Education and Learning
80+ High Quality And Useful Resources For Designers To Discover The Best Of The Web In October
We are always in search of great free resources, tips, tricks, etc. for our readers. Every day we work hard to find new resources and inspiration for designers like you. Today, we have another great post, “Discover the Best of the Web” on SmashingApps. In this, we made a list of 80+ High Quality And Useful Resources For Designers. We obviously cannot cover all the best from the web, but we have tried to cover as much as possible.
You are welcome to share if you know more best of the web in the month of October which our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.
Design Tips, Tricks and Tutorial
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
50+ High Quality Icon Design Tutorials (Part 2)
55 Terrific Cinema 4D Tutorials and Techniques
Create a Realistic Looking Nokia 5800 in 3ds Max
How to Create Roads and Rail Tracks on a Path
40 Adobe Illustrator Text Effect Tutorials
A Beginners Guide to Digital Textile Printing
Create a Transparent Text Effect with Fresh Grass Texture and Custom Brushset
75 PSD to HTML Resources for Web Designers
The Ultimate Round-Up of Print Design Tutorials
Design A Killer Fashion Model Poster
How to Create Smoky Brushes and Type In Illustrator CS4
50 Hot New Tutorials From Around The Web
45+ Adobe Illustrator Tutorials for Creating Cartoon Character Illustrations
Design a Minimal and Modern Portfolio Layout with Photoshop
How to Create an Icon in Illustrator
30 Advanced Photoshop Tutorials for Gamers
Blog Headers: 20 Great Examples and Best Practices
Build a Slick Rich User Interface in Photoshop
40 Quality Photoshop UI Design Tutorials
Artwork, Digital Photography and Inspiration
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
50 Awe-Inspiring Underwater Photos
21 Adorable Pieces Of Manga Art
100+ Clean, Simple and Minimalist Website Designs
15 Fabulous Examples of Origami Inspired logo Designs
39 Astonishing Examples of 3D Typography
35 Smart Logos With Second Thought To Make You look Twice
11 Amazing Photo Manipulated and Digital Art Wallpapers
A Showcase of 35 Beautiful Typographical Illustrations
40 Beautiful HDR Pictures You Would be Amazed
Trends in Pricing Page Design and Layout
14 Bold and Colorful Print Ads from Various Brands
44 Examples of Nature Inspired Website Designs
35 Creative Twitter User Profile Designs
Showcase Of Beautiful Textured Web Designs
23 Eco Friendly Sites that are Using WordPress
30 Superb Examples of Infographic Maps
Website Design Showcase Of 21 Popular Brands
30 Jaw Dropping 3D Character Creations
45 Inspiring Navigation Menus That You Must See
15 Inspirational Single-Page Websites
10 Unforgettable Interactive and Inspirational Business Cards
105 People Photo Manipulation Works You Will Really Marvel
40+ Beautiful Fish Inspired Logos
25 Absolutely Magnificant Landscape Photo Manipulation
Showcase of Social Networking Websites
15 Elegant Cartoon Wallpapers You Can Not Miss
40 Striking Examples of Graffiti Art
24 Awesome Single Page Portfolio Designs
80+ Photo Manipulations Art to Ignite Your Creativity
Javascript and Ajax
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
How to Build a Simple Content Slider jQuery Plugin
35 Fresh and Useful jQuery Plugins
Curtains Opening Animation with jQuery
xHTML and CSS
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
Mastering CSS Coding: Getting Started
The Blueprint CSS Framework – Tutorials, How-to Guides and Tools
Purely CSS – Faking Minimum Margins
Resources
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
Most Useful Collection of Premium 3d models
1000+ High Quality Free Grunge Textures, Icons, Brushes and Fonts
45 Beautiful Dual-Screen Wallpapers
30 Stunning Fonts To Enhance Your Designs
Collection of 8 Free and Exceptional Icon Sets
80 Stunning Background Patterns For Your Websites
9 Open Source Microblogging Applications
500+ Free Download High Quality Photoshop PSD Files For Designers
24 High Quality Free And Stunning Symbol Fonts
50 Surprisingly Amazing Themes for Blogger
40 Amazing Photoshop Brush Directories and Collections
Miscellaneous Articles
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
20 Best Wordpress Typography Plugins To Enhance Readability
How to Properly Prepare a Guest Post in 5 Simple Steps
5 Highly Applicable, Yet Easily Overlooked Features in Photoshop
The History and Evolution of Social Media
20 Useful & Nicely Designed Web Applications
24 Useful Tutorials on Creating Photoshop Brushes
30+ Super Secret OS X Features and Shortcuts
15 Most Important Wordpress Plugins To Help You Fight Spam
Guide to a Successful Blog Post
8 Powerful Wordpress Plugins You Probably Don’t Use But Should
9 OpenSource URL shortening apps to make your own services
7 Key Principles That Make A Web Design Look Good
Windows Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows 7
20 Handy Photoshop Tips For a Faster Workflow
10 Useful WordPress Coding Techniques
3 Really Useful And Informative Educational Websites
Today we are listing here 3 Really Useful And Informative Educational Websites. I hope these sites can help you to find and search the useful information you would love to know. All of them are huge sites and full of information.
