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Meet the Nerds who are invested in your goals, your deadlines and your business. Today we’re highlighting Principal Software Engineer Patrick Fuentes, who shares a little bit about himself and what he loves to do both inside and outside of The Nerdery.

How long have you worked at The Nerdery?
Four years.

Area of expertise:
Android development.

Favorite part about working here:
The Nerds! It’s pretty great to be surrounded by hundreds of experts in topics that I’d love to grow in, and I also love the access to folks that are experts in other areas that I will never pursue deeply but find fascinating. What’s more important is how many genuine, good-hearted people I get to interact with every day.

Favorite type of project:
I like them all for different reasons, but it’s hard to beat the ones that impact tens or hundreds of thousands of people every day.

When people ask you what you do, or what The Nerdery is, what do you say?
It depends on the person, but I normally say “I make apps” or something like that if someone asks about my job. If someone asks about The Nerdery, I tell them, “We do custom software design and development. If you need a website, or an app, or an IoT solution, or something like that, we have you covered.”

What are you most proud of, personally and professionally?
I’m most proud of the tech community we’ve built and continue to build here in the Twin Cities. I’m blown away by how eager people are to give their time and expertise freely to try to help others.

You’re an organizer of Google Developer Group: Twin Cities. What made you want to get involved with GDGTC and what’s your favorite part?
Before I was an organizer, I was an active member because I loved the subject matter. I participated in a lot of tech-focused meetups, and I really appreciated the open-minded, helpful attitude and the commitment to inclusiveness that GDG offers. When the GDG regional mentor, Lloyd brought me to a private party at Google’s San Francisco office and asked if I’d be interested in helping to organize, I jumped at the chance!

You’re The Nerdery’s famed food Instagrammer. If someone were to ask for your recommendation on where to get the best local donuts, mac and cheese, and burgers what would you tell them?
Oh, that’s a tough one! For a donut, I’m a big fan of Angel Food Bakery’s work. For mac and cheese, I like to change it up depending on my mood, but I have to give a shout out to the lobster mac and cheese at Smack Shack. I’ve thought long and hard about my favorite burger in the Twin Cities, and I think Revival has to be my choice. We are really blessed with an incredible food culture here in the Twin Cities. It’s a big part of what keeps me around, and I’m genuinely grateful.

Tell us a little bit more about your life outside of work:
Honestly, Android development and design is probably the biggest part of my life inside of work and out. That said, I also love riding bicycles, going to restaurants (and photographing my food, of course), and traveling when I can.

How many plaid shirts and pairs of suspenders do you own?
Oh funny, yeah, I like to keep my wardrobe pretty simple. Here’s the official count:

• Plaid shirts – 21 total
  • 8 Red – long sleeve
  • 1 Blue – long sleeve
  • 1 Yellow – long sleeve
  • 1 Green – long sleeve
  • 4 blue with red – short sleeve
  • 5 red with blue – short sleeve
  • 1 yellow – short sleeve
• Suspenders – 5 Total
  • 2 silk
  • 3 elastic

Any final remarks?
Stay nerdy, my friends.

Want to learn more about what it's like to be a Nerdery Android Engineer? Contact us or apply here.

Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) is a collaboration across departments including development, product management and quality assurance (QA). Its purpose is to not only facilitate communication between these departments but to increase effectiveness of QA automated tests and reduce the cost of maintenance cycles dramatically. BDD is a loaded subject, but here’s a brief rundown of what BDD is and how it differs from standard development.

BDD is costly up front, but gives development and QA what they need to stick to the timeline throughout a project while keeping product management in the loop for the duration. It is difficult in practice as it is a change in the way development happens; code is committed more slowly, but is also more reliable. Maintenance cycles become almost non-existent as only major unfound issues are dealt with in a sprint, and QA has to be ready to stretch and help with unit testing in the early days of the project.

BDD is an advancement from Test-Driven Development (TDD) which is a reversal of the standard relationship between QA and development. In typical projects (Agile or Waterfall), code is committed and then tested. With TDD, tests are created first and code is not committed until the tests pass. BDD is that same schema, except with a unifying domain-specific language called Gherkin. This language can be learned in a day or so and is flexible enough to be used for any kind of project. The Gherkin language provides an outline for product owners, development and QA to work off of and understand.  

BDD starts right away in the estimation phase. Development, QA and product management come together and write every feature for the project in Gherkin. This is a high-level meeting and is based on the known requirements. After the main features are figured out, QA and development meet in a second event (still during estimation) and design scenarios that fit with each feature. This event tends to be the more detailed of the two as every scenario for a feature must be written before development begins. Ideally, all scenarios are designed in this phase. Depending on the resources available it can be done over time as long as the features are being deployed to development with scenarios. This means a larger investment up-front, but overall provides a smoother project and more accurate timeline.

