Non-forecast for 2019
Since last month, predictions about what awaits us in 2019 began to appear on Habré, and on other sites: someone writes about their new features, someone about market trends, I think that there will be a lot of results and disputes about what technology will be the upcoming 2019th. Of course, all dreamers and visionaries are waiting for breakthroughs in AI, VR, BigData, and realists - new robots from Boston Dynamics and surprises from regulators. We are also waiting for robots, they are very cool. And today’s post we want to devote to those things and principles that have to go from year to year and never disappear from trends (some, alas, disappear). So, our unpredictability.
Source of It’s just that we, like in all decent IT offices, have our own shaman (optional - Chukchi), especially when Windows are ekkhere.
Our company RegionSoft Developer Studio develops and implements business software. Our favorite, pride and flagship - RegionSoft CRM , and also RegionSoft CRM Media , and also RegionSoft Application Server , and more ... In fact, we love everything and cannot choose. The bottom line is that our team does not have beautifully written philologists, translators who are ready to generate content based on sources, and we don’t even have an MBA marketing specialist. We are almost all engineers and other techies by education, and a bit of philosophers. Therefore, a look at trends is purely subjective.
Well, let's go, beyond the trends.
')
Professionalism is the highest value in the work of any company that pulls both productivity, result, good products, revenue and so on. No matter what you do: developing, testing or coding for a junior position, you must be professional in each specific period of time. There is no professional at the end of career growth - there are professionals in their place: a pro is not only a team leader, but also a fellow trainee who performs manual testing (he must know this sphere from and to). Only in this way professionalism increases and brings benefits. It does not happen that you sit, sit, and then - bang - and become a super professional. Only corrosive (but not in the brain of colleagues!), Attention to detail and continuous development will lead to stable growth.
Relations within the company. Today, we have developed a century of special communications: most of the time we communicate online, often neglect the norms of behavior, and then go into the real-life communication zone and broadcast some of the templates outside. Yes, we, too, do not like this alignment, especially given the fact that the tonality and vector of relationships are influenced by factors as old as the world: fatigue, personal problems, health, and so on. The reality is that you need to carefully build relationships: alas, even if you are an ultra professional, but someone seems uncomfortable (we avoid the word toxic, it is disgusting), you can easily lose your job. Therefore, try to build a line of restrained, respectful behavior even regarding colleagues whom you want to call something indecent. In the end, everyone does his job.
The approach to recruitment. In some regions, an employer market has been established and companies can choose workers, in others, an applicant's market, and they choose a dream job. However, in all cases, the old-aged pattern works: post vacancies, assemble a resume, and then call one by one or several and arrange meaningless tests: psychological tests, interviews with an HR-manager, the second stage in the specialty, then a conversation in English with HR, who used English only in foreign languages and at these interviews, well, the main task is to pass the boss. This is customary, but it can exclude a professional for very subjective reasons: for example, in view of the dislike of HR for introverts.
It seems that it is worth changing something: for example, to pay more attention to interviews to professional skills, and HR-s to be engaged in adaptation and the institute of mentoring. And most importantly, do not make descriptions of vacancies, where the senses need a senior NASA engineer, but in fact - a specialist in manual testing. Another point: do not forget that you wrote in the text of the vacancy. And then the “salary from 70 thousand rubles.” Is not equal to “well, that's 45,000 before the deduction of personal income tax and with a completed KPI of at least 97%. And 70,000 is after the probationary period, in the case of training, and if the polar owl flies by the full moon around the office. ”
Training and education. We have been approaching this topic for the second year in Habré, and we see the same trend: “IT education is not necessary”. No, friends, it is necessary - at least, the highest, as a maximum - the highest profile. Education provides skills to work with sources, critical thinking, adequate communication, a basic understanding of so many things in their specialty. For example, after a monthly course you can weaken a simple little site, but only an expert with education and understanding of architecture features and algorithms can make it safe (of course there are exceptions everywhere).