You are welcome if you want to share more useful websites that are worth checking and we have missed here and you think our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.
Read Print is a free online books library for students, teachers, and the classic enthusiast. This is an amazing website with over 8,000 online books by 3,500 authors at your fingertips.
Webopedia is a free online dictionary for words, phrases and abbreviations that are related to computer and Internet technology. Webopedia provides easy-to-understand definitions in plain language, avoiding the use of heavy jargon when possible so that the site is accessible to users with a wide range of computer knowledge.
Google For Educators support teachers in their efforts to empower students and expand the frontiers of human knowledge. They’ve assembled the useful information and wonderful tools that you can find there.
75+ Excellent Collection of Tutorials, Inspirations And Resources For Designers To Discover The Best Of The Web In July
We are always in search of great free resources, tips, tricks, etc. for our readers. Every day we work hard to find new resources and inspiration for designers like you. Today, we have another great post, “Discover the Best of the Web†on SmashingApps. In this, we made a list of 75+ Excellent Collection of Tutorials, Inspirations And Resources For Designers. We obviously cannot cover all the best from the web, but we have tried to cover as much as possible.
You are welcome to share if you know more best of the web in the month of July which our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.
Design Tips, Tricks and Tutorial
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
145 Ultimate Round-Up Of Photoshop Tutorials and Resources
35 Unbelievable Smoke-Themed Designs and Tutorials
Web Design Tutorials: The Ultimate Roundup
40+ Vector Characters Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop Tutorials
Three Short Tutorials for Photographers and Photography Lovers
Creative Photoshop Animal King Photo Manipulation Tutorial
Tips & Tutorials for Creating Custom Designer Toys
Creating an Abstract Watercolor WallpaperÂ
22 Very Useful Adobe Illustrator Tutorials
Design a travel PSD layout with Adobe Photoshop
52 Excellent Cinema 4D Tutorials
50+ Ultimate Collection of Glow and Light Effect Tutorials in Photoshop
How to Quickly and Effectively Clean Out Body Hair in Photoshop
24 Amazing Photoshop Tutorials
Design an E-Commerce Website in Photoshop
How to Create a Photo Manipulation of a Flooded City Scene
20 Amazing Adobe Illustrator Tutorials for Creating Icon
70+ incredible HDR images with photoshop and photomatrix tutorials
How To Create a Retro Apple Wallpaper in Photoshop
26 Professional Photoshop Retouching Tutorials
Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 Tutorial Videos
Artwork, Digital Photography and Inspiration
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
40 beautiful and creative typography designs to inspire
25 Large Photo Background Websites
23 Inspiring And Colorful Examples Of Digital Art And Manipulations
110 Fresh Logo Designs For Design Inspiration
27 Inspirational Horizontal Scrolling Websites
100 Artworks from the Top 20 Digital Artists in South America
22 Eye Catching Colourful Logos
20 Inspirational, Clean E-Commerce Website Designs
Business Card Design: 100+ Creative Examples, Useful Tutorials and TemplatesÂ
44 Advertising Posters with Clever IdeasÂ
30 Awesome and Well Designed Mac App Websites
30 Awesome Twitter Inspired Logo Designs
Animating Design Elements: 7 Unique & Creative Practices
21 Popular Brands That Are Using WordPress
Before & After: Alex Justino Photo Manipulation
25 Inspiring Examples of Sign-Up Pages
30 Wonderful Examples of Shoes Advertisements
70 Typographic, Clean And Minimalist Color Scheme Web Designs
55 Fresh Examples Of Corporate Website Designs
25 Beautiful Examples Of Typography Portraits
