Is chasing a low price an unjustified risk or a reasonable cost savings? And what can it mean when developing digital products? Today we&rsquo;ll talk about current topics: the quality of services of IT companies and how, among many options, choose the one that will take your business to a new level.

Let&rsquo;s imagine a situation: you are on the verge of custom IT development for your business. The range of services for creating an application or website on the market varies in price from a minimum amount to x4. At the same time, all of them position themselves as professionals. In order not to throw your hard-earned money into the void, let&rsquo;s consider the criteria for how to determine the most reliable contractor, and who is better to avoid.

HONEST CONTRACTOR:

Companies that value their reputation will not grab everything they see. The work will begin with studying your requirements, capabilities and answering whether it makes sense to develop cooperation or not:

<ul>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">if not, you will receive recommendations on further steps, optimization and choice of contractor;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">If yes, you will be provided with specialists to more thoroughly collect requirements and draw up technical specifications, evaluate business logic and create wireframes (layouts of a website or application).</li>
</ul>

As a result of such interaction, you will receive ready-made documentation for a reasonable price and an understanding of whether to move on or stop and direct your funds and energy to new ideas.

DISHONEST CONTRACTOR:

<ul>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">says and does what you like, regardless of the risks;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">ready to start the project, bypassing the process of collecting requirements and analytics;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">plays on your feelings - promises to start the project as soon as possible and cheaply.</li>
</ul>

A number of triggers that you should pay attention to in order to avoid becoming a victim of a dishonest contractor:

1) Consent to develop or draw a design without documentation.

2) A minimum number of questions at the project discussion stage, as well as when calculating the assessment.

3) The presence in the assessment of tasks that take more than 10 hours to complete.

RULE No. 1: carefully study the commercial offer.

The same action (for example, developing an application screen) can take 4 hours, or maybe 30 if the documentation has not been described in detail. Any changes may seem simple, but to change a button or add a pop-up window, you will have to make changes to the design and functionality. And, as a result, invest more.

RULE No. 2: do not cut off the necessary specialists.

It is a big misconception to believe that only developers are needed on a project, and that specialists, such as managers, are a waste of money. In fact, this is not true.

Refusal of managerial support on a project threatens:

<ul>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">lack of accurate estimates and deadlines;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">constant returns of the project for revision or its complete rework;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">an increase in the cost of application support (a specialist will have to spend time understanding your functionality).</li>
</ul>

The presence of a manager on a project gives:

<ul>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">accurate assessment of the development and the required budget;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">built business logic;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the project;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">development of detailed documentation;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">lack of modifications and additional cash injections.</li>
</ul>

We can say with 99% confidence that if you receive several commercial offers, the amounts of which differ by more than 30% from each other, it is worth stopping and carefully studying the options, and not choosing those who gave the lowest price, otherwise (as in well-known saying) you will have to pay twice, or even more. What experience do you have working with an IT contractor?

Saving on quality or why not all contractors are equally effective

What are the ingredients of a successful leader? Among the answers about strong-willed character, strategic thinking, decisiveness, and so on, you will surely name a delegation. It would seem that it could be easier than handing out tasks for someone else to do them. In theory, yes, but in practice, leaders, especially beginners, find this process difficult. There can be many reasons for this.

To identify the root of the problem, it is worth remembering who becomes the head of the department?These are the best people in their industry. For example, in our company yesterday&#39;s developers did an excellent job with technical duties, but they got lost when new, previously unfamiliar managerial tasks appeared. And there were only two ways: to hire people from outside or to train our employees. We chose the second variant.

How to delegate?

There are many options for learning how to delegate. Every leader has his own methodology. Tools that helped our managers in this are the following.

<ol>
	<li style="list-style-type:decimal">Practical cases. We hold weekly meetings with top managers, where we collect feedback on what has already been done, what results we have achieved and what we plan to do next. At these meetings, we analyze cases on management. These can be situations that we personally encountered, and cases from someone else&#39;s practice that seemed interesting to work through. What is the point? Using a practical example, we can identify errors and shortcomings in management, express opinions, discuss how to eliminate them and prevent them in the future.</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:decimal">Analysis of future tasks. As the head of the department learned the conclusions of past cases, we look at new tasks. How long will it take to execute? Can a task be delegated to another performer? To what extent? What will be the result? These questions must be answered by the head (first of all, by himself) in order to start delegating and not bury himself in unnecessary work.</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:decimal">Articles and books. Yes, practice is the best way to acquire skills. Until a person understands from his own experience, even if it is negative, it will be difficult to teach him something. But practice, not supported by theory, is just shaking the air. Is it necessary to read books on delegation? We think it is, and not only on delegation, but on management in general. To put the picture into a single puzzle, you need to approach the task from different angles. There is a very good book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, which is useful for understanding the role of the boss in general and his main function.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>

What are the most common delegation issues?

Wrong assignment. Put yourself in the place of the performer and read the task - is it clear to you? Are the goals stated? Are there specific deadlines and results?

The wrong statement of the problem sounds like:

&ldquo;We need to rebrand the site.&rdquo;

The correct statement of the problem sound like:

&ldquo;We need to rebrand the site by March to increase conversions by 20 percent.&rdquo;

The difference is obvious. Without the end result, there is no understanding of where to move and how. If the leader does not say what he wants to see as a result, there is a chance that he will not get what was expected initially. We advise you to pay attention to the SMART model when setting tasks for both performers and yourself.

SMART is a management technique that allows you to make abstract goals understandable and measurable, to determine the timing and means to achieve them.

Lack of clear deadlines. The SMART methodology involves not only the setting of specific tasks and results, but also the deadlines, as noted above. If there are no clear deadlines - the project is not moving or is moving, but very slowly. What do we get as a result? The leader takes over the previously delegated functions and makes another mistake. The second fuckup for one project is an unacceptable situation.

Wrong choice of the performer. An unacceptable situation, although often encountered, is the wrong choice of the performer. Not all team members can be equally effective in solving similar problems. In the same way, not all bosses can be bosses, speaking from the position of the head of the company. What to do? It is healthy to evaluate the previous results of the work and draw conclusions about one&#39;s strengths and weaknesses.

High expectations. Analyzing the capabilities of the team will immediately determine the expectations from the result of its work. Do not overestimate them, but soberly evaluate, and sometimes even underestimate your ideas about beauty. We constantly conduct retrospectives of the work done to understand at what level the team is now, what can be improved next time to make the result even more impressive.

Lack of control or feedback. The head of the department is a priori a person whom the manager trusts. But unobtrusive intermediate control should be at all stages of management in the format of collecting feedback so that the manager is aware of the processes and can help at the right time. Since it is not our method to trigger employees with our constant control, we just keep our finger on the pulse, without excesses.

And always, always think about further scaling. When designing a database, developers analyze how it will perform as the load increases. It&rsquo;s the same in business &ndash; building processes and delegation needs to be thought out with a perspective: what will happen if the team expands by 100, 200, 300 or more people? Will everything still work well or do we need to create new departments and delegate some processes further. And most importantly, decide what functions the heads of departments should have, and where you can not do without the CEO.

What functions to delegate to heads of departments?