BDD is flexible in its application, but the primary goal of any kind of BDD is to unify development, product management and QA. Development can read the scenario plainly and knows what will be tested for immediately, and QA can start to work on automated tests without having to wait for development. The relief of this dependency is a lifesaver for any automation engineer; trying to squeeze an appropriate amount of testing into the last couple days of a sprint can be stressful, especially with another sprint on the way.

The secondary goal would be to reduce the cost of maintenance cycles by using Cucumber tests in addition to unit tests during development. QA is meant to stretch a little in this early phase of the project; a QA engineer on a project in this phase would assist development in setting up Cucumber class and method unit tests. Now the tests are in place before the first code commit takes place, so the very first piece of code is tested before its merge.

Overall this development process is meant to bring development, product management and QA closer together while smoking out issues in the development phase of the project rather than maintenance, which reduces costs of fixing issues by about ten times.

Recommended reading:
Cucumber & Cheese: A Tester’s Workshop, by Jeff Morgan

Modern virtual machines (VMware/VirtualBox) allow us to create completely sandboxed virtual environments with a mix of operating systems. Containers stop just short of virtualizing the operating system; often described as an advanced chroot, they run directly on the host without emulation. Docker brings order to containers with some clever filesystem tricks, solid image management, excellent developer tools and native support on every major cloud platform.

Containers are different, we use them differently

When using Docker, provisioning environments (and cleaning up old ones) becomes so fast and easy that we start to think about provisioning in a completely different way. Our emphasis starts to shift towards quickly (re)provisioning instead of being good at maintenance and migration. It turns out this view of provisioning greatly simplifies our concerns.

Docker borrows a few tricks from popular tools like Puppet and Chef to facilitate a repeatable build process. The “materialized” result of this build process is a read-only image containing an exact set of system and runtime libraries necessary to support an application. This pattern provides strong guarantees about consistency when eventually deployed to a server and it nearly eliminates a whole category of bugs related to the subtle differences between environments.

Unlike its immediate predecessors, Docker is not a Virtual Machine, but instead relies on an isolation technique provided by the Linux Kernel. Because of this, Docker containers not only spin up fast, but also use server resources very efficiently.

What can Docker do?

With Docker Hub (or your own private Docker Registry), you can easily publish and share Docker images using basic Docker commands.

The Docker Hub allows anyone to publish public images for free (assuming you are not violating any laws) and also offers subscriptions for private repositories. There is a large repository of official and community images to help developers get up and running quickly. Images are available for most major runtimes: Java, Node, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc. In addition, Open Source application resources like databases, caches, queues and web servers are also widely available.

Docker’s characteristics make it extremely well suited for a modern integration test environment, where the entire environment can be provisioned quickly and easily, with very few moving parts. This pattern is not limited to application code it is just as easy to spin up supporting application components like databases, caches or queues. With a little bit of cleverness, Docker can be used for things like creating a database with existing schema or even test data.

Docker has a light footprint and Docker servers require very little setup. The large cloud providers offer native management tools like Amazon’s ECS, Google’s Container Engine or Microsoft’s Azure Container Service. You can also manage your resources directly, either on-premise or in the cloud, with tools like Rancher.

How does Docker work?

A Docker Container is an isolated space provided by the Linux kernel to run a process or application. Unless otherwise specified, a container cannot see any files from the host system, only files provided by the mounted Docker image. Docker also provides network isolation, with each container getting its own private network interface.

One of Docker’s most defining traits is its unique take on the filesystem. The entire filesystem, as viewed from a Container, is made up of image layers (think of them like zip files). When an application in a container tries to open a file, Docker looks through the image layers from top to bottom, until it finds a file at the given path. Image layers are read-only, so whenever the application writes a new file or modifies an existing file, a new copy gets written to a scratch area. The scratch area is the first place a container will look for files, making it appear as if the files can be modified. When creating a new image layer, we archive the scratch area, and it becomes the new “top” layer.

The first (bottom) layer of an image is usually a very slimmed down Linux installation. The next few layers (intermediate layers) are composed of application dependencies like Python, PHP, Ruby or a Java Virtual Machine, and their supporting system libraries. The assembly of an image can be programmatically defined in a Dockerfile, an easy and repeatable way to construct Docker images. These definitions should be checked into source control and can be iterated on for continued optimization to your applications needs.

Containers can be quickly linked together with an easy-to-use command line tool, and as environments get more complex, this configuration can be codified using a Docker Compose document. A Docker Compose document can describe container configuration parameters and how those containers get linked together. This allows infrastructure to become a repeatable definition that can be checked into source control, and improved over time, much like the application source code itself.

Conclusion

Docker is a tool that offers a powerful new way to package and run applications. It facilitates repeatable builds, which execute very consistently on any server. It gets developers ramped up faster. It deploys quickly and easily to local or cloud based infrastructure. Ultimately, it will let your team focus on their job, adding value to your products.

