Design

    Part 3: Offshoring Is a Business Model—Not a Cost-Cutting Exercise

    “Startups build for scale. Consulting firms often build for speed—until they hit a wall."

    I’ve seen it too many times.

    In Part 1, I explained why consultants get laid off even when revenue is good.
    In Part 2, I showed how a hybrid offshore-onsite model gives companies more time before resorting to cuts.

    Now let’s talk about what many leaders get wrong—when and why they introduce offshoring.

    Because here’s the truth:
    By the time you’re scrambling to “cut costs,” it’s already too late to build culture, delivery maturity, or trust offshore.

    That’s not offshoring. That’s damage control.

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    Expression Blend 3 + SketchFlow + Dynamic Prototyping

    One word: Incredible!

    The Background:

    I’ve got the privilege to work on a Greenfield project which involves:

    • Collecting and Analysing Requirements
    • Web Application Designing (not Graphic/Web Designing)
    • Implementing
    • Testing
    • Deploying and Going live
    As in my previous projects, it is the first task that takes a lot of time and effort. In my previous projects, I’ve never overlooked the Use Case Analysis and has thus resulted in completing the projects on time and to the stakeholder’s satisfaction.

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    Tapovanam - application design and architecture

    In redesigning and redeveloping Tapovanam's (my friend's organisation) web site, I want to put in place a good architecture. The following are some of the considerations:

    • A multi-tier design (mainly to separate presentation code from business logic)
    • Support themes in presentation layer to switch designs easily at later stage.
    • Object oriented business logic layer (BLL) (with business objects)
    • Data access layer (DAL) to be independent of underlying database (to switch databases or even use XML files as data store at a later time)
    • Data Transfer Objects (DTO) to pass data between BLL and DAL
    • Maximum use of Data Binding at the presentation layer

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    From VSS to CVS; From CVS to SVN

    Hmm…..After VSS came CVS and now after CVS it’s time to try out SVN!

    Yesterday, I was finally determined to make my machine a build system(with WinXP SP2 Pro) for which I had to install and configure CruiseControl.NET. For which I had to install VSS. Then I thought of CVS (because, I was comfortable with CVS way of doing things for the past 1 year). Oh…then I thought of SVN (because, SVN is to be a compelling replacement for CVS).

    The best part of SVN is the availability of the free e-book which is quite exhaustive. I was indeed more happy to read the TortoiseSVN e-book because it gave detailed steps to install the SVN Server and not just the TortoiseSVN Client.

    Since I did not have Apache Web Server in my system, I prefered the SVNServe type of SVN Server which listens on port 3690. With that I had my svn server setup but before running the server, I read a piece of information in the book which said that the svnserve.exe can be run as a windows service using a wrapper called SVNService. Without much thought, I tried running the svnserve as windows service.

    But, to my despair when I tried to view the repository which I had just created using TortoiseSVN, I could not find the repository using the repo-browser of TortoiseSVN. Something has gone wrong somewhere….After 30 minutes, I started to suspect the SVNService wrapper. So, instead of going to that level of abstraction, I decided to run the svnserve manually using command prompt. And lo there was Windows XP SP2 in action asking my permission to unblock the port 3690. Phew! that was a relief. After unblocking it, I reverted back to SVNService.

    There ended my initial adventure with SVN which was quite less exciting than my earlier ones with CVS and TortoiseCVS. I am expecting the real thrill when I start using ASP.NET application with SVN.