with other libraries for better performance. Vue is similar to React in some points like utilizing a virtual DOM, having adaptable and reactive view components and so on.

Vue is easier than Angular in a matter of design and API. If you use Vue framework, you will probably spend a few hours building a simple app and this is almost impossible when you use Angular.

Major pros:

• Simplicity and flexibility
• Good for small and complex apps
• Easy to learn
• A great amount of documentation

Angular

This framework can be used for e-commerce, travel web apps, such sites like Upwork or LinkedIn. To build a robust web app, you can use templates and turn them into code that will be optimized by the JavaScript virtual machine. A good thing here is using a Component Router that allows users to view the rendered code only for a requested view.

The use of Angular is more complicated than Vue and it’s not always SEO-friendly. There’s a need to spend more time learning the framework and how to get the most from it. However, this doesn’t influence the number of available developers – this number is still growing.

Major pros:

• Supported by Google
• A great amount of documentation
• Can be used for server-side rendering
• A great number of third-party components

Ember

This framework can be used for complex user interactions. Developers deal with rapid iteration thanks to greatly integrated toolkits that are a basement for managing the complexity of apps. One of such toolkits is Ember CLI – you can recognize it by $ ember <command> line in the guidelines or manuals. There’s a handy browser extension that lets you check the app in real-time.

It’s not the best framework for mobile apps. There’s a strong need to test the app performance on real devices and avoid using simulated environments. This will guarantee great work on various hardware. You should focus on testing from the first steps of development with Ember.

Major pros:

• Convention over configuration approach
• A big number of add-ons
• A big community

Polymer

Polymer is great for crafting custom elements with the help of web components – this standard was used by W3C. You can deal with Google web components like APIs, Google Analytics or Google Maps services. Developers may deal with:

• iron elements for defining the core functionality
• gold elements for e-commerce components
• neon elements for animations
• platinum elements for notifications
• molecules for third-party JS libraries

Major pros:

• Compatibility with W3C standards
• Can be used for server-side rendering
• Search engines index sites (built with Polymer) better

What is the best framework?

We cannot name any of the above-listed frameworks the best or the worst ones. Each library or framework can deal with specific tasks in the most efficient ways. When you define your goals and tasks that an app can solve, you will make the right choice yourself or Opora Solutions team will help you with this.

Why do fintech organizations implement machine learning technology in their processes?

In simple words, there are core benefits like:

• Automation of processes – it leads to operational cost reduction
• Finer user experience – it leads to the revenue increase
• Security and compliance – it leads to no vulnerability

Process Automation

The goal of automating the habitual processes is to get rid of manual work, replace people with the software for repetitive tasks and increase efficiency. Here are some use cases that we have today:

• Chatbots
• Automated call-centers
• Automated paperwork

How does it look in real life? Natural Language Processing technology can be used for dealing with legal documents and extracting the required piece of data from them. Manual document processing can take a few days while an automated product will spend a few minutes on the same task.

Security

Machine learning algorithms can supervise, control and detect various types of operations with thousands of different parameters. All the checkups are held in real-time. Automated algorithms detect fraud attempts and make decisions based on predefined rules. One of them may be sending a message to the customer for further verification or canceling the payment.

You can also enhance network security. Algorithms will detect cyber threats within a second or even less time. All happens in real-time. If you still have doubts about that, you can find information on how Skrill, PayPal, Payoneer, and Adyen use AI for preventing and solving their security concerns.

Robotic advisory

This machine learning component can be used for portfolio management. What does it mean? You have an automated component that collects and deals with information for managing and optimizing the assets of the customers. If a customer decides to save $4 mln until 50 years old, the robotic advisor will analyze the current assets, risk preferences and goals. As a result of this procedure, a customer will receive a personalized insurance plan. It takes little time and effort to provide such advisory service for a big number of customers.

How can we implement machine learning?

There are a few basic rules and approaches that we follow to make each new project successful. And here are some of them.

• Precise goals
• Robust architecture
• Big data ecosystem
• Improved ETL processes
• New algorithms
• Insights with their visualization

The bottom line

If you need samples of successful implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) functionality, have a look at products from Google, Amazon or IBM. We are inspired by these samples and we aim at getting the most from the achievements of other companies and our own products in the fintech industry.

OporaSolutions team is experienced and qualified to deliver robust and reliable software products that can solve current and future business needs of fintech and banking organizations. Let us know about your ideas or problems, and we’ll find a good solution to it.

Finding and hiring the right project manager plays a significant role in the success of a new product. Should it be someone in your office or a remote team player? What hard and soft skills should this person possess? Let’s try to figure this out.

STEP 1: In-house vs. Outsourcing

It’s sometimes hard to choose whether it’s worth outsourcing this position or find someone to stay in your office. Each variant has some benefits and drawbacks. If you pick up an in-house project manager, you may face:

• Miscommunication between a remote team and an in-house PM
• Time zone difference
• Problems with planning and evaluating the milestones

If you decide to outsource this position, you may face the lack of communication between you and a new PM. A great benefit here will be a full synergy inside the team.

STEP 2: Check qualification and expertise

Once you have chosen the type of cooperation with a PM, it’s time to check qualifications and expertise. It’s good to divide this process into two parts. The first one will refer to possessing some specific hard skills that are required for completing the project.

And the second one will refer to checking the soft skills that are required for managing the development team, planning the process and solving any problems that ever come out. When you outsource project management, possessing excellent soft skills may be even more crucial than having a perfect portfolio with dozens of delivered projects.

STEP 3: Plan your cooperation

This step comprises everything related to your mutual work. You can talk about how you will communicate and how often you will do it. You need to pick up tools for tracking the activities of a remote team and backlogging everything they do. You can plan the days and the time for video calls that will be comfortable for both sides.