We all know that project success depends on timeline, budget and delivery of features, right?

Wrong.

It’s possible to achieve favorable results in all three of those aspects and still have an unsuccessful project.

What, then, is project success? In personal development as well as in software development, success is the accomplishment of value-based goals.

In order to accomplish value-based goals, we need to understand the path that leads there.

Do you know your client?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines aware as, “having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge.” If you want to be a partner rather than a vendor, you must be aware of your client.

• What is your client’s mission statement?
• What are your client’s core values?
• Who are your client’s competitors?
• Has your client been in the news lately?

You should know the answers to these and other similar questions before a project even begins, so you can concentrate your energy on understanding and defining value rather than gaining awareness.

Think back to when you started your first job. You walked into work on your first day feeling anxious — there was juxtaposition of excitement and nervousness. The facilitator of your on-boarding gave you information on your health insurance, vacation policy, dress code, company values and so much more. Throughout the day you met face after face and you tried to remember everyone’s name and job title. Even if you did manage to remember all the people you still didn’t understand how they related to your job responsibilities, which is need-to-know information. Do you report to any of them directly? Indirectly? Does Bob work on your team or is he on a different team that you will work with frequently? Your brain is overloaded and you haven’t even learned about the job you were hired to do and how you are going to add value to your employer yet.

Did you retain all the information you received on your first day? Not likely.

When you start a new job you go through a period of time when you are getting acclimated to the company and how you fit in that company.

When you start working with a new client you go through a similar acclimation period before you can start adding value. What if you could skip that period and proceed directly to adding value?

LinkedIn is an incredibly vast source of information — the first thing I do when I start working with a new client or stakeholder is review their profile. It gives me a head start on building a relationship. I can easily learn their college major, any causes they are passionate about, the industries they’ve been in and their longevity at the current organization. Then when I meet them for the first time my brain doesn’t have to deal with remembering that extra information because I’ve already acquired it.

The same concept can be applied to the company itself. By doing some simple internet research I find my client’s mission statement, core values, recent news articles and history. I can get a feel for the client and their industry which allows me to understand the intent behind their decision-making and business requirements.

Business analysts use techniques like benchmarking and market analysis, document analysis, current state analysis, competitive analysis, stakeholder lists, maps, or personas, SWOT analysis, and good old-fashioned curiosity: one of the most prominent characteristics of an effective business analyst.

As an added bonus, the more you know about something, the more likely it is that you will be passionate about it. Passion breeds solutions; it’s the difference between solving a problem effectively and executing a defined solution that may or may not add value.

Now how can you add value, and what is value, really?

Value

Don’t get caught scope-thinking; it’s dangerous. It results in missed opportunities to add value.

To add value to something is to leave it better than you found it. Features can add value but don’t add value inherently. Having more features does not equal more success. Timeline, budget and features are measures of execution — they are not measures of value.

One of the most important aspects of business analysis is defining the right value to satisfy the business need. According to A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge, “Business Analysis is the practice of enabling change in an organizational context, by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders.”

Scope-thinking is dangerous because it doesn’t give you a holistic picture of your client and their needs. Constraint is, of course, inherent to the definition of scope and it limits the effectiveness with which you can define and solve problems. Although you may be executing within a specific scope, do not think only within that defined scope.

Goals

So if timeline, budget and features are not project goals, what are the project goals?

Your client came to you so you can to add value to their company. They defined a need, allocated the funds and selected a partner that they believe can satisfy their need. It is imperative that project goals are based on adding value, not on just executing the project.

A goal is a destination and a value is a direction. Basing goals on value defines the most efficient path to achieve your project goals.

Most of us have set a personal goal which we failed to achieve... you know those New Year’s resolutions that I’m talking about. I’ve often found that in many cases the reason I failed to achieve a goal is because my goal wasn’t based on something that I value. Value is what defines your direction towards the goal, and understanding that value helps you stay focused and pointed in the right direction.

Business analysts help clients define value, ensure that goals are set based on those values, and trace those goals throughout the project to make sure that it doesn’t veer off the path.

Value-based goals are the key to a successful project.

Success

At the beginning of this blog I told you that success is the accomplishment of value-based goals; goals must be based on value for a project to be successful. With that in mind, it’s easy to define what a successful project is.

Gain as much knowledge about your client as possible, define the value you can add, create goals based on that value and accomplish those goals. This simple formula can be applied to any project in any industry.

Conclusion

Project success cannot be defined by budget, timeline and features. It can only be achieved by defining values and accomplishing goals based on those values. The precursor to defining values and setting goals is client awareness. Learning about your stakeholders, their business and their industry accelerates your path to defining values and setting value-based goals.