50 Fresh Portfolio Websites for Your Inspiration
20 Incredible Sunrise Wallpapers Caught in Space
55 Niche Web Design Galleries for Your Inspiration
33 Inspirational Illustrations
Javascript and Ajax
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
25+ Create Amazing Image Effects with Some of the Best jQuery Plugins Available
25 Fresh and New jQuery Plugins and Tutorials
Making a Content Slider with jQuery UI
MooTools Tutorials and Resources Round-Up
15+ Plugins to Unleash the Invincible Power of jQuery and WordPress
Most Useful Ajax Tools And Tutorials
15 Website for jQuery Enthusiast and Addicts
xHTML and CSS
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
Mega CSS Resource Roundup
20+ Resources and Tutorials for Creative Forms using CSS
50 New CSS Techniques For Your Next Web Design
Resources
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
21 Absolutely Useful And Inspiring Collection Of Most Desirable Freebies
35 High-Quality Free Fonts For Your Designs
30 Awesome Textures for Creating Subtle Grunge Designs
10 Great Free Adobe Air Apps that Every Designer and Developer Should Use
19 Free Photo Source Sites for CG Artists
45+ Absolutely Useful Free Fabric Textures
60+ Free Fonts for Big, Bold and Beautiful Headlines
15 Essential WordPress Plugins for Portfolio Sites
5 Awesome Online Photo Editors
27 Color Tools and Resource for Choosing the Right Color PaletteÂ
28 Best Quality Textured Backgrounds Free WordPress Themes
40 Free and Useful GUI Icon Sets for Web Designers
Miscellaneous Articles
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
13 Ways to Browser Test and Validate Your Work
Best free PHP learning resources for beginners
The Roadmap To Becoming A Professional Freelance Web Designer
13 Helpful Cheat Sheets for Building WordPress Themes
45+ Useful Resources For Better Torrenting ExperienceÂ
Ultimate Ecommerce Starter Kits for Wordpress Users
30 Handy Cheat Sheets and Reference Guides for Web Professionals
WordPress Resources – 48 Resources, Tips, Tricks & Themes
“Self-Trained” Website That Can Help You Make Smart Decisions
What should I be for Halloween? Do I need a Porsche? Should I dump that loser? Is Phoenix a good place to retire? Whom should I vote for? What toe ring should I buy?
In 10 questions or less, Hunch will offer you a great solution to your problem, concern or dilemma, on hundreds of topics. Hunch’s answers are based on the collective knowledge of the entire Hunch community, narrowed down to people like you, or just enough like you that you might be mistaken for each other in a dark room. Hunch is designed so that every time it’s used, it learns something new. That means Hunch’s hunches are always getting better. It’s absolutely free and easy too so why you are not trying it? You can create your account here.
The theory behind using collective knowledge for decision making
Take, for example, expertise about colleges or cars. In a random, large group of people, most probably know something about a few examples (say, the college someone attended or the car they currently drive) but are not experts on the topic as a whole (as a college guidance counselor or auto executive might be). If you were able to collect and organize all the various bits of individual knowledge that the large group possesses, you’d have a pretty complete picture of the topic overall.
The theory in practice: The Hunch algorithm
The algorithm is always asking itself, “What can I ask you next which will lead to the best possible result for this decision?” The choice of which questions to ask and when to ask them will vary based on what you’ve already been asked (and how you’ve answered) so far, the same way that a human expert would adjust a line of questioning based on your responses. The idea is that if someone says they’re a vegetarian, you don’t want to then immediately ask them how they want their steak cooked.
