What happen when a software product released successfully? (IONA case 2)

Well, people often think of software development life cycle i.e the process from gathering requirement to test and release and maintenance. Very rare that people think of what will happen when a software product release successfully. Of course, there will continue bigger sale of the software, and a lot of work relating to customer support and services will be born. But will these things last forever? No way! But then, there comes bigger question - when will the successful period end? How can a manager foresee the change? What should he do to overcome and achieve continuing success?

The Art of Asking WHY in Marketing Research: Three Principles Underlying the Formulation of Questionnaires

(Lazarsfeld, 1935) discusses an interesting topic: How to ask why in marketing research. It is surprising that marketing research was point of interest and was deeply researched into back in 1935.  The author terms three important factor in marketing research: The principle of specification, the principle of division and the principle of tacit assumption.

The soul of a new machine

When I posted a status saying that I am gonna read the book, my boss – the CEO of Kloon, my company I worked before going to Ireland, commented – “Now that I  feel old because you’re reading a book I read 25 years ago”. His comments triggers great deal of curiosity – The book that my former boss read must be something special. The guy was very nice and brilliant, and now he is a CEO of a software company, so reading a book he read 25 years ago is somewhat interesting.

Avalanche case

This is a story of an avalanche (Buxton, 2007) that demonstrates the inextricable relationship between design methodology and social context.

The Activity Checklist: A Tool for Representing the “Space” of Context

In HCI, people are more and more aware of the importance of understanding the context in which computer-supported activities take place. There are several approaches to achieve this goal: task analysis (Dix et al., 1997), participatory design (Bødker et al., 1988), contextual design (Holtzblatt and Beyer, 1993). They are for the most part “bottom-up” one.

The author suggested that “bottom-up” – or empirically driven strategy – can be complimented with a “top-down” one. They presented a broad theoretical framework: Activity Theory (Leont'ev, 1978) and a tool called Activity Checklist which reifies the theory. The tool is not the only attempt to deal with context in the field of HCI, but can be applied to broader field.