I’ve often heard it said that there are no shortcuts to success. I think this is true — you can’t skip steps, but you CAN make those steps as easy as possible. One of the ways to do this is through trust. Business projects are executed through a series of relationships; trust is the most important aspect of any relationship, and a business to business relationship is no different. Check out Building Trust Through Business Analysis to see how you can accelerate your path to success.

Want to learn more about what it's like to be a Nerdery Business Analyst? Contact us or apply here.

I've seen some recent activity on my social networks talking about good and bad hiring practices in tech. It prompted me to share my experience getting hired at The Nerdery. This generated some follow up and in consultation with Nerd Experience (NX, or HR for those outside of the world of Nerds), we wrote up this explanation of what we feel is the best way to hire Nerds.

It starts with skilled recruiters

We rarely use external recruiters at The Nerdery. Instead, we rely on a team of recruiting Nerds: our NX talent advocates. These NX’ers work, eat and play alongside engineering and user experience (UX) Nerds every day. Our talent advocates are hired with an eye for understanding what kind of person makes The Nerdery tick: capable, curious people who are passionate about what they do. They don't show up every day looking to fill a quota, but are passionate about making The Nerdery the best place in the world for Nerds to work.

Would you be happy here?

Our Nerds get to work with other talented software engineers, strategists, designers and problem solvers to create digital solutions that better people’s lives and drive business outcomes. Our most engaged Nerds are those who enjoy collaboration, are professionally and personally curious, and have a strong desire to learn, grow and be challenged. They are energized by helping each other succeed. Our talent advocates work with you to discover if your work style would thrive within The Nerdery.

Screening questions developed by our engineers

While many of the screening questions we ask are similar to ones you'll hear from other companies, our questions have been developed by senior engineers in each of our disciplines (Java, C#, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, iOS, Android and UX). We've even gone further and given our talent advocates an understanding of why we think the question is valuable and what makes a good answer in our context. We give the talent advocate examples of answers that indicate varying levels of understanding both within and across the different development disciplines that we hire. Because our technical interview process does take some time, we want to be sure that we're not wasting yours. If you pass our recruiting screen, it's because we think you have an excellent chance to be successful in our technical interview process and at The Nerdery.

A real problem to solve

So far what we've described doesn't differ, at least structurally, from much of what you'd experience with other companies. The involvement of our senior engineers in the screen design probably sets us apart from other companies somewhat, but as an applicant you won't see that difference directly even though it impacts who makes it to the technical interview.

It's in our technical interviews that you'll begin to experience the difference that The Nerdery offers. Those same senior engineers who helped with the recruiting screen develop and maintain our technical interview process. We call it the NAT or Nerdery Assessment Test.

The NAT is customized for each discipline. It's a simple yet realistic problem for you to solve. In the NAT you'll see the same sorts of resources and constraints that you would find on typical Nerdery projects: understanding requirements, working with APIs and/or databases, designing application architecture and implementing a site or mobile application. Exactly the sort of thing you would do every day at The Nerdery.

While the problem is relatively small, it will still take some time for you to accomplish. We want you to have the opportunity to show us your skill set in a meaningful way. We don't use whiteboard problems. We let you solve a real problem using your own tools at your own pace on your own time. The skills you'll need to demonstrate in the problem are very similar, though limited in scope, to those you'll use here.

Documentation, similar to what you'd get on a real project

As part of the problem, we'll give you documentation on the problem to be solved. There are no tricks. We've done our best to make the documentation, a project scope, as complete as possible. It describes the problem that we need you to solve and gives you guidance on what we're looking for — and what we're not. To keep the amount of time down, we even give you some boilerplate code tailored to the discipline that you're applying for. You can choose to use it or not.

Of course, as a developer, you know that all documentation is, at best, incomplete. We also set you up with a technical sponsor who can answer your questions. While they won't tell you how to do your implementation they can help you if you have problems accessing any of the resources you need or if you need clarification on any of the requirements. We want to make sure that you enjoy the process (hey, you're writing code, that's got to be a good thing) as much as possible by making it easy to get the information you need to succeed.

We're not looking for one specific implementation. We want you to craft the solution that you think is best. It needs to meet the project requirements, but beyond that you have free rein to show us what you know. The project documentation will also give you a heads up for things you might be asked about  later in a technical interview that aren't required in your submission.

Consistent, example-based scoring rubric

There is a side of the NAT that you won't see but it's important to our success in hiring the best Nerds: our example-based rubric for evaluating your NAT submission. We score your NAT along the same dimensions that we use internally for our developer evaluation process. We use a simple 0-4 point scale for each of these dimensions, ranging from Not Implemented to Exceptional. For each level in the scale we have examples of the kind of code we would expect to see for a solution to be given that score. This helps us to eliminate inconsistencies based on which senior engineer scores your NAT.

