My previous blog posts have shown how to create better software design and defined the idea of Usable Software Design. Usable Software Design comes from the simple observation that the developer is the user of a software design. My thesis is that using principles and practices from Usability in software design will create two important economic benefits: faster implementation time for common tasks and faster integration of new developers in an existing team. In this article, I will explore further usable software design starting from the simple idea that nobody likes to make mistakes but mistakes still happen. Since usable software design means software design that’s a delight to use by developers, something has to be done to prevent mistakes. So, how about Mistake-Proofing your software design to make it more usable?

Have you ever wanted to turn safe driving into something fun and your friends into responsible drivers? Wouldn’t it be even greater to be rewarded for this? SafeDrive app makes your dreams come true. Launched by the software company XL Team, along with Know Now Solutions, and in partnership with Microsoft, SafeDrive is a mobile app that encourages safe driving, by offering points to the drivers that do not use their mobile phones while driving. The process behind the app is quite simple.

Headquartered in London, Ve Interactive is a world-leading technology company whose platform has become an essential component for any online business to acquire, engage and convert more customers. After just 5 years, Ve has grown rapidly by successfully delivering products that give incremental value to our clients. Now with over 700+ staff, 26 offices worldwide and over 10k customers in 43 territories, Ve offers employees an entrepreneurial and global environment within which to grow and develop. We plan to employ circa 1,000 people by the end of 2015, and to support this growth we are opening a new development center in Cluj. This being the latest addition to our portfolio of development centres, in London, Bilbao and Paris. This centre will assist us in not only developing our existing Apps, but innovating and developing new products to assist our customers in increasing their revenues.

The initiative of a TSM application for Windows Phone was born more than one year ago, within the 3PillarGlobal center of competence, as a way of exploring and acquiring of new knowledge regarding the Microsoft platform for mobiles. The project continued afterwards, with a lot of voluntary dedication and commitment of the people involved: Cosmin Jeler, the author of the present article, responsible for the development part; Robin Molnar – focused on the quality assurance part, Dan Hădărău for the support given on the design and server-side part and Ovidiu Mățan, project manager/ product owner.

A graduate of Moscow State Institute of Electronic Engineering with a master’s degree in Applied Mathematics and holding a bachelor’s degree in Business of The UK Open University, Natalya Kaspersky is an active participant of international business community life and actively invests in high-tech companies. Natalya is a co-founder of Kaspersky Lab, one of the world’s largest antivirus companies, and CEO of InfoWatch Group of Companies, working in the sphere of internal information security. During her 10-year tenure at Kaspersky Lab Natalya turned a small group of enthusiasts into a world-class international IT company with annual revenues of hundreds of millions USD.

I met Roxana last year, when she had come to Cluj with the purpose of creating a new generation of programmers. It was a courageous statement in a local context characterized by a great number of programmers. To this, we also have to consider the fact that, at about the same time, Pitech+Academy was being launched. But Roxana kept her word and managed to launch her program in which twelve young people were selected. They were promised to be offered courses and programs, free of charge, for a period of six months, in order to become young web programmers. Now, at the end of the six months, Roxana reveals to us from the experience of implementing this program, but also the endeavors that condition its continuity.

We started to work on a project where we need to be able to offer a reliable solution for Remote Screen Sharing - RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol). Luckily, all devices are running Windows operating system and we can use with success the support from Windows. Because all the devices are spread world-wide we need a tunneling solution. All the content that is send over the wire needs to be encrypted. In theory we would need some relays servers that would be ‘the man on the middle’ between devices and people that would like to access that device - tunneling.

Rene is a senior test adviser and test coach with over 17 years of experience in software testing. He advises organisations on Lean Quality, test management, test change management, structured testing, and manage test (change) projects. This year he will be the chairman of Romanian Testing Conferences and we had the pleasure to take this interview.

A while ago I attended to an Agile conference here in Cluj. Among many interesting topics, presentations and discussions, I took part in a debate where the main idea was centered on the question “Is Velocity a metric or not”. There were a lot of ideas thrown around and the final conclusions were pretty good. At one point during that discussion I said that velocity is too contextual to be a metric. One of my colleagues asked if that was a good or a bad thing. Since I was not sure of an answer I picked the most neutral one and said that is neither good nor bad and it’s just a fact (actually a very important fact). I continued to think about that even after the debate ended and I started to add pros and cons in my mind to see if something contextual can be good or bad. I reached the conclusion that “contextual” used in the right way might be very good if we want to obtain the maximum efficiency from a situation.

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Each and every one of us wants "more/to have it better", regardless if we're talking about ourselves as individuals or as an organization. But what pleases us actually? What renders us entirely satisfied, motivated and willing to remain in the same organization for years on end? Right now, employees have a tendency to switch companies easily, in order "to have it better". But let's find out what this somewhat ambiguous phrase means to an employee: is it a higher pay?

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