<ul>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">Department&rsquo;s management and its development (including training and employees&rsquo; skills improvement): holding internal meetings, distribution of tasks.</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">Local issues (conflict resolution, personnel changes within the department, including dismissal, etc.).</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">Quality control of the work of the department and its employees.</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">Feedback on the results of work for performers and the CEO.</li>
	<li style="list-style-type:disc">Preparation of proposals for the growth and development of the company.</li>
</ul>

What functions does the CEO of the company take on?

A reasonable question arises: what then remains for the head of the company? The functions of the head of the company are no less diverse, but more responsible.

Establishing communication between departments. One way or another, the leader acts as a link between all the departments of the company. He decides which department to entrust this or that task, sets deadlines and organizes the interaction between all departments in the process of solving it.

Presentation of ideas for the development of the company and consideration of proposals from top managers. The leader, like no one else, is interested in promoting the company, therefore he should be the most active and full of ideas, but also listen to the opinions and advice from top management. It is not worth extinguishing the ideas of employees, the initiative should not be punished, but encouraged.

Feedback and control of results. At the stage of leadership, this is the most important thing. All the fuckups allowed at this level can have irreversible consequences for the company.

Meetings with partners of the company. And finally, the last, but one of the most important functions is to establish relationships with potential and existing partners. All high-level business processes are solved in the presence of company leaders from both sides.

Now let&#39;s recap. Delegation is the key to the success of large companies. The wider the staff becomes, the greater the need for a redistribution of tasks. Ignoring the inevitable is the path to personal burnout or the collapse of the entire company. To prevent this from happening, approach the matter wisely and start the process of delegating unnecessary functions in time.

How to delegate responsibilities between heads of departments and the CEO of the company

Sometimes finding inspiration is more difficult than getting lucky. But we know how to do it easily and quickly: to replenish the portfolio with new cases and at the same time pump up creative skills. In this article, we will tell you how to maximize the potential of a novice designer and find new facets of talent from an experienced specialist.

Let&#39;s remember how and where you can draw inspiration from? Music, nature, books, people - each person has his own source of creative inspiration. In office conditions, it is more difficult to find the very thread that will immediately lead to the muse. But we found a solution! So that inspiration never leaves our designers, but only multiplies from project to project, we offer them to go through a small training challenge, which consists of several stages.

It gives beginners the opportunity to replenish their portfolios with cases close to real ones, upgrade their skills to a higher level and successfully &ldquo;sell their services&rdquo; to a future customer, and experienced designers to try their hand, refresh their knowledge and increase their expertise. We come up with some tasks ourselves based on &ldquo;live&rdquo; projects and previously identified needs of clients, while others are used from ready-made services, which we will discuss below.

What skills we improve through the training system to increase the creativity of designers:

Logical thinking;

High-quality UI;

Broad visual experience, knowledge of trends;&nbsp;

Related areas.

LOGICAL THINKING

Each designer is a bit of a marketer and even a developer. He must be able to identify the user&#39;s needs, determine the target audience, understand how various UX tools work, analyze information and separate the particular from the general. In addition to a rich imagination, he can not do without logic. There are two ways to develop logical thinking:

1. &ldquo;Analysis of a popular product.&rdquo; We suggested that our designers take a well-known digital service, analyze it, find bottlenecks and try to improve it. WhatsApp and Skype were chosen as &ldquo;guinea pigs&rdquo;. The products were well known to both our interns and experienced designers - the guys used them for a long time, they knew the strengths and weaknesses from the user&#39;s point of view.

It&rsquo;s better not to risk analyzing absolutely new or specific products - the threshold will be too long: you have to master the service from scratch and only then do its analysis.

The result of such a study (or UX audit) can be presented in different ways:

- in the form of a presentation in Figma, which will further improve the demonstration skill;

- in the form of an article with a step-by-step presentation of the result of the analysis and the logic that was used to solve the creative problem (it is ideal, but keep in mind that not all novice designers have the necessary terminology and a good style).

&nbsp;

HIGH-QUALITY UI

UI Design or user interface design is a basic skill that both an experienced specialist and a beginner should have. The main goal of our training at this stage is to fill your hand. The popular Daily UI service helps a lot in this matter.

Daily UI is a 100-day challenge to complete tasks and post them on Dribbble with the #dailyui hashtag.

&nbsp;

BROAD VISUAL EXPERIENCE

The creative profession is inextricably linked with such a concept as &ldquo;visual experience&rdquo;. An experienced designer notices new images and presentation options, ideas, and on this basis (including) creates and forms his own, fresh creations.

In the process of our learning, the stage of gaining visual experience goes in parallel with all the other steps. We improve this skill together: we exchange interesting materials with each other on a regular basis in a separate channel of the corporate messenger. Each of the channel members can share their design findings there and describe why it is remarkable. Examples can be not only interfaces, but also other types of design: industrial, graphic, architectural, and so on.

An obligatory element in this work is the presence of analysis: what is remarkable about the product? What unusual technique is used? What can be improved? For juniors, this practice is a must-have, it broadens their horizons and forms a good taste.

&nbsp;

And this is an example of the &quot;Splash Screen&quot; challenge:

The <a href="https://www.uxchallenge.co/">UXchallenge</a> library is small, so it&#39;s a good practice to build your own. How to do it? Observe people around, what worries them, what problems and difficult situations they face in everyday life. This analysis helped us in creating the app for cycling. In it, we foresaw the problem of building a cycle route, taking into account the features of the terrain and the presence of dogs as a potential danger.

2. &ldquo;Problem search and solution&rdquo;. The second method is more laborious, but at the same time more productive. It consists in identifying the user&#39;s problem from the real world and solving it through the product. Why is this method of learning more difficult than the first? The designer does not have a ready-made solution before his eyes, he is forced to come up with it himself. He will have to find that very client &ldquo;pain&rdquo; and develop a digital product to eliminate it. The process includes a full cycle: audience analysis, building information architecture, testing hypotheses, and creating a concept.

Experienced colleagues support beginners on the path of creative development, they give advice, share information, useful articles and their knowledge. One of these recommendations is to take a closer look at the UXchallenge site, where you can find interesting ideas for implementation. Based on it, we created an application for travel planning.

&nbsp;

The idea is great, but not all tasks from the Daily UI are relevant to our profile. Then we replace too simple tasks with examples from &ldquo;live&rdquo; projects. This may be a part of non-trivial functionality from a real case or an example from test tasks that we do for clients when they first get acquainted with a new product. Screens from tests can later be used as a conditional framework for which you can come up with any UI.

Thus, we have a whole collection of online magazines, various libraries and other resources from which you can draw inspiration in the future. Here is a small part of them:

<a href="https://siteinspire.com/" style="text-decoration:none">https://siteinspire.com/</a> 
<a href="https://app.uitrial.com/" style="text-decoration:none">https://app.uitrial.com/</a> 
<a href="https://pfolios.net/" style="text-decoration:none">https://pfolios.net/</a> 
<a href="https://www.lapa.ninja/" style="text-decoration:none">https://www.lapa.ninja/</a> 
<a href="https://minimal.gallery/" style="text-decoration:none">https://minimal.gallery/</a> 
<a href="https://brutalistwebsites.com/" style="text-decoration:none">https://brutalistwebsites.com/</a>

RELATED AREAS

The final stage of training is equal to the extra credit question. The bottom line is to expand the designer&#39;s expertise in the area that is in demand on the market and for which he has the ability.