Obviously, education still determines the speed of career growth, if only because you don’t need to catch up with anyone. Plus, the developer’s education should be continuous: read books, sources, understand the specifications of new technologies. The only way to stay on the ridge.
Using the development stack. At the Nizhny Novgorod GDG-2018 there was a wonderful report about server-side Swift. It sounded really inspiring, and our employee became a participant in a conversation, where one developer fervently argued that it was necessary right in production tomorrow and he would certainly push through this idea. At the same time, the guys have everything in Java and works pretty well. He couldn’t motivate the reason for his abrupt choice with anything except that “this same Swift and report is fire”. In fact, new technologies appear every month, a couple of times a year old or new languages and frameworks become popular. Dragging all this into your technology stack means continuously mastering and rebuilding. Ask yourself what the new technology will give you: make development faster, make the product better, reduce the cost of product development, allow you to pick the best market specialists?
It is best to test, analyze, understand the benefits and then carefully move to new rails. Changing technology on the fly is a dangerous story, even if there is someone's positive experience before your eyes. And yes, the new technology in the old crooked hands will not become a magic pill, it will become a new stack for writing crutches and bugs. Want to improve the project? There are three words for you: refactoring, optimization and testing.
Delivery to the customer. The world of IT is conquered by the most convenient software deployment tools: containers, DevOps and DevSecOps, which have ceased to be wow topics at conferences and have become commonplace, etc. But nevertheless, horrible and sometimes stupid bugs that spoil relations with them come back from even very large companies (for example, one company sold software for several million, but it ... did not have a cross in the upper right corner to close the window - testers missed it, and a blocking ticket came from the client. If anything, it's not us :-)). There are a lot of reasons for problems on the client side: unfair testing, assembly curve, poor technical support work, mismatch of customer infrastructure and software vendor requirements.
Do not learn from customers, learn from test versions, train engineers, and work carefully on test plans. Otherwise, tomorrow, customers will go to competitors, and this is your salary (although salesmen will, of course, be guilty).
Software delivery model. The cloud boom went into decline and everyone in the market realized that both cloud and desktop software have a right to exist. Therefore, attention should be paid not to beautiful presentations with clip-on servers on the cloud, but to work with the client's infrastructure, especially if you have the task of building it. Anyway, in any case: fewer words - more deeds.
Customer support should be professional. Yes, many people sin by gaining support either according to the principle of knowledge of the language (if sales are for the whole world) or according to the principle “students are cheaper”. In general, there is nothing bad about it, but technical support needs to be trained, monitored and periodically checked for certification, otherwise the result will be deplorable. Best of all, if you can select a person / department (depending on scale) who will develop customer support and constantly update information about products, problems, requests, customer requirements, etc. This is a service that, without feeding with fresh information, in half a year turns into a pumpkin.
The first option is not always better, but always calmer :-)
People are more important, processes are faster. Alas, the business has not learned to appreciate people - it is focused on blame and blame more than on elevating a person to the rank of a main asset. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, small and medium businesses are very slowly moving towards automating business processes, one might say, he almost does not even look in their direction. You don’t see a contradiction here: I’m not going to automate processes, but I’m not going to appreciate people who are beyond automation the most? Therefore, the solution should be simple and reliable: drive the whole routine into algorithms and make it automatic, and redirect people to solving complex and communication tasks. By the way, absolutely in any company there are processes that need automation.
Automation is needed not only for processes - it must be end-to-end: production, development, customer service, accounting, marketing, all departments need software in order to simplify task execution and collect data, without which a business will soon not be able to do it at all. No. It is desirable that adjacent units have common software nodes: for example, CRM-system, ERP, ECM, etc. To solve this problem within the infrastructure, you can use integrated solutions and / or integration.
