With the advent and maturity of Web 2.0 concepts and feature rich dev tools, the impetus to develop desktop solutions for your computing needs should be seeing a decline. I was mulling over the “problem of choice” ( Matrix fame)…… What would be the factors to consider when deciding whether an application/system should be served as a standalone installer for a desktop app OR a surf-n-use web solution. These are some of the factors that favored going online with our apps.
- Cross compatibility: This is one BIG advantage where you would’nt have to create Linux, Mac and Windows distro’s for the same app. Bad news for those companies that made a neat packet out of “application porting”.
- Universal Upgrade: Web applications reduce the pain of distributing patches, service packs and version updates. This needs to be done only in the centralized application server and it trickles to all users.
- Easy application support: This will come as a great sigh of relief to companies maintaining extensive service/ support personnel. The logic lies in the fact that a stable release of a software is done after extensive QA where trained testers try to break the code. So most support queries issues are with respect to system specific compatibility issues, missing support utilities and the problems due to OS localization etc etc etc… These are cleaned out in one sweep when you go online.
- Heightened security and reliablity: Service continuity is enhanced if the application servers are robust and outages will not happen on an ad-hoc basis. If the application is processor intensive then high end servers can do a better job and heighten throughput as compared to a desktop.
Will be building on this in the coming days. For the moment just could’nt resist sharing this with you….. 
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Recently I was brainstorming with a highly competent tester based in Bangalore, India [a rare breed out here] and we stumbled on a startling fact. Requirement gathering and tracking methods have remained largely static for a long time. The delivery models in India with respect to QA and process are reminiscent of the late 90’s.
These are some of the facts that we ascertained:
- The most prolific and commonly used requirement tracking tool in the Indian IT service sector is…….. “Microsoft Word”.
- Every stakeholder/developer/tester in a project has a personal copy of the requirement document resident in his inbox.
- Requirement changes are often not centrally held/ distributed.
- Requirement discussions/ freeze is effected after multiple rounds of talks with the onsite customer/coordinator.
Software systems today have reached a stage of “critical complexity” where it is imperative that we hold requirements in a central repository. There core reason for no advances in this segment is because our internet non-savvy IT community is oblivious to the concepts of web2.0 and the “collaborative internet”.
The version of the internet as we have it today has moved towards distributed applications with added focus on communities,collaboration and harnessing collective intelligence.
The benefits this can provide to requirement tracking are the following:
- Use Web 2.0 principles to build requirement tracking tools on the “internet platform”.
- Provide features within the app like forums [to start discussion threads], chat enabling for real time gap resolution, wikis for public bulletin boards.
- The feature rich UI capabilities of internet based applications can provide “mind map” like interfaces for provide a structural organization for requirements.
- This would provide the benefit of greater usability and clarity compared to “referring to section 1.1.3 (a) or 1.2.4 (b)” to track requirements.
Requirements are the most critical pieces of information in the IT sector…. Information management is a science that Internet gurus are trying to perfect and they are the forerunners. So its only logical to adopt their practices in “managing” our information rather than stick to “Pubic library model of requirement tracking and analysis”.
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