STEP 4: Discuss possible pitfalls

You shoul preict the main pitfalls that you can face during the cooperation. Some of them are:

• One of the team players leaves the project
• You cannot get in touch with the team
• You get the wrong design or specific product feature
• You dislike your cooperation
• You’re not happy with the outcome

You can think of any problems that you have ever had before or the issues that make you feel worried. You should note down all the agreements that you come up with.

STEP 5: Evaluate your cooperation

You can always replace the project manager is everything goes the wrong way. We cannot state if it’s easier to do this if you have an in-house person or a remote team player. But you should have the milestones specifically for the PM and evaluate if they are reached. It’s good to analyze the reasons for not achieving those milestones as there might be some circumstances or obstacles that don’t depend on the PM.

Summary

Hiring the right PM for building a new product is a hard task. But once you find the right person, you will see the smooth workflow, moderate speed of development, and ontime project delivery. Here at OporaSolutions, we can help you with hiring the best project manager that will fit all your requirements and expectations. Let us know you’re looking for a PM and we’ll find the one for you.

Stage 1: Collecting Requirements for a New Project

This is the initial stage and it requires a thorough analysis of the current situation on the market and understanding what you expect from a new product.

We think that it’s good to divide this stage into several components:

• Business requirements. You should think of the overall strategy of the business and the role of a new software product here. We recommend defining some key peculiarities that will let the app stand out among the competitors. For example, you may offer the fastest delivery service in your location.
• Stakeholders’ requirements. It can be an interview or a chat with the people that have a clear vision of where the company is now, where it’s going and how it can grow with the help of a new application. You should be ready to end up with controversial requirements that you will need to aggregate into a single vision.
• Product requirements. Here we mean everything that is related to the software itself: functional (how it will behave) and non-functional (safety, quality, and efficiency) specs.
• Regulatory norms. You should always check if you meet the norms of local and global quality standards and metrics like FDA, ISO, etc.

Stage 2: Specs and Planning

If you don’t have a business analyst in your office, it will be hard to deal with this stage. However, your software development vendor will probably offer you an option when a new project is backed up with e BA.

Here are three things that a BA deals with:

• Use case
• Software Requirements Specifications (SRS) documentation
• User stories

If a BA doesn’t have a technical background, there should be a project manager or CTO to prepare all the documentation the right way. They will think of the requirements, specs, possible obstacles and the ways to overcome them.

Stage 3: Designing, Development, and Testing

When you have collected all the requirements, it’s time to visualize them. It can be a wireframe that will provide you with a full understanding of the app functionality. It may lack some beauty of a mockup but you can click and test how it behaves. And you can offer some updates if required.

If you are happy with the design and the functionality of the app, it’s time to build it. Developers will pick up the best-suiting methodology like Agile, Waterfall, DevOps, etc. The next steps will be the choice of architecture and technology stacks. Testing should be integrated into the process of development from the very beginning.

Stage 4: Deployment, Iteration, and Monitoring

The happiest time for app deployment is Friday at 5 pm. Of course, we’re joking and we do not recommend you to ever do this. Even if you have a perfect app, you cannot predict whether you will have any problems right after the deployment.

Here are the ways you can deploy a new app:

• Dummy or Recreate. You terminate the old version and replace it with the new one.
• Incremental. A new version is slowly replacing the old one.
• Shadow. The old version will exist until the moment when there’s zero traffic.

The next steps will be collecting information about the productivity and efficiency of the app and its upgrades in the future.

Summary

You can expand this list of stages if needed. Here at OporaSolutions, we give only a brief description of what we are doing at each stage as there’s a lot of information to add. And we’ll do this on request.  If you’re looking for a reliable vendor to build a custom software product, drop us a message and we’ll get back to you right away.

Each business has a limited budget and wants to know the costs before they’re willing to start a project. Project estimation means looking through all available data to propose the time, cost, and resources needed to complete a project. Seems like everything is clear, but there are still some issues to discuss. In this article, you will learn all about estimation from the developer’s side.

Before each new project, there is a time for estimation. It’s a process when all team members gather to clarify 3 questions: What? How? When?

– “What” means what scope of work they will have to do;

– “How” means how much time it will take to complete it;

– “When” means when it will be finished.

To make an accurate estimate, it is necessary to know, whether this project already exists and your task is to make modification to current functionality, update or fix bugs, or you need to do everything from scratch.

In the first case, there should be time to learn the code structure, to find out if there is a staging environment, also time for testing and bug fixing.

In second – there should be time for technology stack research, creation of a staging environment, developing, testing and bug fixing.

After finding out that information, we usually discuss the scoop of work, if it is really to do that and how difficult it will be. We evaluate it in story points, not in hours because you will never know how it will be going. In the end, there always should be time for risks!

From this, we have the first client’s stereotype about the developers “These developers are terrible guys because they didn’t complete the project on time”.

People should understand that no one can give you exact terms, even after getting all this information mentioned above, because of one simple reason: one day it’s not enough to learn the project that was developing during months or years or to predict which roadblocks you will face with during developing.

Of course, our developers have years of experience and, in some cases, they can tell you about potential roadblocks in your situation, but each client has his own individual product and needs.

The biggest mistake in this process is no time for risks, testing and bug fixing. It exists in every single project and not taking time for that it’s a disservice. We always explain to our clients that these terms are not final, because something can go wrong.

As a developer, a person should inform his clients about all these issues. Don’t be afraid if they won’t agree with you, discuss it, explain it again. It always better to finish your work earlier than fail deadlines.