KPI - you can hate them, you can use them, you can refuse them in principle, but they are necessary. First of all, in order to evaluate the work of workers and the contribution of each to the creation and implementation of the product. However, you should not strive to measure what cannot be measured: for example, it is better to think three times before offering a KPI system for programmers or designers. But in the commercial service, KPIs are obligatory as a tool of motivation and an important metric of productivity.
Ideas everywhere: we need to develop new software - we are looking for an idea, it's time to write a post on Habr - we are looking for an idea, advertising, new features inside the software, organizing the development process and technical support - these are all ideas. But they are a dangerous thing: it seems to you that you have invented something brilliant, and such applications are full AppStore and Google Play. Therefore, for each idea, follow the formula: first, we formulate the idea and its attributes (cause, users, development methods, approximate results), then conduct an experiment (release a product or release, present a service), finally adapt (change based on feedback from customers and users) . That's when ideas will be green light.
The listed categories will be present in the life of each of us for a very long time, regardless of where progress goes further. Therefore, building forecasts, trends, dreaming and breaking into ambitions, remember them, take them into account and do not forget that as long as humanity is alive, the following schemes will live: man - man, car - car and man - car. So, you need to be able to survive inside these systems - and not just to survive, but to work actively and get high from what you are doing.
Well, the development team of RegionSoft CRM and other business automation software wishes you a happy new year! In 2018, you were with us throughout 33 of our articles, fiercely minded and plucked, famously commented, wrote us letters, criticized and praised. Thank you, friends! We wish you success, cool ideas and realizations, a beautiful and productive code, fair metrics, adequate managers, decent employees and, of course, goodness and health. See you in 2019! Chin Chin.
Our best articles for 2018:
Source of It’s just that we, like in all decent IT offices, have our own shaman (optional - Chukchi), especially when Windows are ekkhere.
Our company RegionSoft Developer Studio develops and implements business software. Our favorite, pride and flagship - RegionSoft CRM , and also RegionSoft CRM Media , and also RegionSoft Application Server , and more ... In fact, we love everything and cannot choose. The bottom line is that our team does not have beautifully written philologists, translators who are ready to generate content based on sources, and we don’t even have an MBA marketing specialist. We are almost all engineers and other techies by education, and a bit of philosophers. Therefore, a look at trends is purely subjective.
Well, let's go, beyond the trends.
')
People
Professionalism is the highest value in the work of any company that pulls both productivity, result, good products, revenue and so on. No matter what you do: developing, testing or coding for a junior position, you must be professional in each specific period of time. There is no professional at the end of career growth - there are professionals in their place: a pro is not only a team leader, but also a fellow trainee who performs manual testing (he must know this sphere from and to). Only in this way professionalism increases and brings benefits. It does not happen that you sit, sit, and then - bang - and become a super professional. Only corrosive (but not in the brain of colleagues!), Attention to detail and continuous development will lead to stable growth.
Relations within the company. Today, we have developed a century of special communications: most of the time we communicate online, often neglect the norms of behavior, and then go into the real-life communication zone and broadcast some of the templates outside. Yes, we, too, do not like this alignment, especially given the fact that the tonality and vector of relationships are influenced by factors as old as the world: fatigue, personal problems, health, and so on. The reality is that you need to carefully build relationships: alas, even if you are an ultra professional, but someone seems uncomfortable (we avoid the word toxic, it is disgusting), you can easily lose your job. Therefore, try to build a line of restrained, respectful behavior even regarding colleagues whom you want to call something indecent. In the end, everyone does his job.
The approach to recruitment. In some regions, an employer market has been established and companies can choose workers, in others, an applicant's market, and they choose a dream job. However, in all cases, the old-aged pattern works: post vacancies, assemble a resume, and then call one by one or several and arrange meaningless tests: psychological tests, interviews with an HR-manager, the second stage in the specialty, then a conversation in English with HR, who used English only in foreign languages and at these interviews, well, the main task is to pass the boss. This is customary, but it can exclude a professional for very subjective reasons: for example, in view of the dislike of HR for introverts.
