Services

Product Audits

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:52:59 -0700

Once the plan, process, and people are all in place. The product/service can be built. Along the way, there will be code/design reviews as well as Quality Assurance (QA).

Cadent can help in this process by becoming third party auditors to the product/service. Services include:

Doing third party code inspections.
Auditing the QA plans for proper coverage.
Match the product/service features against the original requirements/specifications and outline where deficiencies lie.

A side effect of code auditing allows a determination of how easy/difficult the code written by different employees is to understand. This can be fed into the employee evaluation system (rarely does this happen).

People

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:52:41 -0700

Good people are truly the backbone of any good technical company. The proliferation of placement agencies specializing in high tech employment will attest to that.

Problem is that most interviews of high tech people are very poorly done. More often than not, a "technical expert" will test the interviewee's memory by getting them to define terms like "polymorphism" or to draw how something works on a white board.

Though this approach will show you what is in someone's memory (or how long away from University they are), it rarely shows you how good the interviewee is at solving the specific types of problems you will need them to solve.

After 20 years of being interviewed numerous times per year for contracts, as well as having done a lot of interviewing on behalf of clients, I have seen a lot of approaches to technical interviewing. Some have been effective, some downright insulting sending the wrong message to the interviewee with regards to the company and job.

I can help a company in their interviewing process by:

First interviewing the managers to determine exactly what they need for the position and what the expectations are.
Looking at other members of the team the candidate will be working with to understand the environment.
Then, participate in the interview process to help isolate whether the candidate will fit into the environment, and will be able to do the job required. This is done by not testing the candidate's memory, but really getting to understand the candidate's attitude and the way he/she thinks.

Technical Plan/Architecture

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 16:10:39 -0700

For Investors:

Investors evaluating potential clients usually focus on the marketing aspects of an idea/prototype. However, problems in the technical plan/architecture will lead to longer than expected development cycles as well as difficult to support products/services. These will in turn require more investment to carry the companies forward thereby diluting the original investment. Unfortunately, this has become the norm rather than the exception in our high tech community.

By using Cadent to evaluate the technical part of a potential client's business plan, you can help to reduce and better manage the risk of such cost/time overruns. We can:

Evaluate the technical parts of any business plan creating an analysis of potential risks and where more due diligence on the client's part is required.
Estimate the probability of cost overruns.
Interview the technical representatives to better understand the proposed technical architecture and desired development process. This can then be matched against the client's marketing objectives to see how feasible the approach will be.
"Smoke-and-mirrors" detection: a technical evaluation will determine if the client just has a great idea and marketing plan, but no real technical know-how to actually pull it off.
Suggest adjustments to the plan/architecture which will improve its feasibility.
Help to identify Intellectual Property (IP) elements in the architecture for potential patents.
Help to identify areas of concern regarding the use of open source software and its relationship to intellectual property.

For Startups/Established Companies:

Good engineering can make even a mediocre idea work, but bad engineering can kill even the most brilliant plans.

Cadent can help startups and established companies fine tune their technical planning and architectures by:

Reviewing their current plan/architecture for feasibility and provide suggestions on where potential improvements can be made.

Create a list of risks which will need to be monitored or mitigated.

Develop an opinion on how easy/difficult the proposed product/service will be to support once it is done. Many do not anticipate how much it costs in time and money for support. Alterations in the technical architecture can have a big effect on support costs.

Outline areas in the technical plan which are missing or require more due diligence.

Provide a reality check on how long the development cycle is likely to be and how many people will really be needed.

Help to identify Intellectual Property (IP) elements in the architecture for potential patents.

Help to identify areas of concern regarding the use of open source software and its relationship to intellectual property.

Development

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 15:54:42 -0700

Cadent's original mandate was to provide contracting services to high tech companies. This involved being on-site doing active development for a given project.

We still provide development services to clients on a stand-alone project basis where a specific piece of work is well defined and can be developed by us at our own site and delivered to the client upon completion. This allows us to retain control over the high level of quality/craftsmanship we have become known for.

Typical projects which are perfect for such off-site development include:

Prototypes for startups seeking funding.
Experimental prototype work to help determine future directions.
Plugin development.
Security audits of existing software.
Glue code to integrate existing commercial or open source components.
Utility development.

Development Process

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 15:50:10 -0700

There are almost as many documented development processes as there are programming languages. The selection and implementation of a development process is usually a subjective activity done by the founders of a startup or the management team of an established company.

I have found that there is no such thing as a development process which fits all circumstances. The process, like any tool, should be uniquely selected for how well it fits into the objectives of the project and the nature of the people who will be following it. Rarely is this done well.

There are two areas where Cadent can help with the development process:

Development Process Selection and Implementation

Before a project is started, some thought as to what development process will be followed should be given. It is very common to hear the phrase "we are a startup and don't have time to waste on process planning" from new companies (though I have heard this even from a 4 year-old company). The problem with this is that new arrivals to the project find it difficult to come up to speed because little thought has been given to having a cohesive plan on how everyone can work together towards a common goal.

Cadent can help speed the process of defining a development process by:

Interviewing current employees to get a feeling as to what processes they are familiar and comfortable with. It is important that everyone buys into the process and knowing what experience is present helps in selecting a process which is universally adopted.
Interviewing the founders/managers to understand the objectives for the project including the time critical nature of the work. This has a very big impact on what approach needs to be taken.
Separate out the "religion" from the "reality" of the development process. Too many "process zealots" proclaim their process as universal. That tends not to be the case and their process ends up being the "flavour of the day" (remember the huge push for ISO 9000 compliance everywhere...now we have Agile development). We will outline the pros/cons of any process objectively thereby removing the religious zeal from the selection process.
Help to ensure the process facilitates development rather than gets in the way (i.e. no TPS reports ala "Office Space").

Development Process Audit

With regards to a process which is already in place, Cadent can audit the process:

Interviewing employees to determine if the process is getting in the way or is helping. This also determines acceptance.
Interview managers to see if the process supports the objectives set down for the project/product/service.
Examine the process to see if it is properly deployed. A process can look good on paper but be very poorly implemented.
Provide some fine-tuning tips where things can be improved upon.