While we look at your resume in the process, it's your code that counts. Score well enough with your code and you'll get a second interview with the technical interview team. Regardless of how well you score, you'll get feedback on how you could improve your NAT submission. We've had several engineers take that feedback, devote themselves to improving their skills, then re-apply (we ask that you wait a few months before re-applying) and get hired.

Technical interviews are focused on your solution

If you're selected for a technical interview, you'll sit down with a team of developers, your potential manager and your talent advocate. This might be at our site or over a Google Hangout. The technical interview gives a chance for people besides the talent advocate to get to know you and your background. Expect some traditional interview questions about how you like to work, what you do for fun and what you're passionate about. Our technical questions, though, will generally be focused on your NAT solution. We'll probe at bugs we might have discovered, talk about the extensions we asked you to think about in the project scope, and generally go through the code looking at the choices you made and why. This part of the interview feels very much like a code review and you'll get feedback on your solution. We try to keep this informal and relaxed. We know it can be scary to have someone else look at your code. Our goal is to learn together whether you would be successful at The Nerdery.

How we evaluate

The technical interview is designed to help us discover not only what you're capable of based on your skills and experience, but also the potential you have to grow at The Nerdery. We're looking for technically-curious developers who have a real passion for their craft. At the same time, you'll be working with other highly-skilled people who are looking to help you get better as well as for help in making themselves better developers. The review portion of our interview helps us to gauge how you take and give feedback. It's not an easy interview, but our hope is that even the interview process helps you to grow as a developer.

Obviously we think, and talk, a lot about the candidate when we've completed the interview. Our commitment to you is to work as hard in evaluating you as you have in preparing your NAT and participating in the interview. Invariably, though, we always ask a variant on a couple of questions as a team: Would you want this person on your project team? Do you see this person having a positive impact on The Nerdery?

Ultimately our goal is not just to fill a job, but to build the best place in the world for Nerds to work. That starts with hiring people who make us better than we are today. We hope that is you.

Want to learn more about what it's like to be a Nerd? Contact us or apply here.

Meet the Nerds who are invested in your goals, your deadlines and your business. Today we’re highlighting Danny Estavillo, Branch Director at our Phoenix office, who shares a little bit about himself and what he loves to do both inside and outside of The Nerdery.

How long have you worked at The Nerdery? Nine months

Area of expertise: I sell ice cubes to Eskimos and parkas to Phoenicians. Seriously, Consultative Sales is where I feel the strongest. Listening to customers, understanding their issues/goals and helping them find technical solutions to overcome problems or achieve their mission.

Favorite type of project to work on: This may sound a bit cliché but I love working on projects that make a difference in the world beyond the software that we are developing. We are currently working on a project with a medical device company that will provide relief to millions of people worldwide. We are a small part of that, but it’s awesome to play a role!

Favorite part about working here: Collaboration. Everyone is so willing to jump in and get it done. It is super refreshing to be part of an organization that is the real deal in making things happen for our customers. I also love the snacks, beer and the endless supply of coffee!

When people ask you what you do, or what The Nerdery is, what do you say? I say that I am the voice to an amazing bunch of talented and dynamic Nerds in the Southwest. I focus on making sure that companies in the Southwest get access to some wildly talented software professionals to help solve their business problems.

What are you the most proud of, personally and professionally? Man, I am super proud of being a dad, it is the coolest thing and a huge honor. Professionally, I am very proud of helping my wife start her own mental health private practice so that she can live out her dream of providing much needed mental health resources to people facing some of the toughest areas of life.

Tell us a little bit about your life outside of work: I am not as lean and not as mean but I am a proud U.S. Marine veteran. I love Arizona! I was born and raised in the desert and never plan on leaving. The desert keeps you on your toes; everything is trying to kill you: snakes, scorpions, drought and haboobs… gotta love it! I am a Sun Devil for life… GO Devils! I used my sales skills to convince a woman far too beautiful and far too smart to marry me nearly 10 years ago. We have a one year old daredevil named Luca and a five month old aspiring “scientist ninja princess” (daddy wants her to know she is a badass) named Tula.

Any final remarks? We would love to meet other Nerds in the Southwest. If you're interested in becoming a Nerd check out our careers page or stop by CO+HOOTS to have a beer with us and chat!

Every year The Nerdery hosts a themed holiday party for its employees at a local venue, and every year, I struggle with one of my personal demons. To be perfectly honest, I don’t like large social gatherings. For me, there is no worse hell than wandering through a crowd of 800 people, making uncomfortable small talk while trying to find the three or four people I want to hang out with. I suppose that makes me the perfect stereotype for someone who works at a place called The Nerdery.

But, this is not an insurmountable problem. In fact, we have the technology to make gatherings like this a more enjoyable experience for the socially-averse among us. Given that today the majority of Americans have sensor-laden, internet-connected supercomputers in their pockets, it makes sense to use this to technology to our advantage. With powerful hardware like this so available, all it takes is some clever software to unlock its potential. And so, NerdFinder was born.