It seems that it is worth changing something: for example, to pay more attention to interviews to professional skills, and HR-s to be engaged in adaptation and the institute of mentoring. And most importantly, do not make descriptions of vacancies, where the senses need a senior NASA engineer, but in fact - a specialist in manual testing. Another point: do not forget that you wrote in the text of the vacancy. And then the “salary from 70 thousand rubles.” Is not equal to “well, that's 45,000 before the deduction of personal income tax and with a completed KPI of at least 97%. And 70,000 is after the probationary period, in the case of training, and if the polar owl flies by the full moon around the office. ”
Training and education. We have been approaching this topic for the second year in Habré, and we see the same trend: “IT education is not necessary”. No, friends, it is necessary - at least, the highest, as a maximum - the highest profile. Education provides skills to work with sources, critical thinking, adequate communication, a basic understanding of so many things in their specialty. For example, after a monthly course you can weaken a simple little site, but only an expert with education and understanding of architecture features and algorithms can make it safe (of course there are exceptions everywhere).
Obviously, education still determines the speed of career growth, if only because you don’t need to catch up with anyone. Plus, the developer’s education should be continuous: read books, sources, understand the specifications of new technologies. The only way to stay on the ridge.
Tips for the new year
- Learn: go through the new course, read several professional books, make a rule to read thematic posts in English.
- If you choose courses, try to pass them not online, but choosing evening classes is much more inspiring, and knowledge is better absorbed.
- Create a hobby project and develop it: so you can look at business processes from different angles.
- If there is no system of adaptation and intangible motivation in the company, develop and implement them.
- Make a rule: let every month about the product and its professional approach to it tell new units (rallies + question-answer).
Technology
Using the development stack. At the Nizhny Novgorod GDG-2018 there was a wonderful report about server-side Swift. It sounded really inspiring, and our employee became a participant in a conversation, where one developer fervently argued that it was necessary right in production tomorrow and he would certainly push through this idea. At the same time, the guys have everything in Java and works pretty well. He couldn’t motivate the reason for his abrupt choice with anything except that “this same Swift and report is fire”. In fact, new technologies appear every month, a couple of times a year old or new languages and frameworks become popular. Dragging all this into your technology stack means continuously mastering and rebuilding. Ask yourself what the new technology will give you: make development faster, make the product better, reduce the cost of product development, allow you to pick the best market specialists?
It is best to test, analyze, understand the benefits and then carefully move to new rails. Changing technology on the fly is a dangerous story, even if there is someone's positive experience before your eyes. And yes, the new technology in the old crooked hands will not become a magic pill, it will become a new stack for writing crutches and bugs. Want to improve the project? There are three words for you: refactoring, optimization and testing.
Delivery to the customer. The world of IT is conquered by the most convenient software deployment tools: containers, DevOps and DevSecOps, which have ceased to be wow topics at conferences and have become commonplace, etc. But nevertheless, horrible and sometimes stupid bugs that spoil relations with them come back from even very large companies (for example, one company sold software for several million, but it ... did not have a cross in the upper right corner to close the window - testers missed it, and a blocking ticket came from the client. If anything, it's not us :-)). There are a lot of reasons for problems on the client side: unfair testing, assembly curve, poor technical support work, mismatch of customer infrastructure and software vendor requirements.
Do not learn from customers, learn from test versions, train engineers, and work carefully on test plans. Otherwise, tomorrow, customers will go to competitors, and this is your salary (although salesmen will, of course, be guilty).
Software delivery model. The cloud boom went into decline and everyone in the market realized that both cloud and desktop software have a right to exist. Therefore, attention should be paid not to beautiful presentations with clip-on servers on the cloud, but to work with the client's infrastructure, especially if you have the task of building it. Anyway, in any case: fewer words - more deeds.