User contributions are mostly what makes Hunch smart
As you answer questions, Hunch can narrow down your possible decision outcomes because each outcome can be “trained” to correspond with each question’s answers. Any logged in user can set initial training or correct existing training, in addition to proposing new topics, questions to ask, and decision outcomes. This is how Hunch is truly a collection of common knowledge. So whether you happen to know a great question that would lead someone to a Sancerre vs. a Pinot Grigio, or you’d like to clarify that “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane” is probably more of a “campy” than a “cult” movie, Hunch absorbs your input and uses it to provide smarter decision results for the next user.
Hunch also uses machine learning based on statistical inferences
Besides users explicitly training and contributing to Hunch, there’s a second way that Hunch learns, especially for what we call ‘Teach Hunch About You’ questions which have more to do with you as a person than with your preferences for a specific topic’s objective decision criteria. When a user clicks “Yes” or “No” to indicate whether or not they like a decision result, Hunch incrementally strengthens or weakens the mathematical correlation between that result and any ‘Teach Hunch About You’ questions that have been answered so far. So over time, Hunch might learn that people living in cities tend to prefer diet sodas, or that SCUBA divers tend to like bicycles with lots of gears.
Hunch is designed to soak up collective knowledge and then organize it in a useful way to help you make smart decisions. Hunch proposes custom decision results for you that it wouldn’t necessarily give to somebody else. But at its core, Hunch’s decision making algorithm is just a mathematical framework. It’s the users of Hunch who give the algorithm proper training and personality by contributing to it and making it clever, funny, and nuanced…. but most of all very useful in helping everyone to make smart, efficient decisions.
60+ Incredible Tutorials And Resources Collections For Designers To Discover The Best Of The Web In June
We are always in search of great free resources, tips, tricks, etc. for our readers. Every day we work hard to find new resources and inspiration for designers like you. Today, we have another great post, “Discover the Best of the Web†on SmashingApps. In this, we made a list of 60+ Incredible Tutorials And Resources Collections For Designers. We obviously cannot cover all the best from the web, but we have tried to cover as much as possible.
You are welcome to share if you know more best of the web in the month of June which our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.
Design Tips, Tricks and Tutorial
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
53 Crazy-good Digital Photography Tutorials
40 Top-Notch Print Based Tutorials
10 Most Wanted Vector Tutorials
13 Useful Techniques for Enhancing Web Design Photography
Design a premium wordpress blog with Photoshop
Create a Character Illustration Wallpaper
50 Excellent 3D Adobe Illustrator Tutorials
Simple Coffee Cup Icon Photoshop Tutorial
Photo Manipulate a Falling Angel
77 Ultimate Round-Up of Adobe After Effects Tutorials
25 Photoshop Tutorials for Creating 3D Text Effects
Useful Flash Cartoon Tutorials
It’s Time to Create a ‘Neo-Constructivist’ Poster with Photoshop
Create a Texture Based Vintage TV Poster in Photoshop
Artwork, Digital Photography and Inspiration
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
50 Breathtaking CG Images
50+ Creative Masterpieces Of Logo Designs Using Gradient Effects
50 Inspiring Abstract Illustrations in Web Design
100 inspiring character designs
40 of the Best Websites of Non-Profit Organizations
Vector Backgrounds in Web Design: Examples And Best Practices
60+ Really awesome Typography Showcases
74 Fresh Examples Of Beautiful Single Page Website Designs
50 Beautiful Hand-Drawn Web DesignÂ
100 Creative Twitter Backgrounds Featuring Illustration
25+ Examples of Effective Glowing Effect in Web Design
13 Beautiful Graffiti and Street Art for you inspiration
43 Spectacular Examples of Fractal Art
20+ Excellent Free Character Illustration Wallpapers
Creating a tri-fold brochure plus 15 amazing examples
25+ Examples of Inspirational Text Art
40 Examples of Incredible Photo Manipulation
21 Stunning Examples Of Creatively Done Stop Motion Animations
Javascript and Ajax
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
55 Jquery Tutorials, Resources, Tips And Tricks
Playing with jQuery Color Plugin and Color AnimationÂ
15 Best Techniques For Implementing Autosuggest With AJAX