NerdFinder is a proof-of-concept prototype developed by the mobile engineers at The Nerdery. At its core, it is a native Android and iOS app that scans for beacons located throughout the event venue. These beacons act like miniature lighthouses that broadcast radio frequency signals in an approximately 100-foot radius. For this application, it's probably easiest to think of these beacons as extremely tiny GPS satellites. However, instead of orbiting the Earth, they are located in fixed positions — on a wall, under a table, or even floating in the hotel pool thanks to a waterproof 3D-printed enclosure. Given that the location of each beacon is fixed, they can be associated with a specific set of latitude/longitude coordinates. When the app detects the beacon’s radio signal it knows where it is located in the physical world without having to rely on a clear view of the sky required to obtain a GPS signal. Although this prototype was originally envisioned for tracking people throughout a venue, it could easily be repurposed as an indoor navigation system, perhaps as a way for new employees to find their way around an office. Until now, valuable applications of technologies like this were few and far between; we're excited about the opportunities to apply this to real-world challenges people are facing on a large scale.

This is all well and good, but to me the interesting part isn’t knowing where you are, but where your friends are. To facilitate this, the NerdFinder app uses the Firebase Realtime Database to broadcast location changes to other users. When another user opens the app, it automatically receives the latest location updates from the Firebase cloud. This makes it easy to search for your friends and plot their locations on a map in order to ascertain the most direct route between two people. The NerdFinder app also leverages Firebase Cloud Messaging as a way to interact with other users via push notifications. Because playing a game of ring-around-the-rosie when trying to find your friends seriously cuts into the amount of time you could all be enjoying a beer together, a simple user-to-user messaging system is crucial. The app allows the user to “poke” another user with preset messages such as “I’m headed your way,” or “Come find me.” Tapping the notification shows your location on the venue map relative to the other user.

Innovative projects like these are why I love working at The Nerdery. Working with such a talented group of individuals with diverse skill sets makes rapidly prototyping ideas like these an easy, collaborative effort. Even though this is a fairly robust solution to a niche problem, the success of this project proved to me that custom software truly can improve the lives of users.

Want to learn more about what it's like to be a Nerdery Android Engineer? Contact us or apply here.

Cullyn A. reached out to us on Facebook with two questions: 
“I see Facebook posts asking me to copy and share with warnings that if I don't share I have a callous disregard for starving puppies or some such thing. I have also been traumatized by my IT department telling me to never, ever share anything, download anything or touch anything, and to be constantly vigilant of potentially lethal viruses secretly lurking behind pictures of puppies. It's very stressful. How safe is it to copy and paste? And why is it so important to my IT department that I not do these things?”

Let me answer your second question, “Why is it so important to my IT department that I not do these things?” first as it may provide context to your first question.

It should be very common to any IT/security professional to view humans as the weakest link in terms of security. While there could be any number of measures in place such as firewalls, VPNs and anti-viruses, unsecure networks and servers generally come down to someone clicking one wrong link or downloading one wrong thing. While you personally may know your way around a computer, there are a vast majority of people who don’t. When IT is telling you not to do particular things, this is likely just their effort to inform and promote awareness of the dangers of the web. While that may not be the approach I would take, I am a firm believer that awareness is an integral part — if not the most important part — of any aspect of security.

While the dangers of the internet may not surface on your portion of Facebook, they’ve likely affected someone you know. One example as to why IT would not want you sharing things is what is uncommonly known as a “clickbait worm.” If you’re not familiar with the term, clickbait is when web content is created in a way that psychologically exploits the reader’s curiosity using compelling headlines. When someone clicks on the article to read it, the service promoting the article generates online advertising revenue. When navigating from Facebook to the new site, a pop-up or a similar introduction may appear stating to “Like our page,” “Subscribe” or “Share now!” While that pop-up may initially look harmless, it may have been a disguised iframe. An iframe (short for inline frame) is an HTML element that allows an external webpage to be embedded in an HTML document. Unlike traditional frames – which were used to create the structure of a webpage – iframes can be inserted anywhere within a web page layout. That iframe may have been cleverly coded so that when it is selected, it causes you to unknowingly share and spread a link of the creator's choosing.

That’s just one simple example, but this method can be commonly chained and/or combined with redirecting you to a site that asks you for a realistic “Facebook” login. Many other things can allow the attacker to target someone who has not learned of these warning signs, or doesn’t get on the internet often to enter their login and password in their field. This method chain is known as a type of phishing attack.

Long story short, the IT department is trying to protect you from what may at first glance appear harmless. A lesson here is to be wary of the destinations of links and pop-ups before selecting them. If you are really worried, I would advise installing a script blocker; a popular one is NoScript. This will disallow JavaScript from loading on various pages unless you allow them to load, which can prevent a number methods that attackers will use in attempts to steal or harvest data.