Among the most popular related industries, we highlight:

- animation;

- 3D;

- illustration;

- no-code development;

- logo and so on.

Since every 4th project requires quality work with graphics, we decided to dive deeper into the creation of illustrations. Our picture-drawing challenge was exactly eight weeks long. During this time, the participants had to draw one picture per week, for a total of eight pieces.

How were the assignments formed?

Over the years of work and communication with customers, we have developed a list of the most popular illustrations that are suitable for the design of most products. Sometimes this list also includes more &ldquo;eccentric&rdquo; custom pictures (used in empty states, error messages, etc.) or completely non-trivial tasks, especially if it is related to the study of anatomy.

It was this non-standard task that was given to our designers:

&ldquo;The character is a book lover. Think of an unexpected way or unusual place to read books. There must be at least 1 person in the illustration.&rdquo;

And here is how they accomplished the task:

Look for even more works in our full case on <a href="http://www.behance.net/fusion-tech">Behance</a>.

After such a powerful skill improvement, a novice designer acquires the key components for work: professional skills and a portfolio. There is confidence in their abilities and the ability to present themselves to the customer in a favorable light. An experienced designer acquires a new vision, deepens into modern trends and trains observation. Checked! How do you develop your creative skills, share in the comments.

Case "Illustrations": developing creative skills of a designer

What a modern company cannot do without is a CRM system. The market offers many options, the functionality of which is becoming more diverse from year to year. Which system to choose so that it meets all the requirements of the company and is not wasteful for the budget? We, too, have been asking these questions for a long time. What solution did we find?

CRM-system is a tool for customer relationship management and business process optimization.

In the sales department, we use the CRM system for its intended purpose - for internal work with clients throughout the entire sales funnel: from the moment of response to an application to the conclusion of a contract. Additionally, CRM allows you to store the necessary data about the client, his project, related materials - this is very convenient when everything you need for work is stored in one place and there is no need for a long search for the necessary information.

In addition to sales managers, CRM interacts with:

<ul>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">tech leads;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">project managers;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">heads of design and QA departments;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">as well as other specialists who are assigned to work with a specific order.</li>
</ul>

How to choose a CRM system?

The main criteria for choosing a CRM system are, in fact, the needs of the business and the company. Before you start looking, ask yourself these questions:

1) What tasks should the tool solve?

2) Which processes should be optimized first?

Decide what your company lacks, what routine it is time to automate, what system is more convenient for employees, whether they have used similar tools before, etc.

Do the criteria for choosing a CRM system depend on the direction of a particular department?

Absolutely yes! What is needed for the technical department may be completely useless and redundant for the design department and vice versa. All departments have their own specifics of work, established processes in accordance with the regulations and tools used. For example, when choosing a CRM system for sales managers, you should pay attention to the convenience and informativeness of key functions - collecting information about the client and indicators necessary for analyzing the effectiveness of the sales department. And for marketers, in addition to the described functions, mailing lists and the ability to segment the audience will also play a key role.

What then should be the CRM system to please everyone at once?

The most ideal version of a CRM system is a product that is optimized for the needs of each specialist who uses it. Finding the very balanced instrument is not always possible to do so fast.

What CRM systems can be found on the market?

As we noted earlier, the market is replete with various CRM systems that help simplify business processes in companies, regardless of the line of business. As a rule, they are divided by purpose (for which department the system is intended), by the type of data storage (on the server of the developer or the consumer company) and by the type of tasks performed. Let&#39;s take a look at the last criterion.

By the type of tasks performed, CRM is divided into:

<ul>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">Analytical: collect data and evaluate it. In such a system, you can set up end-to-end analytics, conduct audience segmentation, evaluate efficiency, and predict the performance of sales channels. Such systems are especially appreciated by marketers and sales managers.</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">Operational: indispensable assistants for the sales department or project managers. They automatically combine all customer data into a single card: contact information, order information, messages, and more.</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">Collaboration: allow you to set up a mailing list to communicate with a client - notify about the status of an order, inform about an appointment with a specialist, collect requests for a callback, and so on.</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">Combined: the most popular product, as it combines many functions at once. Such CRMs allow you to automate the workflow in the company, and client data, and evaluate the effectiveness of the marketing department, and much more.</li>
</ul>

What is the best CRM system?

Many ready-made CRM-systems are equipped with a fairly wide functionality and can satisfy the most specific business needs. But the best one will still be the one that is developed individually for your company and its needs.

Is it worth developing a CRM system for every business sphere?

In our opinion, no. However, developing your own personal CRM has many advantages, among which are the following:

<ul>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">business gets exactly what it needs;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">the system is not littered with unnecessary functionality;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">self-configuring the security level allows you to restrict access as much as required by the business;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">data is stored on personal servers, which reduces the possibility of leakage;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">contributions are made only for the maintenance of servers, no subscription fee - significant savings;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">it is possible to integrate CRM with any other systems/services as needed;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">the system can be developed gradually, there is no need to spend years on development (the minimum functionality can be built in a short time, and then gradually increase additional tools).</li>
</ul>

Third-party CRM users may have concerns when switching to their own: what to do with the data that remained in the previous system? We dispel fears - many third-party systems allow you to export data in JSON, CSV or other formats. This makes it possible to start using a third-party product while building an individual CRM, and upon completion of development, export the data and bring it into your own.

How we developed our own CRM system

A few years ago, these arguments seemed convincing enough to us to start developing our own CRM system. At the time of launch, we had already implemented an internal personnel management system named Staff.

What is Staff? The system allows you to manage employees: their access, status, data. Through it, employees submit requests for time off, sick leave, vacation, leave household applications. Processing, inventory management, corporate regulations and other functionality required by our company can also be found there.

For this reason (the presence of an internal personnel management system), the development was carried out in close conjunction with the existing architecture.

We built the CRM system right away along with the integration into Staff and set up the functions necessary for the business at the same time. For example, the payroll of sales managers was implemented based on analytics from CRM.

For the implementation of CRM, suitable relevant technologies were selected, such as:

<ul>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">Angular;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">MaterialUI;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">Node.js</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">PostgreSQL;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">Web socket.</li>
</ul>

And also a separate developer was allocated, who was engaged in the implementation of all the required functionality, based on our non-standard requirements. We will not bore you with the technical side of the issue, let&#39;s focus on the pluses that we got in the end.

What gave us the development of our own CRM-system

We have already mentioned above that our tasks required specific functionality and a special approach, the implementation of which we did not find among ready-made solutions on the market. At least to the extent that they wanted.

Third-party systems are mostly designed for the sale of goods and are more difficult to adapt to internal tools, for example, to the same Staff system.

In addition to the maximum flexibility that we needed, our own CRM also gave us the opportunity to experiment using non-standard ideas of employees. An example is the introduction of OpenAI * in the process of work.

*OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research lab. Known for her achievements, including the development of the GPT-3 neural network, which has the ability to generate human-like texts and perform a wide range of tasks.

And now the most interesting thing is what we got in the end, except for flexibility, the ability to implement the necessary functionality that the business needs in the shortest possible time, and the implementation of any, the most non-standard idea. First of all, we saved the budget as much as possible. In third-party services, you have to pay for each person in the system, which is quite expensive even with a small staff.