10 Ways to Instantly Increase Your jQuery Performance
xHTML and CSS
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
24 CSS (in some cases with jQuery) Navigation and Menu Tutorials
7 New Essential CSS 3 Techniques Revealed
15 Effective Tips and Tricks from the Masters of CSS
Resources
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
50+ New and Beautiful Free Wordpress Themes
30+ Useful Photoshop Custom Shapes Set
15 Most Useful & Free Collection Of Ready-To-Use Design Freebies
Ultimate List of 32 Font And Typography Tools
25+ Useful Wordpress Themes with Ads Ready
Hibiscus flowers – vector freebies
100 New and Beautiful Seamless Patterns
35 Excellent Websites for Downloading Free CSS TemplateÂ
20+ Beautiful Free Serif Fonts
30+ High Quality Metallic Texture, Pattern, Brushes and Photoshop Tutorials
Miscellaneous Articles
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
12 Essential Rules to Follow When Designing a Logo
Ten Rock Solid Free Platforms To Start Your Successful Website
40 Must Have Cheat Sheets for effective Web Designers
20 Tools to Make the Life of a Web Developer Easier
10 Ways To Make Your Site Accessible Using Web Standards
17 Creative Collection Of Inspirational Resources For Designers
As a designer, all of us are continuously searching for effective inspiration because getting an idea and inspiration is sometimes really hard and when you are planning to start your new web design project and you are curiously finding for a mind blowing web design inspiration so you don’t want to spend too much time and want to get start something as soon as you can. But most of the time, your mouse is not moving around as you want or your hand is not in your creative control or maybe when you are just tired and do not have creative mood to work. So if you want to get fresh your creative man or come up with some creative web design ideas or just need to motivate and inspire yourself with current design trends, we are today listing down 17 Creative Collection Of Inspirational Resources For Designers. This list is not long in numbers but I promise you that when you start browsing them in details it will must boost your creative design ideas professionally and motivate you for to design your project in such a way that people will never forget that you have made it!
You are welcome to share if you know more resources and collection to get inspired with current design trend that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.
You may be interested in these older posts
43 Really Useful Photoshop Tutorials For Excellent 3d Effects
17 Mind-Blowing Digital Painting Tutorials Of Beautiful Girls
31 Masterpieces Of Creative And Clever Advertising Concepts
23 Magical Photographs To Believe That Are Not Photoshopped
13 Premium-Like Wordpress Themes That Are Free And Stunning
21 Really Stunning Photoshopped Photos For Creative Inspiration
43 Of The Extremely Creative Wonders Of Macro Photography
27 Best Places You Should Visit To Get Incredible Web Design Inspiration!
13 Simple And Elegant Free Wordpress Themes
21 Extremely Vibrant And Creative Advertisements With Animals
39 Masterpieces Of Creative Advertisements
17 Digital Image Illustration Which You Probably Never Seen Before!
15 Digital Photo Manipulation From Flickr To Get Inspiration
23 Awesome Photos That Look Like They’re Photoshopped But Are Not
25+ Most Creative and Stunning Photo Manipulations
100 (Really) Creative Business Cards
20 Beautiful Examples of Photoshopped Smoke Art and Technique Tutorials
25 Unique uses of WordPress as CMS
40 Useful and Creative Infographics
35 Examples Of Masterful Lighting Effects In Web Design
Totally Awesome Joker Collection
20 Stunning Panoramic Landscapes
21 Colorful Artwork Of Character Design To Grab Your Attention
42 Amazing Resources for Inspirational Typography
25 Great Examples of Using Gradient Effects in Web Designs
60 Beautiful Fractals Created with Apophysis:Part 1
25 of the Best Websites for Educational Institutions
50 Inspirational Web Design Blogs
Agility! An Approach to Fight Global Recession
Most of the countries all over the world are going through the phase of economic recession. Many old and big companies have already been brought down on their knees to bite the dust. Many companies as well as countries have become bankrupt or are on the verge of it. Millions and millions of people have lost their jobs. Many people have lost millions and billions of dollars. People in general are scared and fearsome. This is not the first time that the global economy is going through recession and this is also not the last time. There is a pattern involved in it. On an average it is happening after every 8-10 years.