Moving on to your first question: “How safe is it to copy and paste?”

The act of copying and pasting is not inherently bad and is integral to using a computer, although there are some risk scenarios that are important to know and understand. When you perform the act of copying using either “CMD + C” or “CTRL + C” (depending on your keyboard), the text, file or object that you have highlighted is stored in your computer’s clipboard. There are two specific vectors that attackers aim for on your computer’s clipboard; the first is accessing the contents of what is stored in the clipboard, and the second is adding additional data to the clipboard than what the user originally intended. While accessing a simple copied sentence in your clipboard might not sound like a big problem, this poses a more significant risk to people who feel safe copying and pasting passwords.  

In the past, attackers have utilized JavaScript or Flash to access and take the contents of a clipboard that could be embedded on a website. They then utilize methods of social engineering to get a user to access the website that contains the malicious JavaScript or Flash code. The attacker could then access or harvest the data from your clipboard. Luckily, many of the major and updated browsers have measures to aid in preventing these types of attacks. It’s important to note, however, that these attacks still occur in these browsers. If you or one of your less tech-fluent friends are using an out-of-date browser — such as the more legacy versions of Internet Explorer (e.g. IE8) — these attacks can succeed at a much higher rate. I would like to note again that NoScript also prevents the JavaScript from loading in this instance. It also, by default, does not allow Flash to run unless allowed.

It should also be noted that Android clipboard stores a history of copied data which has to be manually deleted. Malicious applications installed on the mobile device that have the appropriate permissions are able to access this clipboard and potentially send this data to wherever it is aimed at. In this scenario, be sure to only allow the permissions on an app that do not pose a risk to your data. Also, clear the clipboard frequently of sensitive data in case your phone is lost or stolen.

In regards to the second vector of adding additional content to the clipboard, there are various methods attackers use to add additional data to the clipboard, one of the most popular being with JavaScript. An attacker, or even a clever marketer, can embed JavaScript into a web application that, when you copy text from the application, adds additional text to the clipboard. Such as when copying the text “The code is 10” from a site that hosts problem solving solutions, the paste output could be “The code is 10 – Solutions found at www.solveallthethings.com.”

While that example is innocent enough, the attacker or crafter could add extra characters into terminal commands. A common example of this: when copying the text echo “not evil,” what actually gets copied is echo “evil”\n where the \n is a new line character that causes the previously pasted command to move to a new line without the user needing to press the enter or return key. A sophisticated attack using this could be to run a various number of commands after what appeared to be a “safe” copy that would take over or compromise the victim’s machine. While you may not work in terminal, social engineering attempts could be made to get you to perform what may seem like a harmless command.

While both topics of copying and pasting and sharing posts seem to be relatively harmless at a glance, there are many scenarios in which attacks may lead you into a false sense of security and onto bigger problems. To help protect yourself against some of the dangers that lurk online, I recommend keeping your technologies up-to-date by updating your machine operating systems and using a current browser. Browsers are doing their best to roll out updates to ensure that their users are safe using their technologies, but there will always be risks. If you are copying data make sure that it is done on a legitimate and trusted website. If you’re sharing links, ensure that you know where the links are going and that they’re trustworthy sources to prevent the spread of malicious links. If you need to paste content from a worrisome source, paste the content into a non-formatted text editor to remove formatted content, then re-copy and paste into the destination.

Make sure you’re only downloading files from trusted sources. For measures of safe browsing, look for additional tools such as NoScript to prevent the auto-loading of JavaScript on web applications. If you are concerned about your personal computer, look into more sophisticated anti-virus tools as well.

Awareness is the key to knowing what is out there and what to avoid, and understanding that humans are inevitably the last link in the chain when it comes to preventing security issues from arising.

In order for a digital transformation to be successful, it has to become part of an organization’s core business strategy. Getting there isn’t easy. A successful digital transformation needs to be integrated with a management approach that builds one unified digital organization, not siloed digital departments.

We’ve identified five mistakes businesses make – sometimes without even knowing it – that get in the way of alignment and send the transformation veering off course.

Mistake 1: Treating digital transformation as a one-time project.
A successful digital transformation is not something that starts on Monday, ends on Friday and is forgotten over the weekend. True transformations use software to change how a business delivers value to its customers. It makes things faster and easier; it solves customers’ problems and helps them perform better.
The fix: Connect your digital transformation to future business goals. As you achieve those goals, the digital transformation will become engrained in how you operate.

Mistake 2: Not listening to users.
Only users can tell you want they want from your business. Marketers, salespeople, C-suite execs and anyone else in a company can think they know what users want, but the only way to know for sure is to actually ask your users. Listening to them will give you a roadmap for which problems to solve.
The fix: Take what you learn from your users and build a human-centered approach to your transformation. This will put you on the clearest path toward achieving your business goals.