Own CRM also allowed to:

<ul>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">automate all internal processes;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">carry out integration with the corporate messenger and our internal personnel management system, which we have already discussed;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">aggregate analytics in any way that is required for a particular task;</li>
	<li style="list-style-type: disc; text-align: justify;">increase the speed of the appearance of new functionality that will work exactly as we need it.</li>
</ul>

For several years, the functionality has grown and optimized so that work processes have become even more efficient and comfortable. For example, we have greatly improved the analytics features that track all the metrics of the sales funnel. The process of creating a CV for our specialists has also become easier - all information is taken from the database, edited as necessary and assembled into a beautifully designed document, which is very important for operational work and presentation of services to the customer.

The development of our CRM-system is ongoing and is being finalized for the needs of all departments, based on the general development of technologies, as well as on the requirements of the market.

In sum, we note once again that although not every business needs its own CRM system, its development not only has significant advantages in automating processes, but also optimizes the company&#39;s budget as much as possible. We have such experience, which means that we can help you with the implementation of an individual CRM system, if the business requires it.

Choosing a CRM system to save the company's budget

Metrics in testing - a waste of time or an objective indicator of the quality and speed of development? When are they applied and what is given to a digital product? Together with the head of the Fusion Tech QA department, we will try to understand these issues and find out which metrics and how affect the development process.

QA metrics are tools that help in measuring the quality of a software product and in finding problem areas during project implementation.

WHEN TO USE METRICS?

The need to implement and apply metrics should be determined by each individual team on a particular project. To understand whether this tool is needed and which one, decide on the result that you want to get in the end. Often in articles on the topic of testing, you can see similar phrases about metrics: &ldquo;control the QA process&rdquo;, &ldquo;give objective indicators of product readiness&rdquo;, &ldquo;show the effectiveness of the team and the individual employee&rdquo;, and so on. One might get the impression that the metric is a universal silver bullet for all problems, which, perhaps, only does not kill vampires and werewolves. But is it really so?

The purpose of the metric is to increase the speed of project implementation at all stages, streamlining the development process and reducing the number and duration of bug fixes.

Imagine the following situation: in the previous month, the percentage of project returns (from developer to tester and vice versa) fluctuated around 3%, and in this month it increased to 15%. You might think that the development team began to work 5 times worse and it&#39;s time to get the dusty whip from the closet. But in real life, it may turn out that in the previous month there were simple layout tasks, and in the next month a component with complex logic is being formed, or the requirements for tasks are not fully described. This is an example that the end result should be considered based on the analysis of metric data in order to understand where the drawdown occurred and why.

HOW DO METRICS HELP THE PROJECT?

Metrics allow you to notice deviations of the system from the intended result in terms of such parameters as speed, quality, productivity of the digital product&rsquo;s development, and connect in time to fix problems. The use of qualitative and quantitative indicators in software testing and development in general reduces the release rate of the product and guarantees its viability.

Goals for collecting metrics:

Analysis of the system operation (assessment of a set of metrics, how indicators change over time, monitoring of new processes / ideas).

Search for problem areas:

<ul>
	<li>
	accumulation of tasks awaiting testing;
	</li>
	<li>
	the number of tasks in the testing process;
	</li>
	<li>
	the time spent on the regression;
	</li>
	<li>
	the number of bugs found and closed;
	</li>
	<li>
	the number of rejected bugs;
	</li>
	<li>
	average time to fix bugs.
	</li>
</ul>

Analysis of the found problems.

WHAT PROBLEMS CAN METRICS LOOK AT?

Low throughput*

* Throughput is the number of tasks that go through the development team in a certain period of time from the requirements stage to the release of the product.

Let&#39;s say a developer is able to solve 10 problems in 2 weeks, then the testing team should have the ability and resources to process them. If QA is not enough, and one employee can only test 3 tasks out of 10, then the release throughput will be 3. And the opposite situation - if QA is able to test 10 tasks, and the developer can close only 3, then the efficiency (efficiency factor) will remain also at mark 3. As in the army on a forced march: the time for which the unit ran the distance will be recorded by the last soldier, that is, the unit (as a single system) as a whole will run at the speed of the slowest soldier.

In such a situation, metrics help us fix the fact that we have a &ldquo;jam&rdquo; somewhere or, conversely, have an excess resource, and as a result, come to a systemic balance: we receive 10 tasks within the sprint (1 development cycle) and 10 tasks arrive at the end in production.

A large number of task returns

Returns of the project from the tester to the developer due to clarification of requirements and found errors can be one of the reasons for insufficient throughput. What happens if QA returns to the previous stage (product creation) too many tasks with bugs? To say the least, the load on the testing department will increase in the future, since in addition to new tasks, you will have to look at redone ones.

Let&#39;s take a case from our practice: on a small project, a QA engineer stopped coping with the load due to a large number of tasks. Another one was added to the project, but this eased the situation for a while. Soon the problem returned, &ldquo;jams&rdquo; appeared again, as already two QAs were diligently submitting even more tasks, which, after correction, were returned for testing. It became clear that we should think about optimizing processes, and not about expanding the staff.

Metrics highlight the problem in the early stages, allow you to understand what is going wrong, and quickly get involved in the implementation of the project in order to solve it as soon as possible. Without them, the team misses precious time and instead of developing new features, only the fixing of identified bugs occurs.

Return loop is too long

Returns to previous steps must also be considered in terms of how long the loop is. That is, at which stage of development the problem was discovered. If we have identified bugs at the stage of requirements formation, then fixing a couple of lines of text in the brief will cost less than redoing the code and re-testing (short return loop). Finding a problem in the business logic after development, on the other hand, makes the return loop too long. It will first lead us to a business analyst to fix the requirements, and then to a systems analyst and further along the chain until we again reach the testing stage.

Similar to the previous point, the shorter the return loop, the less time it takes to fix defects, and the cheaper it is to develop a product.

Lack of balance between quality and throughput

For better or worse, we live in a world where the market decides everything. You can spend a lot of time on developing a product that is perfect to the pixel, but do not forget that competitors are on the alert. While you spend time perfecting everything, they release products with new features. Yes, their projects may have minor flaws, but they are already the first ones, the attention of the target audience is riveted to their development. Therefore, getting carried away with excessive testing is an unaffordable luxury.

In this case, metrics help to allocate and plan time for tests more efficiently for the release of new features without compromising quality.

WHAT ARE THE METRICS?

On the Internet, you can find an impressive number of different metrics. Each team uses their own depending on the project, upcoming tasks, and previous experience. The selection of the metrics necessary for work is usually carried out at the stage of testing planning and control.

Tools that are more often used in our company:

<ul>
	<li style="text-align: justify;">&ldquo;Queue&rdquo; metric: the time of accumulation of tasks waiting for testing.</li>
</ul>

Helps to plan resources and prevent or clear project congestion.

<ul>
	<li style="text-align: justify;">Metric &ldquo;Density of defects&rdquo;: number of defects in the module / total number of defects.</li>
</ul>

Helps to understand what requires the most attention during development.

