RAD – Out with the old and in with the old!

Uncategorized Published August 31, 2010 at 1:51 pm No Comments

RAD, rapid application development why am I talking about this? I was reading a weekly online journal article about Hot Non-Certified jobs in IT, and one they mentioned was RAD. I am just rambling for the fun of it in this article but those who want to know about my companies experiences may like this.

First so I don’t stray to far off-topic what is RAD my explanation, it is a non-standard development program to get applications off the ground in record speed. In doing so you throw away some of the old model used in programming like documenting till your blue in the face, before the first line of code is written. Another thing to throw away is the notion that the programmers never see or talk to the actual customers or users of the software. These were very radical ideas 23 years ago when I was actually doing this as a consultant. But, I paid the price as a free thinker in this environment, I tell people what is on my mind and often overwhelm them with issues they never even thought about. To some people this concept was a no-brainer how could you even have thought about writing programs without contacting your customers. Well that is the way it was done, often Business analysts try to translate the needs to something the programmer can develop. Like a game of telephone things are lost in the translation, so RAD was to do away with most of this. RAD also meant that we had to design shell applications for customers to touch and get a feel for how their applications would work. Often users would call this the Smoke and Mirrors because we had shell code that was not fully functional, and a project might die due to funding so team like are were often the negatively looked at.

So why did I blog about this, well I thought it would be nice to explain a little about my history and how it effects my customers. Because of my years of working in RAD and JAD development I have a great deal of end user computing and managing customer expectations. Often customers will say it is difficult to spend money with me, because I grill people on there needs. I do not like to sell just for the purpose of selling. I want people to be happy with their decisions and feel like they made them not that somebody just said “How much do you want to spend?”. I want my clients to feel like I have done something for them, at an intrinsic level. I pride on setting myself apart from my competition by finding this value proposition, trust or what ever it may be. For me this business is not about the money at the end of the day it is about the friends I have made along the way.

So if you are looking for the cheapest solutions in my model is not going to be correct, although sometimes not spending money today is an answer I give, but if you are looking for the right answers at reasonable costs then beat a path to my door.

I hope you enjoyed getting a little insight to the owner of this little business we call E2 Computers and Simply Reliable Solutions, llc.

Oh and why did I say out with the old and in with the old, a little sarcasm how most of the time we throw out the old with the new, but in the case of RAD it is a return to something that is OLD or at least has been around the block.

Check us out on the web at www.end2endsupport.com, and as always feedback is welcome but scrutinized before being published.