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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

Weekly Vector Inspiration #40

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

20 Simple jQuery Tricks

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

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90’s Technology

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

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

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

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

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.

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 Wallpaper 

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

Mastering Illustrator Effects

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 Templates 

44 Advertising Posters with Clever Ideas 

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

15 Cute Cartoon Wallpapers

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
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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 Palette 

28 Best Quality Textured Backgrounds Free WordPress Themes

40 Free and Useful GUI Icon Sets for Web Designers

Miscellaneous Articles
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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 Experience 

Ultimate Ecommerce Starter Kits for Wordpress Users

30 Handy Cheat Sheets and Reference Guides for Web Professionals

WordPress Resources – 48 Resources, Tips, Tricks & Themes

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.

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

18 Fresh Font Designs

40 of the Best Websites of Non-Profit Organizations

Vector Backgrounds in Web Design: Examples And Best Practices

45 Fabulous Logo Designs

60+ Really awesome Typography Showcases

74 Fresh Examples Of Beautiful Single Page Website Designs

50 Beautiful Hand-Drawn Web Design 

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

12 Water Inspired Web Designs

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

23 Flourish Designs

Javascript and Ajax

”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””

55 Jquery Tutorials, Resources, Tips And Tricks

Playing with jQuery Color Plugin and Color Animation 

25 Useful MooTools Tutorials

15 Best Techniques For Implementing Autosuggest With AJAX

10 Ways to Instantly Increase Your jQuery Performance

xHTML and CSS
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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
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Watercolor Icon Pack

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 Template 

20+ Beautiful Free Serif Fonts

30+ High Quality Metallic Texture, Pattern, Brushes and Photoshop Tutorials

Miscellaneous Articles
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12 Essential Rules to Follow When Designing a Logo

20+ WordPress Recipes (Codes)

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

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.

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100 (Really) Creative Business Cards

25 Flourish Designs

20 Beautiful Examples of Photoshopped Smoke Art and Technique Tutorials

25 Unique uses of WordPress as CMS

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Totally Awesome Joker Collection

20 Stunning Panoramic Landscapes

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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.

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