<ul>
	<li style="text-align: justify;">Metric &ldquo;Reopened bugs&rdquo;: number of reopened bugs / total number of bugs.</li>
</ul>

Helps to identify gaps in QA and add additional test scenarios.

<ul>
	<li style="text-align: justify;">Metric &ldquo;Average lifetime of a defect&rdquo;: time spent on fixing defects / number of defects.</li>
</ul>

Helps in planning releases (we can roughly understand how long it will take to fix defects), as well as in assessing how effectively the development team responds to bugs.

<ul>
	<li style="text-align: justify;">Metric &ldquo;Number of bugs found in production&rdquo;: number of defects after release / number of defects in iteration.</li>
</ul>

Allows you to understand how stable the product is after the release.

BRIEFLY ABOUT THE MAIN:

Metrics are useful, but only an additional tool. They can highlight the problem, fix where something went wrong, but they will not point directly to the cause.

The selected metrics should be brought to a single form, so that it is easier to focus on past indicators and track future progress.

For the same purpose (monitoring the effectiveness of actions), it is necessary to analyze metrics once a sprint, a month, and so on.

You should not use this tool to evaluate the performance of specific people or implement metrics for the sake of metrics without asking the question: &ldquo;What do I want to measure, and how will this help me in my work?&rdquo;

Try to choose those metrics that will be most useful for the project, or trust a team of professionals who will test the product at all stages of development and bring it to release faster.

Using metrics in testing to speed up the release of a digital product

Bright colors

The third feature of oriental applications is the abundance of color. Strict and conservative Europeans, as a rule, strive to simplify the color scheme in website design as much as possible. Calm and mostly nude tones and shades are held in high esteem. Oriental clients, on the other hand, welcome the expressive color approach. This is the case when a designer should not be afraid to make a button brighter than is customary in the European market. There is no need to go far: from our practice, many clients have asked to use richer and more saturated colors in the elements. And such a request is by no means a personal preference of the customer. If you delve into the details, it becomes clear that the love of brightness is one of the features of the local target audience. Oriental design is much more colorful than we are used to seeing on professional venues. When creating a design project for an Eastern client, this factor should definitely be taken into account.

An example of a premium style is a project that came to us from Kuwait. The task of the design team was to design the client side and admin panel of the web application. The project itself is a streaming platform for certain sports: equestrian sports, tennis and padel tennis. What is especially remarkable about this site is the large number of screens - there are about 200 of them. You can find out how we managed to bring our plans to life <a href="https://www.behance.net/gallery/163842561/Sports-Streaming-Platform">here</a>.

Features of communication

The strict mentality of Eastern culture can be traced not only in the very approach to design, but also in the communication between the customer and the contractor. In the course of work, we often communicate with clients live or through comments in the Figma program and noticed several patterns in interaction. Eastern customers carefully draw up the brief and expect the same carefulness in the designer&#39;s layouts. A lot of attention is paid to the details, everything must be worked out to the pixel. This thoroughness is reinforced by a more formal style of communication.&nbsp;

Despite all the features and special identity of the East, IT products for this market still obey the basic design principles: minimalism, following trends, ease of use and accessibility for all users. The nuances described above only add to their uniqueness and originality.

&nbsp;

The most unusual project that demonstrates the above for a client from Turkey is a mobile game for passing quizzes. What is its feature? The application is as close to real conditions as possible and is very similar to the game, but only in offline format. In it, you can create online rooms and compete with entire teams by answering questions. But it&#39;s better to see once than hear a hundred times - look for our case on <a href="https://www.behance.net/gallery/152827459/KAD-Quiz">Behance</a>.

Thoughtful meaning illustrations

Despite the bright color accents, the choice of illustrations does not imply excessive expressiveness, an orientation towards modesty and restraint. Particular attention should be paid to the choice of characters for illustrations. In some countries, for example, in Saudi Arabia, it is not customary to use photographs of women without traditional clothing - hijab, in others - this is allowed, but with some reservations (only strict images, including for men). In no case is it allowed to post illustrations with frank or provocative poses. Clients of this region carefully treat their culture and traditions, therefore, the restrictions associated with religion and mentality cannot be neglected.

The events unfolding on the world stage have played their part in the global reorientation. And those who previously sought to conquer the West are now actively looking to the East. A promising direction attracts more and more businessmen. The original eastern market, in turn, has a number of features that should be taken into account in order to gain trust and replenish the client portfolio with new contacts, and preferably contracts. On the example of specific cases, we will analyze several nuances when creating a design for Eastern clients.

Throughout the history of the company&#39;s development, we have had many clients from the countries of deserts and dunes. It is difficult to give an exact number, but about a third of design requests are from customers from Turkey and representatives of MENA countries - the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and others.

Eastern projects with which we managed to work during this time are very diverse: online stores, fintech sector, streaming platforms, applications of various types (from social to entertainment products). The abundance and variety of client applications made it possible to highlight similar design features that are more typical for the audience of the East than the West.

Premium Style Preference

Before the start of the UI phase, we always offer the client several style directions as part of the moodboard &mdash; a collage of ideas. The choice of Eastern customers very often falls on the premium style. Why so, let&#39;s discuss. What is the East associated with? With luxury and wealth, therefore, design accents at the request of customers should reflect a high standard of living. What is Premium Style? These are serif fonts, a b/w palette with bright accents, a special selection of photo content, icon styling, and more. Everything that at a glance reflects luxury living. The main thing is not to overdo it. It is necessary to strike a balance so that the design remains luxurious, modern and minimalistic at the same time with an abundance of premium elements.

Arabic interface language

Decided on the style. What&#39;s next? The first thing you need to know before creating an oriental design is multilingualism. That is, in what language it is planned to issue the application and whether it will be possible to switch to another if necessary. Why is it important? Multilingualism significantly affects the assessment of the scope of work, as it involves an additional language selection screen for the client. The biggest snag here is that Arabic is read from right to left. All elements are mirrored, and even the back button will be located on the right, and not vice versa. Therefore, the oriental design interface needs to be completely rebuilt taking into account this feature.

One of the largest projects that meets the sign of multilingualism came to us from the UAE - we developed the design of the marketplace for the client. This is a very large scale product.

It took a lot of time and effort to create the application, a lot of roles had to be worked out: the client side, couriers, administrators, managers, sellers. About 500 screens were designed, not counting the Arabic version and responsive ones (a way to correctly display the interface, in which the site itself adapts to any screen size and resolution). After the launch, the customer&#39;s team redesigned the logo and returned to us again for redesign and illustrations.

MENA Market: Oriental Design Features

Customer person

This is a way to model the target audience of the created product. There can be several persons if the product involves several market segments or roles within the product. For example, a teacher&#39;s person&nbsp;for an LMS and a student&#39;s person&nbsp;for a front-end product in the EdTech industry. Images should describe the expectations and motivations of future users.

How to form images (persons)?

<ul>
	<li>From observing people in the real world.</li>
	<li>From patterns based on responses in study groups.</li>
	<li>From narrowly focused projects (for example, an application for people with anxiety disorders).</li>
	<li>Focus only on the main features: goals, expectations, motives, and not archetypes, age, stereotyped properties.</li>
</ul>

This is a sketch, a kind of storyboard of how the user will interact with the product in the real world, taking into account external factors (his location, emotional state, environmental conditions). This method helps to better understand the context of using the product, highlight key goals and possible problems. The storyboard is a great example of how paper and pencil can be used to quickly and effectively identify product goals and problems.

