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How to be a great software consultant
I'm often asked advice on what makes a good consultant. Hang on a tick before I get to that.
Software exists to solve problems and make our lives easier - but any software consultant can tell you that creating software
can come with problems of its own.
The 2 big ones are:
- Software is expensive to develop, and
- Software development has a high rate of failure
Estimates vary as to just how high the failure rate is for software projects -
this ZDNet article puts it at 68%! That is staggering
- and the amount of money sunk into these failures
is even more so.
In the face of these figures, it would seem that SSW is an anomaly. I've been running SSW for more than 25 years, and based
on my sexy Power BI graphs, I can see in that time
we've completed almost 1,000 software projects, yet
I can count on one hand the number of failures we've
experienced.
Many things have contributed to that success. I guess
I consider it starts with the excellent staff and
smart clients, but many companies have both of those
and still can't ship software. Therefore, I attribute
our success also to SSW's comprehensive and ever-evolving
rules and best practices. The SSW website has
thousands of guidelines, all organised, tagged, and
searchable. I've had plenty of feedback so I know
that some developers find the sheer number of them
intimidating - but nothing great is easy.
Rules to Better Software Consultants - Working in a Team
When it comes down to it, the reason for SSW's existence is to develop high value software solutions on the best technology.
The best tech is always expensive but tends to have
the longest lifespan. I believe it is a pay now or
pay later thing.
But there's no point in having the best tech if you don't have the right team behind it. Assuming that all consultants are
otherwise equal in terms of the 3 A's (Affability,
Ability, and Availability), these rules are part
of what makes SSW special:
Rules to Better Software Consultants - Working in
a Team. These are the rules that I encourage
all new SSW developers to read. Some of these rules
may seem like simple common sense, but we don’t all
seem to have the same common sense! Therefore, I
have spelled it out to guarantee we’re all on the
same page from the get-go.
Keep reading for Adam's top 5 rules to being a great software consultant.
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Featured video from SSW TV
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VIDEO: NDC Sydney 2017 | Ask Me Anything! with Adam Cogan and Richard Campbell
Right now SSW is gearing up for NDC Sydney 2018. This year, we'll be working with Richard Campbell and the .NET Rocks team to record an entire track (Room 8!), so we thought we'd share this great "Ask Me Anything" interview we did with Richard at NDC Sydney last year. Look out for videos from NDC Sydney 2018 in our upcoming newsletters.
Watch video
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SEP
17-18
Mon-Tue
|
2
days
of
workshops |
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SEP
19-21
Wed-Fri
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3
days
of
conference
sessions |
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2 Days of Workshops
// 3 Days
of Conference
NDC Sydney is this month! With more than 100 speakers covering 36 technologies, 10 workshops and 127 talks, this conference is not to be missed! SSW will be well represented by Adam Cogan, Jason Taylor, Thiago Passos, Jernej Kavka, Brendan Richards, William Liebenberg, and more, so come find us at our booth and meet SSW Sophie.
There'll
also be a
selection
of fun evening
activities
like
the boat
cruise
and the
ever popular
pubconf.
For tickets and more information, visit
ndcsydney.com/.
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2-Day Angular
workshop
In this workshop
we will
build
a CRM
application
with
Angular
using
components,
services,
dependency
injection,
forms,
Angular
modules
and lazy
loaded
routes.
We will
then
cover
unit
tests
and using
the redux
pattern
with
the ngrx
library.
By the end of this workshop you will have built a working Angular applications you can extend into a working enterprise application.
Read
more
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OCT
18
THU
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Melbourne, Australia
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OCT
22
MON
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Brisbane, Australia
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OCT
25
THU
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Sydney, Australia
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1-Day .NET
Core
course
.NET Core is the most powerful and flexible version ever! Much of the day-to-day code you write will be the same - but much
of the
architecture
and how
your
project
fits
together
has changed.
We will provide you with a solid foundation in .NET Core, an understanding of why you should be using .NET Core, and the
capability
to build
an enterprise
application
using
the new
stack.
Read
More
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NOV
26
MON
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Brisbane, Australia
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NOV
29
Thu
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Melbourne, Australia
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NOV
30
Fri
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Sydney, Australia
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With the latest release of Angular, there's even more to learn and love. Angular Hack Days are free events for beginner and
pros alike
to come and
share the
thrill of
creating
something
beautiful
in a supportive
and friendly
environment.
Read More
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MAR
2
Sat
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Sydney, Australia
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JUN
1
Sat
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Brisbane, Australia
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JUN
22
Sat
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Melbourne, Australia
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Xamarin Hack Days are free events that make it easy for anyone to learn cross-platform development using Xamarin, a product
that allows
you to use
.NET/C# to
create native
apps that
will run
across Android,
iOS, and
Windows.
Read More
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MAy
18
Sat
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Sydney, Australia
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JUL
13
Sat
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Melbourne, Australia
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AUG
3
Sat
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Brisbane, Australia
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[
SEPTEMBER
]
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Come and get a sneak preview of NDC Sydney, with this exciting presentation from Dylan Beattie, who will be giving the keynote as well as several presentations at the conference.
Sydney .NET User Group: The Secret to Happy Code - presented by Dylan Beattie
We spend our lives working with systems created by other people. From the UI on our phones to the cloud infrastructure that runs so much of the modern internet, these interactions are fundamental to our experience of technology - as engineers, as developers, as users - and user experiences are viral. Great user experiences lead to happy, productive people; bad experiences lead to frustration, inefficiency and misery.
