Software projects are  packed chock-full of Risk. It’s important to acknowledge the risks and to mitigate them. How you address the risks depends on which type of “project process” you are following. The two types of project processes that I have experienced are Agile-type and Waterfall-type projects. In this post I list some of the common ways to mitigate well-known risks for both these project types. When given a choice...

I had a shocking start to my Monday. I received a phone call from Tracy saying that our fingerprint recognition system was down and the team couldn’t get into the NML office. When we relocated from the Upper East Side’s ground floor to the 6th floor our finger print recognition system had journeyed sans the override switch, an oversight on the suppliers part, but I’d signed off on the job so I must accept the blame for this. I arrived...

At New Media Labs we strive to be awesome. We want to deliver great solutions to our clients and have fun doing so. In the dynamic software development industry you need to experiment, adapt and find out how to be super-efficient without sacrificing quality. It’s a challenge. In this series of blog posts I will describe in detail the things we do and why those things work so well. Problem Nr1: Broken Code Any reasonably sized...

In 2007 when facebook was huge (well it is still huge, but 2007 was a time when we talked about our Crackbook Addictions and we got a huge kick out of getting wallposts and we were as proud of our facebook “friends” count and our wallpost count as some twits are about the number of twitter followers they have now days [I'm one of them!]) Vodaspam hadn’t smelt SMS integration into Facebook and I figured it would be an...

Aurecon is a new, innovative, global group created by the recent coming together of 3 world-class companies - Africon, Connel Wagner and Ninham Shand.  They focus on providing professional technical services across a broad spectrum of proficiencies from engineering to information technology. Aurecon is developing a whole suite of new Incident Management/Emergency Response Software for clients in areas such as Emergency Services, Disaster...

Since April ‘09, Christian and I have been based full time at Aurecon. It is about time for the long overdue update.  Here it is! In a nutshell, the past few months can be summed up as 2 kick ass applications down and more to come! Aurecon saw the need to develop a whole suite of new Incident Management Software for existing clients in areas such as Emergency Services, Disaster Management and Policing. Once they decided that immersive,...