How to create a storyboard?

<ul>
	<li style="text-align:justify">Start over. What precedes the use of the product?</li>
	<li style="text-align:justify">Take into account all the factors of the user session: lighting, decor, environment, etc.</li>
	<li style="text-align:justify">Indicate the user&#39;s mood at the beginning of his &ldquo;journey&rdquo; and at the end of the session.</li>
	<li style="text-align:justify">Imagine drawing a mini script for a movie, don&#39;t focus on the beauty of the drawing.</li>
</ul>

CJM (Customer Journey Map)

A structured version of the storyboard, when all hypotheses and conditions can be combined into a single picture. CJM shows how the user interacts with the product at certain &quot;junctions&quot;. Each such step of interaction should motivate the user to do the next one and remove the &quot;resistance&quot; of the interface.

How to design CJM?

<ul>
	<li style="text-align:justify">One CJM is drawn for one person.</li>
	<li style="text-align:justify">Consider all points of contact and the psycho-emotional state of users at each of these points.</li>
	<li style="text-align:justify">Pay attention to all channels of customer interaction with the product: online (devices, browsers) and offline (reception departments, pickup points, etc.).</li>
	<li style="text-align:justify">List all perceived barriers and hypotheses for overcoming them.</li>
</ul>

Benchmarking

The object of study in this method are not users, but products. Benchmarking is used to analyze similar products on the market and identify their strengths and weaknesses. Best practices can be adopted. Applicable when the task is to redesign or scale the product.

How to do benchmarking?

<ul>
	<li style="text-align:justify">Identify direct and indirect competitors.</li>
	<li style="text-align:justify">Identify key parameters (product features) for comparison.</li>
	<li style="text-align:justify">See real user reviews.</li>
	<li style="text-align:justify">Decide what to measure: at the top level, you can refer to the HEART approach (basic user experience metrics: Happiness, Engagment, Adoption, Retention, Task Success), or more specific indicators (how much time is needed for a particular task, how many sales, sending forms, etc.).</li>
</ul>

UX Research Tools: Which to Use and When

Remember, we told you about the Story Brand method and how to make customers fall in love with you verbally and textually? Today&#39;s case is about love, which has been formed just verbally for more than 4 years, about the interaction that led the client to major success and progressively growing profits. That is, the realization of the very goal pursued by the SB method and our company along with it.

&nbsp;In 2018, we met through the Upwork platform with cool guys from the USA - Zach and Clayton, who came to us with the startup CloudPano, which is now actively growing and scaling. It was from the &ldquo;look, spark, madness&rdquo; series, we were so on the same wavelength that we led the guys to their goals with ease and pleasure.

Now about the product itself.

It is a cloud-based 3D panorama service and its main purpose is to allow companies to create and publish virtual tours to improve sales and marketing of products and services. The service is especially popular among real estate agencies, car dealerships, museums and universities and already has an impressive customer base around the world.

We started with finalizing and redesigning the web application, which we now have on technical support, but this was not the end of it, and we created two more mobile applications for them.

Initially, our tasks included:

<ul>
	<li>
	Improvement of user authorization process.
	</li>
	<li>
	Implementation of the password recovery process.
	</li>
	<li>
	Adding file library functionality.
	</li>
	<li>
	Optimization of application functionality.
	</li>
	<li>
	Adding new functionality to expand the capabilities of the product and attract users of different levels (private and enterprise clients).
	</li>
	<li>
	Increasing the level of competitiveness in the market.
	</li>
</ul>

Our solution:

<ul>
	<li>
	Using a specific technology stack: WebGL, Three.js, Node.js, React, React Native.
	</li>
	<li>
	Implementation of enterprise rules for individual client groups of the customer for customized provision of application functionality.
	</li>
	<li>
	Implementation of the possibility of integration with any web platform for hosting virtual 360&ordm; tours.
	</li>
	<li>
	Implementation of a white-label solution for application users.
	</li>
</ul>

During our cooperation, the CloudPano project has shown impressive growth, judge for yourself.

The number of users in 2019 was 3,000, and in 2023 it is 48,000.

The number of tours, which is the main instrument of the product, was 10,000 in 2019, and now it is more than 200,000.

Expansion of areas of demand and application: construction and design.

Profit growth amounted to +1100%.

During this time, we have developed and released new mobile applications:

<ul>
	<li>
	<a href="https://apps.apple.com/ru/app/cloudpano-virtual-tour-creator/id1553738112">Virtual Tour Creator на Android и iOS</a>,
	</li>
	<li>
	<a href="https://apps.apple.com/ru/app/cloudpano-automotive/id1576669607">CloudPano Automotive App</a> (spin panoramas creation).
	</li>
</ul>

Well, if we talk about the client base, which we have already mentioned, it is more than 100 corporate clients in the real estate, automotive business and others. Among them are Fox Movie Studios, Audi, Toyota, BMW, Bugatti, Lamborghini, General Motors and Zillow Rentals, Apartment.com and Google Maps. Impressive, right?

And after that, do you still think that the true goal of any company is its own success? Our goal is unequivocally the client&#39;s success and building long-term friendly relations, within the framework of which we receive wonderful photographs, exchange gifts, congratulate each other on all state and personal holidays. This is what we strive for with each customer, therefore, according to statistics, 3 out of 5 customers come to us on the recommendation and are ready to return again.

By the way, with these guys we took 2 gold and 3 platinum in the prestigious <a href="https://museaward.com/winner.php">MUSE Creative Awards</a> for the best web application in various categories.

And we will finish our case, of course, with an excerpt from the review of CloudPano CTO and co-founder Clayton Rothschild:

&ldquo;Having worked in tech now for over a decade I can say with confidence that the level and caliber of talent that you get at Fusion exceeds most other people I worked with in my career, and my career included technical consulting at large enterprises. I highly recommend Fusion, everyone there is really technical, really competent, really polite and really professional.&rdquo;

You can see and listen to the full review <a href="https://vimeo.com/782849867?share=copy">here</a>.

Let&#39;s sum up. Being one team with the client that is working hard towards a common goal is our default internal mission, which we are always happy and ready to turn into reality, as well as your ideas and technical specifications. For quality services and a warm human attitude, you can safely contact the Fusion Tech team.

Fusion Tech - we appreciate your time.

&nbsp;

CloudPano or a case of success and friendship with a client

What IT profession is associated with a large number of myths and stereotypes? Probably the profession of a QA engineer! A lot of people are still wondering what they do and is it possible to do without them? Running far ahead, we will immediately answer: &ldquo;No, it&rsquo;s impossible!&rdquo; And in this article we will tell you why and dispel the most popular myths about this profession. Well, let&#39;s get started!

Stereotype #1: The biggest stereotype is that a tester&#39;s job is to hunt for bugs in a website or application. And then with the exclamation &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve broken!&rdquo; joyfully run to the developer and show their &ldquo;loot&rdquo; in the form of a technical bug.

Stereotype #2: At the same time, people have the illusion that software developers have to write code without errors, thinking through everything to the smallest detail. And along the way, organize the work within the team.