Whether we realise it or not, when we create software, we are creating user experiences. People are going to interact with our code. Maybe those people are end users; maybe they're the other developers on your team. Maybe they're the mobile app team who are working with your API, or the engineers who are on call the night something goes wrong. These may be radically different use cases, but there's one powerful principle that works across all these scenarios and more - and it's called discoverability.
In this talk, we'll draw on ideas and insight from user experience, API design, psychology and education to show how you can incorporate discoverability into every layer of your application. We'll look at some real-world systems, and we'll discuss how discoverability works with different interaction paradigms.
Because, whether you're building databases, class libraries, hypermedia APIs or mobile apps, sooner or later somebody else is going to work with your code - and when they do, wouldn't it be great if they went away afterwards with a smile on their face?
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About the presenter
Dylan wrote his first web page in 1992 and never looked back. He's been building data-driven web applications since the late 1990s, and has worked on everything from tiny standalone websites to complex distributed systems. He's the CTO at Skills Matter in London, he's a Microsoft MVP, and he's a regular speaker at conferences and user groups, where he's spoken about topics from continuous delivery and Conway's Law to the history of the web, federated authentication and hypermedia APIs. When he's not wrangling code, Dylan plays guitar and writes songs about code. He's online at www.dylanbeattie.net and on Twitter as @dylanbeattie.
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SEP
17
MON
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SSW Sydney
Gateway Court Suite
15
81-91 Military Road,
Neutral Bay
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Melbourne .NET User Group
We’ve got an extra special Melbourne .NET user group session for you! Justin Yoo presented at DDD Sydney, and David Wengier is about to jet off to present at NDC Sydney. Come catch these 2 in-demand presentations at the Melbourne .NET user group.
Talk #1: Pragmatic Performance: When to care about perf, and what to do about it - David Wengier
As a developer you often hear both that performance is important, but also that you shouldn't worry about performance up front, so when is the right time to think about it? And if the time is right, what are you actually supposed to do?
If you're interested to hear about a pragmatic approach to performance, this talk will explain when is the right time to think about benchmarking, but more importantly will run through how to correctly benchmark .NET code so any decisions made will be based on information about your code that is trustworthy.
Additionally, you'll also find out about some of the common, and some of the unknown, performance pitfalls of the .NET Framework and we'll discuss the true meaning behind the phrase "premature optimization is the root of all evil".
Talk #2: Lessons learned: Best practices writing ARM templates - Justin Yoo
An ARM template is a convenient tool to manage Azure resources, but it is very difficult to manage them, and can be time consuming unless it is efficiently written. In addition, an ARM template is a big JSON file that is hard to read. What if DevOps engineers could write them in YAML? How about testing them efficiently? Lifecycle management? There are many ways to write ARM templates that really work, but not all of them are considered best practices.
At the end of the session, audiences will learn how to manage ARM templates in YAML, and hear best practices for ARM templates. Hear how ARM templates are tested before deployment, and how deployment histories of ARM templates can be proactively managed.
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About the presenters
David Wengier has spent almost 20 years learning how to do the right thing by doing a lot of the wrong things first. He hopes to save you from some of that pain by sharing his passion for looking into the "why" of things, to help better understand them.
Justin Yoo is a Senior Consultant at Mexia and double-awarded Microsoft MVP in both Azure and Developer Technologies (particularly in .NET and DevOps/ALM). He is passionate to share his knowledge with community, which he has learnt from the various industry. He is also a big fan of serverless technologies that he believes it will make everyone's life much easier.
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SEP
12
Wed
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SSW Melbourne
Level 1, 370 Little
Bourke St
Melbourne
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[
SEPTEMBER
]
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Full Stack User Group:
Talk #1 (Lightning Talk): Building Single Page Applications with ASP.NET Core 2.1 – Jason Taylor
This lightning talk will teach you how to get started building Single Page Applications with React or Angular and ASP.NET
Core 2.1. This talk will cover the basics,
ensuring that you have a seamless experience
from development to production.
Talk #2: Make Your Life Easier With Logic Apps + Save $$$ - Thiago Passos
Automation is the word of the day. Why do it yourself if there's already a logic app doing it for you? Some, at first sight,
silly "getting started" integrations will
save you a lot of time and money. Let's build
some of these apps and customise them to
our needs.
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About the presenters
Jason Taylor is an SSW Solution Architect and full stack developer with over 17 years professional experience. He is currently
specializing in teaching
and building awesome applications
utilizing ASP.NET Core, Entity
Framework Core and Angular.
Jason loves a challenge and
is skilled at progressing
from a proposal into a well-defined,
coded, and tested solution.
Thiago Passos is passionate about technology and learning new skills. He's got over 15 years of experience, mainly with the
Microsoft stack. He's currently
in love with Angular and
Azure.
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SEP
10
MON
|
SSW Brisbane
Unit 4, 471
Adelaide St
Brisbane
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Zendesk's primary Australian
implementation partner
Most organisations start off
using a simple email inbox
for support queries, and
have a phone number for more
complex issues that require
a call, but the modern customer
wants to be able to contact
you by phone, email, social
media, SMS, etc., and have
the conversation continue
seamlessly, regardless of
who may take on the support
request. As your organisation
scales, this becomes a challenge...
enter Zendesk.
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Instantly improve your customer experience with Zendesk.
Zendesk Guide is a smart knowledge base where your customers
can help themselves via a help center, an online community
or customer portal.
Want to know more about Zendesk Support?
Book a FREE initial meeting now!
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