Information Technology industry too takes the impact of global recession and a difference in the average IT investment can be monitored during the times of recession. Analysis of IT investment shows that Information Processing equipment and Software investment increased a modest 5% in 1990 recession before taking a major jump to 15% in 1992. However the 2001 recession, in contrast with the decline in 1990, was much harder on IT spending because there was a great deal of overspending on IT equipment and software in the latter part of 1990s. The need for extra hardware and software for Y2K remediation ended abruptly in 2000. The 2001 recession was somewhat unique in that this huge overhang of excess IT equipment needed to be burned off before investment levels could recover. This intensified the negative impact of the 2001 recession on IT spending. However the current recession bears remarkable similarities to the recession of 1990, which was led by the financial sector. It also bears some similarities in IT spending patterns during the 2001 recession. In either case, over the past 20 years the negative impact on IT spending has never lasted more than two years. Therefore, the analysis shows IT spending will remain weak through 2009, with a recovery in 2010.
IT Agility
A key goal of every IT department is to reduce the time and effort needed to deliver value to the business. To accomplish this, the best long-term trend we have in IT beyond Moore’s law and the power of the Internet is the improvement of IT agility. Increasing IT agility is important because it provides a value innovation and delivery method that harnesses these fundamental advances in infrastructure.
Agile practices enable teams to build less, but return the same value by focusing on early delivery of the features that have the highest business value and not wasting money on the features that don’t.
IT agility is driven by three major innovations: agile development, Software as a Service (SaaS), and Web 2.0 social networks. However, without agility in development and software releases, the innovations of service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0 are elusive.
Agile Process Model
Agile development is an iterative and incremental (evolutionary) approach to software development which is performed in a highly collaborative manner by self-organizing teams within an effective governance framework with “just enough” ceremony that produces high quality software in a cost effective and timely manner which meets the changing needs of its stakeholders.
The following illustration depicts a typical agile development model.
Agile methods choose to do things in small increments with minimal planning, rather than long-term planning. Iterations are short time frames (known as ‘timeboxes’) which typically last from one to four weeks. Each iteration is worked on by a team through a full software development cycle, including planning, requirements analysis, design, coding, unit testing, and acceptance testing when a working product is demonstrated to stakeholders. This helps to minimize the overall risk, and allows the project to adapt to changes quickly. Documentation is produced as required by stakeholders. An iteration may not add enough functionality to warrant releasing the product to market, but the goal is to have an available release (with minimal bugs) at the end of each iteration. Multiple iterations may be required to release a product or new features.
Team composition in an agile project is usually cross-functional and self-organizing without consideration for any existing corporate hierarchy or the corporate roles of team members. Team members normally take responsibility for tasks that deliver the functionality of an iteration. They decide for themselves how they will execute during an iteration.
Agile methods emphasize face-to-face communication over written documents, when working in the same location, or in different locations but having video contact daily, communicating by videoconferencing, voice, e-mail etc.
Most agile teams are located in a single open office to facilitate such communication. Team size is typically small (5-9 people) to help make team communication and team collaboration easier. Larger development efforts may be delivered by multiple teams working toward a common goal or different parts of an effort. This may also require a coordination of priorities across teams.
No matter what development disciplines are required, each agile team will contain a customer representative. This person is appointed by stakeholders to act on their behalf and makes a personal commitment to being available for developers to answer mid-iteration problem-domain questions. At the end of each iteration, stakeholders and the customer representative review progress and re-evaluate priorities with a view to optimizing the return on investment and ensuring alignment with customer needs and company goals.
Agile methods emphasize working software as the primary measure of progress. Combined with the preference for face-to-face communication, agile methods usually produce less written documentation than other methods. In an agile project, documentation and other project artifacts all rank equally with working product. Stakeholders are encouraged to prioritize them with other iteration outcomes based exclusively on business value perceived at the beginning of the iteration.