Customer support should be professional. Yes, many people sin by gaining support either according to the principle of knowledge of the language (if sales are for the whole world) or according to the principle “students are cheaper”. In general, there is nothing bad about it, but technical support needs to be trained, monitored and periodically checked for certification, otherwise the result will be deplorable. Best of all, if you can select a person / department (depending on scale) who will develop customer support and constantly update information about products, problems, requests, customer requirements, etc. This is a service that, without feeding with fresh information, in half a year turns into a pumpkin.
Tips for the new year
- Make it a rule to test and discuss new technologies within the team.
- Participate in industry conferences as listeners and speakers (better as speakers!).
- Conduct training and support service certification.
- Recycle your test plans and keep in mind the most sudden moments.
- If you have not done so already, create and fill the knowledge base (by teams).
Business
The first option is not always better, but always calmer :-)
People are more important, processes are faster. Alas, the business has not learned to appreciate people - it is focused on blame and blame more than on elevating a person to the rank of a main asset. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, small and medium businesses are very slowly moving towards automating business processes, one might say, he almost does not even look in their direction. You don’t see a contradiction here: I’m not going to automate processes, but I’m not going to appreciate people who are beyond automation the most? Therefore, the solution should be simple and reliable: drive the whole routine into algorithms and make it automatic, and redirect people to solving complex and communication tasks. By the way, absolutely in any company there are processes that need automation.
Automation is needed not only for processes - it must be end-to-end: production, development, customer service, accounting, marketing, all departments need software in order to simplify task execution and collect data, without which a business will soon not be able to do it at all. No. It is desirable that adjacent units have common software nodes: for example, CRM-system, ERP, ECM, etc. To solve this problem within the infrastructure, you can use integrated solutions and / or integration.
KPI - you can hate them, you can use them, you can refuse them in principle, but they are necessary. First of all, in order to evaluate the work of workers and the contribution of each to the creation and implementation of the product. However, you should not strive to measure what cannot be measured: for example, it is better to think three times before offering a KPI system for programmers or designers. But in the commercial service, KPIs are obligatory as a tool of motivation and an important metric of productivity.
Ideas everywhere: we need to develop new software - we are looking for an idea, it's time to write a post on Habr - we are looking for an idea, advertising, new features inside the software, organizing the development process and technical support - these are all ideas. But they are a dangerous thing: it seems to you that you have invented something brilliant, and such applications are full AppStore and Google Play. Therefore, for each idea, follow the formula: first, we formulate the idea and its attributes (cause, users, development methods, approximate results), then conduct an experiment (release a product or release, present a service), finally adapt (change based on feedback from customers and users) . That's when ideas will be green light.
Tips for the new year
- Describe the processes in the company, formalize them, draw diagrams and try to automate.
- Implement good software to make your work easier.
- Recycle the system of motivation and bonuses, revise the odds.
- Get a clean board, where you will write or attach your ideas with the whole company, discuss them at the end of a month or quarter (you can offer them for all departments).
The listed categories will be present in the life of each of us for a very long time, regardless of where progress goes further. Therefore, building forecasts, trends, dreaming and breaking into ambitions, remember them, take them into account and do not forget that as long as humanity is alive, the following schemes will live: man - man, car - car and man - car. So, you need to be able to survive inside these systems - and not just to survive, but to work actively and get high from what you are doing.
Well, the development team of RegionSoft CRM and other business automation software wishes you a happy new year! In 2018, you were with us throughout 33 of our articles, fiercely minded and plucked, famously commented, wrote us letters, criticized and praised. Thank you, friends! We wish you success, cool ideas and realizations, a beautiful and productive code, fair metrics, adequate managers, decent employees and, of course, goodness and health. See you in 2019! Chin Chin.
Our best articles for 2018:
- How zadolbat all colleagues: collect requirements for CRM
- Do not automate it: bad business advice
- Freshman: High School. Instruction 1.0
- How I did not become you: a post of love for sysadmins
- 40 stupid CRM questions
- The manager needs to be able to think, not program
- Hana kitten. Why do employees hate CRM?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/434362/
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