From these two stereotypes, the question naturally arises: &ldquo;Why are testers still needed?&rdquo;

Our answer is: they are not just needed, they are real must have! Who will check all conceivable and inconceivable scenarios of user behavior when working with an application or website, identify potential bugs, catch defects based on their experience and skills even at the stage of familiarization with the requirements, so that the developer receives the most detailed task, and the product is released faster? Who if not a tester? Not a single mistake escapes his keen eye. The tester acts as a kind of safety net for the developer, a guarantor of the quality of his work. No matter how professional the developer is, the product he creates can potentially have unreported bugs that are difficult to detect at first glance.

And here another question arises: &ldquo;Can&#39;t programmers independently find bugs in software without involving a tester?&rdquo;

We believe that a programmer is able to obtain basic knowledge for testing and even conduct superficial checks. But it is always more difficult to look for your own mistakes. And the programmer&#39;s hourly rate is many times more expensive than that of a tester. In the end, testing a product by a developer will not give the same result as testing by a specialist who is an ace in software quality assurance.

Stages of the tester&#39;s work on the project

Let&#39;s dig deeper and consider the full cycle of interaction between a tester and a project in order to better understand the essence and principles of work. Let&#39;s divide the software product quality assurance process into five conditional phases:

<ul>
	<li>
	Clarification and analysis of requirements for the software product.
	</li>
	<li>
	Drawing up a test plan.
	</li>
	<li>
	Writing test documentation.
	</li>
	<li>
	Product testing using technical means.
	</li>
	<li>
	Checking the results.
	</li>
</ul>

1. Clarification and analysis of requirements for the software product

Testing a finished function in an application is just one of the tasks in the work of a tester. As soon as you receive the first requirements for the software, you need to foresee all the problematic moments as much as possible in order to redo less later.

Let&#39;s give an example from our practice: as conceived by the customer, the registration page should contain the &ldquo;email&rdquo; and &ldquo;password&rdquo; fields. The task of the tester in this case is to clarify:

<ul>
	<li>
	what emails are allowed;
	</li>
	<li>
	how long should the password be;
	</li>
	<li>
	what symbols/numbers, lowercase/capital letters will definitely be present;
	</li>
	<li>
	what is the next page after successful registration;
	</li>
	<li>
	what errors and how should be shown during email/password validation, and so on.
	</li>
</ul>

The more information is obtained, the more emergency cases can be foreseen. The developer will receive more complete requirements and perform his work with high quality, since a significant part of the details will already be described in the task.

2. Drawing up a test plan

Along with this, the tester thinks out a test plan. It is impossible to keep everything in mind, so the engineer creates a document where he describes:

<ul>
	<li style="text-align:justify">testings that are planned;</li>
	<li>
	test data to be used (for example, fake user accounts);
	</li>
	<li>
	how and with what tools it is necessary to carry out load testing, security testing;
	</li>
	<li>
	what we need from the development team to run the tests.
	</li>
</ul>

Together with the developers, a trace matrix is additionally written - a document in the form of a table, which clearly shows the dependencies of one function in the application logic on another.

3. Writing test documentation

Based on the developed test plan, documentation is prepared. It can be different, there are several types of documents that are created in the process of product testing. The most famous is the &ldquo;bug report&rdquo;. It is necessary to fix the defect and describe its reproduction step by step. The better and more accurately the bug is described, the faster the developer will fix it. Test cases are useful not only to all members of the development team, but also directly to the customer. They describe step by step how this or that functionality works, down to scenarios, how validation should work out - the process of checking whether the final product meets the original requirements.

4. Testing the product using technical means

At the end of the theoretical part, the tester starts the practice. With the help of our own hands and machine mechanisms, the product is tested at all stages of its creation. To understand in more detail when and what type to use (manual testing or autotests), we have saved an article for you. In it, we revealed the difference between these two types of testing, and also talked in more detail about the process of finding bugs in an application or on a website.

In addition to the type, the engineer is also determined with the methodology of work, so as not to carry out excessive testing of everything in a row.

5. Checking the results

At the final stage, the tester checks the compliance of the plan and the results of the testing. It also supplements the test documentation with new information that was obtained in the process of work and will be useful to the developer in the future.

What threatens to refuse software testing?

The question is broad and complex. Let&#39;s simplify the task and show it with a specific example: our company received a request for outsourcing - an online store that was previously tested only by the customer support service. At first glance, everything worked fine: the business logic is in order, the designs are pixel by pixel. But the server had to be restarted often, the application slowed down. The team was tasked with identifying and localizing the problem. We had to test the whole application. And what did we see?

1) In addition to the memory leak, the testers realized that if you insert the order number into the url (website address), you can view the receipts of any user, not just your account.

2) In the response from the server, in addition to the necessary data (name, e-mail, rating, and so on), the user&#39;s balance was also loaded.

3) When entering the application, the user&#39;s password was received from the server (although encrypted, but this is very, very bad).

What does all this threaten? The personal data of users is practically open to the attacker and served on a silver platter for further fraudulent operations. It&#39;s good that we discovered these bugs before someone became the fraud&rsquo;s victim and the customer received a lawsuit from users. In this case, the refusal to test threatened both the loss of the budget and the loss of reputation.

In order to prevent such situations, you need to clearly understand that an application or website is not only a beautiful visual. These are complex mechanisms with their own &ldquo;laws&rdquo; and internal systems. Both the application and the site have a hidden part, like in a car, that works &ldquo;under the hood&rdquo;. And just as a car needs not only a driver, but also a mechanic, so an IT product needs a tester who will detect a breakdown in time and prevent negative consequences

Does your project need a QA engineer? On the importance of testing

Did you know that the interface can resist? And it resists to show the value of the product. By reducing its resistance, we increase the metrics, which means we increase the conversion. This is the main point of conversion centered design.

And it solves only one, but very important task - it increases the number of clicks on the button on the site or in the application. How to create an interface that will sell your products and give the right&nbsp;conversion?

First of all, reduce the cognitive load on the user. What does that require:

<ul>
	<li>less text, keep to the subject;</li>
	<li>clear and understandable CTA;</li>
	<li>titles no longer than 70 characters;</li>
	<li>structured and clear navigation.</li>
</ul>

Next, provide a quick search:

<ul>
	<li>the presence of a search in the usual place;</li>
	<li>possibility of sorting and filtering;</li>
	<li>offer of similar goods and goods from the &quot;bundle&quot;;</li>
	<li>alternative search (by image, voice).</li>
</ul>

Now we must convey to the client the understanding of the benefits. For this purpose, these points&nbsp;do an excellent job:

<ul>
	<li>a list of distinctive features of the product;</li>
	<li>details of discounts;</li>
	<li>comparative table as an aid in decision making;</li>
	<li>coupons, promotions, loyalty programs.</li>
</ul>

Help your potential client through:

<ul>
	<li>FAQ;</li>
	<li>chat with support;</li>
	<li>contact information in quick access;</li>
	<li>glossary for complex products.</li>
</ul>

Last but not least, know and understand your customer, they can be classified into the following types:

<ul>
	<li>Product Focused (they know exactly what they want);</li>
	<li>Browsers (kill time);</li>
	<li>Researchers (thoroughly study everything);</li>
	<li>Bargain Hunters (in search of benefits);</li>
	<li>One time (drop-in visitors).</li>
</ul>

Conversion Centered Design. How to create design that sells

In today&#39;s world, where time is the most valuable resource, the project manager&#39;s role&nbsp;becomes one of the key factors for business success.