Enterprise agile adoption roadmap
Like any mission-critical systems or initiative, you need a vision and roadmap to steer your adoption and rally the troops. The roadmap for an enterprise to adopt agility is described in the following illustration.
There are three keys to effectively managing this process:
- Work incrementally, in an agile fashion, through the steps and gain proficiency before widespread scaling.
- Develop a vision/roadmap and change backlog with key executives before you attempt to move up to step 3 and beyond.
- Share the vision and roadmap with the entire organization and manage the rollout in a collaborative fashion with complete transparency.
Many of these rollouts have started with a grassroots effort to get to Step 1 and Step 2. With the help of external coaching and parallel tool rollouts, many companies have taken more aggressive, “flash-cut” moves with top-down leadership and investment to jump to step 3 in the roadmap within months.
Flash-cut approaches
Given the pressure and opportunity of this crisis, as well as the increasing number of public proof points showing how large organizations can quickly transition to agile, you might be thinking about your ability to do accelerate your adoption and capture savings in 2009 from your efforts. There are three things to heed while considering this:
- Adopting agile needs complete management buy-in and a true sense of urgency. What is it going to take for your management team to get buy-in to adopt Agile on a major portion of your organization?
- You are going to need a strategic partner to help you manage this organization change effort. I do not know a company that followed the flash-cut approach without an outside coaching or consulting firm. As a result, you will have to budget for this investment and the time to choose and schedule them. These partners will help you build the organization capacity for agile while also supporting the professional development of your middle managers as the organization becomes flatter and leaner.
- This is a whole system change from a world of plan-driven to value-driven ideas. As a result, you will see immediate changes in your process, organization, and technology. This transition will set up a culture of continuous improvement and even drive changes in your overall development and business strategies. To make this transition go well, you are going to need to implement a collaborative project management solution to provide visibility across your development teams.
Conclusion
We don’t know how long or how deep this recession will be. Belt-tightening and staffing cuts almost seem inevitable. You can either reduce costs by just cutting your budget, or you can use this opportunity to make systemic changes in your business. Enterprise IT agility is proven to do that — more so than investments in technology point solutions that only have a point in time savings. Most important, this approach will help ensure the savings from today’s cuts do not create worse problems in the long run.
Guest post by Muhammad Usama Alam, who is a software engineer and web developer with over 8 years of experience in designing and developing business solutions for enterprise. You can follow him on twitter.
22 Motivational And Excellent Photography Dedicated To The Labor Day
Labor Day is an annual holiday celebrated all over the world that resulted from the labor union movement, to celebrate the economic and social achievements of workers. The majority of countries celebrate Labor Day on May 1, and it is popularly known as May Day and International Workers’ Day. But why we are talking this? Because today, Labor Day is celebrating all over the world, and we are trying to take part by giving labors a warm tribute. Today, we are posting another post that probably will make you look twice. In this post we are listing 22 Motivational And Excellent Photography Dedicated To The Labor Day. I appreciate to all those talented photographers who taken these excellent photos with their efforts, imaginations and creativity to give us a chance to see these photographic wonders from their creative eyes. This list is not long in numbers but I promise you that when you start browsing them in details it will surely refresh you and force you to know more about Labor Day and motivate you to appreciate them. These are the wonder creations of photographers who use their creativity with a different angle and approach to get the result that makes a difference.
You are welcome if you want to share more creative photography that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well. Click on the images to go from where the images has been taken and learn more about their creators and to appreciate them.
HARDWORKED HAND by Cristian Naidin
Traditional farming by Janusz Wanczyk
The Sweets-Maker by Mitchell Kanashkevich
Sand Collector by Mitchell Kanashkevich
Hard at Work by Mitchell Kanashkevich
Tea Maker by Mitchell Kanashkevich
Working at the Ijen Crater by Mitchell Kanashkevich
Pulling out the morning catch by Mitchell Kanashkevich
A Fisher of Fish by Robert Larson
The Chilly Bearers by Prateek Dubey
The Long March by Richard Ford
Men in the Farm by Christian Aslund
Horsemen. Calcutta by Claude Renault
28 Beautiful And Inspiring Photographs Dedicated To Earth Day
Yes, we know that SmashingApps is dedicated to designers and developer but I think it would be good if we can be able to give some awareness and knowledge to our readers for some environmental issues. Today, Earth Day Network is celebrating a Earth Day all over the world, this is a day when they try to create awareness and educate people about keeping their environment clean and motivate them to Go Green for their sorroundings. Today, we are posting another post that probably will make you look twice. In this post we are listing 28 Beautiful And Inspiring Photographs Dedicated To Earth Day. I appreciate to all those talented photographers who taken these excellent photos with their efforts, imaginations and creativity to give us a chance to see these photographic wonders from their creative eyes. This list is not long in numbers but I promise you that when you start browsing them in details it will surely refresh you and force you to know more about Earth Day and motivate you to save your planet. These are the wonder creations of photographers who use their creativity with a different angle and approach to get the result that makes a difference.
You are welcome if you want to share more creative photography that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well. Click on the images to go from where the images has been taken and learn more about their creators and to appreciate them.
You may be interested in these older posts
18 Creative Poverty Posters That Can Create Effective Awareness
31 Masterpieces Of Creative And Clever Advertising Concepts
23 Magical Photographs To Believe That Are Not Photoshopped
13 Premium-Like Wordpress Themes That Are Free And Stunning
21 Really Stunning Photoshopped Photos For Creative Inspiration
17 Mind-Blowing Digital Painting Tutorials Of Beautiful Girls
43 Of The Extremely Creative Wonders Of Macro Photography
27 Best Places You Should Visit To Get Incredible Web Design Inspiration!
13 Simple And Elegant Free Wordpress Themes
21 Extremely Vibrant And Creative Advertisements With Animals
39 Masterpieces Of Creative Advertisements
17 Digital Image Illustration Which You Probably Never Seen Before!
15 Digital Photo Manipulation From Flickr To Get Inspiration
23 Awesome Photos That Look Like They’re Photoshopped But Are Not
Earth from above by Yann Arthus-Bertrand
Goðafoss by Ragnheidur Arngrimsdottir
Morning impression by Przemyslaw Wielicki
Flowing Water & Ice Formations by Doug Roane
A Reflective Morning by John Parminter
Morning line by Janusz Wanczyk
Mountain Waves by Alan Czekierda
Dream about a green valley by Janusz Wanczyk
Autumn curve by Janusz Wanczyk
Morning valley by Janusz Wanczyk
Elf’s Land by Alexander Maslarski
In the mist’s sea by Janusz Wanczyk
The Sky Goes All the Way Home by Mark Broughton
Strolling on the Dolomites by Robert Strahinjic
Glacier Formation by Axel Gimenez
The Other Side by Stefan Bingham
Seljalandsfoss by Henrik Spranz
Let’s Find Out, What’s Being Copied From Your Site?
Each time a user highlights or copies text or images from your site Tracer records the user action, and automatically adds a link back to the original content when it is pasted. Now, you can see what is being copied from your site and benefit from the additional traffic generated by each copy.
Tracer is a brand new way to generate more visits and page views. You can get credit when content is copied from your site. It will help you to measure and understand user engagement and Improve your search engine ranking.
Tracer allows you to identify the most popular content on your site so you can
- Provide high quality data to your advertisers, over and above page view stats.
- Track Virality. Learn which stories users forward most using our copy/paste technology.
- Produce content more closely aligned with what your users are interested in.
- Optimize your search terms or keywordss.
Tracer automatically adds a link back to your site when content is copied and pasted. When your content is pasted onto a blog, Twitter, or another web site it has a direct impact on your search ranking. By seeing what words and phrases users are copying from your site you can better understand how you might select your keywords, meta-tags,tags, and even ad-words.
Also, Tynt.com is an increasingly popular place for people to find interesting web sites and content and generates visits to your site when content is copied.