The PM has to establish contact with the client, assemble a team and establish communication, plan work and risks, distribute tasks, make sure that the project is within the time frame, budget, scope and a super mission - not to go crazy. An impressive list, isn&rsquo;t it? And this is only a small part of the long list of responsibilities that the PM faces every day. However, does everything depend on the manager and is it possible to launch the project without him? We&#39;ll tell you. But first, let&#39;s find out what skills help the PM to be so multitasking.

Multitasking or important PM skills?

&ldquo;To be in time everywhere and at once&rdquo; - no, this is not the name of an Oscar-winning film, this is a description of a typical working day for a project manager. To be a PM is to have a source of an endless amount of motivation, strength and a certain set of qualities, without which it is impossible to succeed in the profession. To do their job perfectly and bring value to the business, a manager needs to have a specific combination of hard and soft skills.

The mandatory hard skills include:

<ul>
	<li>
	the ability to collect and analyze requirements, convert them from the language of the customer into the language of the performers;
	</li>
	<li>
	planning and organization of work;
	</li>
	<li>
	building communication;
	</li>
	<li>
	analytical skills;
	</li>
	<li>
	knowledge of methodologies and tools;
	</li>
	<li>
	management skills:
	</li>
</ul>

&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; - risks;

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;- cost and budget;

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;- quality;

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;- resources;

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;- changes.

As for soft skills:

<ul>
	<li>
	proactivity;
	</li>
	<li>
	the ability to influence decision-making;
	</li>
	<li>
	delegation;
	</li>
	<li>
	the ability to listen and ask questions;
	</li>
	<li>
	empathy and emotional intelligence;
	</li>
	<li>
	adaptation in conditions of uncertainty;
	</li>
	<li>
	ability to solve problems.
	</li>
</ul>

 
This list can be expanded and deepened - as you know, there is no limit to perfection. And from company to company, the requirements for the skills of a project manager vary markedly. But the essence remains, the project manager is a man-orchestra who will calm the client and put out burning deadlines. You need to be able to find such a specialist, like a diamond among ordinary stones, or, in extreme cases, grow it yourself, but this will require considerable resources.

Who will be responsible for the failure?

When you have a large number of responsibilities, any failure on the project is also the manager&rsquo;s responsibility. Didn&#39;t meet deadlines? Did the client formulate the requirements poorly? Is the client not satisfied with the results? Budget bursting at the seams? The team does not understand what they are doing and why? Top management not aware of what stage the project is at? All this is the responsibility of the project manager.

Let&#39;s recall some of the basic principles of project management: teamwork and proactivity. And the responsibility for teamwork falls primarily on the one who is at the head of the task, directs the work, sets deadlines and controls the results. Any failure is a triggered risk that the PM either did not take into account or did not respond to in time.

We at Fusion Tech have long introduced an unbreakable rule that no project manager can neglect: the PM must definitely plan risks, keep them up to date and involve the entire project team in this process - some points can only be seen from a different position.&nbsp;

The time spent on compiling the risk register will pay for itself very quickly. But the consequences of unaccounted for failures, on the contrary, can be unpredictable and long-term.

Is it possible to do without the PM?

Yes, but only at the start. In a small company of four to six people it is indeed possible to imagine the absence of a PM. But get ready! Someone from the team will have to take on the responsibilities of that same manager and write code in parallel. Not the best idea, is it? And the larger the team becomes, the more difficult communication and coordination will become. Misunderstandings, loss of information, duplication of efforts and, as a result, inevitable conflicts.

There is only one way out of the situation. To put everything on the shelves, take over the entire organization of project work and allow the team to concentrate on what they are pros in, only the PM can. The project manager will take on both the daily routine and responsibility for the result. Developers will go deeper into their work, and the project will go many times faster.

To summarize!

To what extent does the success of the project depend on the manager? Maximum!

The way the PM makes decisions, reacts to changes and problems, assesses and updates risks, will determine the success or failure of the project. Of course, many other factors affect the implementation of the development: the complexity of the task, the team size, the qualifications of specialists, and other circumstances. But the absence of a PM is already a failure in itself, it is impossible to wear two hats, do everything at once. And also do well. If your team lacks a human orchestra, Fusion Tech is ready to collaborate in an outstaff format so that all your projects reach successful releases as soon as possible.

Project’s failure or success? Does it all depend on the manager?

Today we&rsquo;re going to talk about a tasty app on iOS that we developed for food bloggers and avid cooking fans who can&rsquo;t keep quiet about new recipes and are ready to share them with everyone &mdash; the Spillt app for our clients Betterfeed Inc. from New York.

Learn more about the functionality of the application.

Spillt helps you at every step of the way, from creating a grocery list to reviewing recipes.

Users can save links to recipes from popular platforms, create collections from them, share cooked dishes with friends and more, leave comments, add new friends, create interest groups, and even organize dinner parties. And food bloggers can grow and promote their blog using the app&#39;s functionality, like leaving reviews for used recipes or adding new friends and commenting on their dishes and recipes.

Our task:

<ul>
	<li>
	iOS application development.
	</li>
</ul>

It is worth mentioning that the front-end development was initially carried out using Expo and then migrated to React Native to implement a number of features.

Solution:

<ul>
	<li>
	Use of React Native, Supabase technologies to develop an application.
	</li>
	<li>
	Use of Firebase to implement notification logic more efficiently.
	</li>
	<li>
	Integration with the WP plugin (WordPress) to synchronize data from food bloggers&#39; websites with their account in the application.
	</li>
</ul>

The project involved a full-stack developer, a QA engineer and a project manager. More than 3000 hours were tracked on the counter and about 34 screens were implemented. Now we continue to support the application.

And now the most important thing that is expected from each case -&nbsp; the result and statistics:

<ul>
	<li>
	Over 3,000 users have downloaded the app since its release in June 2022.
	</li>
	<li>
	More than 250 food bloggers have registered on the site.
	</li>
	<li>
	The app has been published to both the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store.
	</li>
	<li>
	The app has a 5.0 App Store rating and excellent user reviews.
	</li>
</ul>

This case is about the pleasure of harmonious interaction with the client, complete mutual trust and systematic work of the manager and developer. Similar stories in our portfolio prevail. Well, we would like to end this short article with a paragraph from a review from CEO and co-founder of Betterfeed Inc., Ann Baum, which she left us without even waiting for the work to be completed:

&ldquo;We&#39;ve been working with FT for 9 months now to develop our mobile application. We&#39;ve been incredibly impressed by their efficiency, and how thoughtful they are regarding our designs. It&#39;s very clear that they think through the product from a user&#39;s perspective in addition to just meeting the requirements. We would strongly recommend their services to other companies considering using an agency for development &ndash; it has allowed us to move faster while maintaining high quality standards.&rdquo;

<a href="https://clutch.co/profile/fusion-tech?sort_by=date_desc#reviews">The full review is available at the link.</a>

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