Mistake 3: Treating symptoms instead of solving problems.
If you don’t align your goals and metrics at the very beginning, you’re going to chase the wrong solutions throughout your digital transformation. By pinpointing what’s important, you’ll be putting your time and resources behind the things that have the biggest impact on making your transformation successful. 
The fix: Track where people exit your digital experience before completing an action, then use qualitative research (like interviews) to find out why they left. That’s where you’ll spot the root issues to fix with your digital transformation.

Mistake 4: Focusing only on what users see.
Re-styling a website may give people the impression that you’ve evolved your digital experience, but the illusion will shatter if it didn’t fix the problems that caused users to leave before achieving your business goal. Overhauling a platform’s appearance without addressing the functionality problems is not transformation.
The fix: Give your teams the freedom to work together. A collaborative culture encourages sharing efforts and resources in a way that helps individuals see how their roles affect the entire scope of a project. Which leads us to our last fatal mistake in digital transformations…

Mistake 5: Living in silos.
Internal politics and unnecessary bureaucracy are the enemy of good intentions, and they rear their destructive heads when silos persist in a digital transformation. When roadblocks arise, you can waste money replicating efforts because one silo doesn’t talk to another. 
The fix: For digital transformation to work and last, you have to connect the goal-setters at the top of the organization with the people who implement the solutions. That will show you how connected everything truly is, and you’ll see that empowering people at every level to collaborate and make decisions is what unlocks genuine transformation.

If you’re at the beginning of your digital transformation or you’re trying to get past a hurdle, our eBook, The Truth Behind Digital Transformation, provides an in-depth approach for long-term success.

Getting a digital transformation off the ground isn’t easy, and securing buy-in at the top of the organization can take a long time. Once you get the go-ahead and the funding starts to come through, the pressure falls on business decision makers (BDMs) to start showing results. But how?

A digital transformation is about lasting cultural change within a company, not just a project that starts and ends. When we work with BDMs, we help cast the overall vision for where they want the business to go. Where does their transformation need to be in five weeks, five months and – ultimately – five years? Then we work backwards to know what to deliver in the near-term to get there.

After that, there are four things that are critical to a successful digital transformation:

1. Alignment at the top. Creating alignment between the people who are setting the goals and the people who are implementing the solutions will make sure everyone understands what the organization needs to do in order for the transformation to be successful. With this focus, digital will become a core part of your business strategy, not just an add-on to what you already do.
2. Put users first. Any successful transformation has to rely on listening to your users. Whether it’s through analyzing data or gathering feedback, your users tell you what to focus on to deliver a valuable digital experience. By understanding how people interact with your digital experience, you’ll find the major pain points you can address right away to show early results, and be less likely to spend time chasing something that will only have a marginal impact on your business goals. For the long-term, you’ll have the advantage of a human-centered approach and seeing your transformation through your users’ eyes from the very beginning.
3. Focus on the right metrics. We try to help businesses align their goals with the right metrics at the very beginning so they know what success looks like. Some organizations focus on the wrong metrics and end up with misconceptions about their actual results. For example, if the business goal is mobile app performance, we want to make sure that gets judged by app metrics like in-app sales or user retention. If we’re judging mobile app success by marketing metrics, we aren’t going to get the right sense of how it’s performing with users.
4. Pick the low-hanging fruit. Once you have metrics aligned and can focus on delivering what users want, the low-hanging fruit becomes apparent. Address the critical short-term issues that improve performance or remove roadblocks. Depending on the type of systems you have, this could be anything from adding a quality control element to making a technology scalable for future growth. It’ll show that you are able to quickly adapt to the challenges of a digital transformation and make an impact across the business.                                                       

Achieving quick wins is only the start of a lasting digital transformation: a good foundation for the heavy lifting that’s to come. For a deeper look at how to create a digital transformation that gets results, download our eBook, The Truth Behind Digital Transformation.

World Information Architecture Day (WIAD) is an annual one-day conference focused on fostering a community of practice, learning and teaching of information architecture. The conference was started with support from the Information Architecture Institute and has grown consistently in number of attendees and locations since the first event in 2012. This year, WIAD will take place in 58 locations spread across 24 countries and five continents.

The Nerdery is hosting the inaugural Minneapolis event at our Bloomington headquarters on February 18, 2017. I’ve been involved in the event for three years and I’m excited to help bring WIAD to Minnesota.

The theme this year is “Information Strategy and Structure” and speakers will present topics related to Information Architect Abby Covert’s book, How To Make Sense of Any Mess. Architecting information occurs in many different professions and all are welcome at the event.

The event is free and coffee, light snacks and lunch will be provided.

Learn more about WIAD and view registration information below. We hope to see you there!

Event details:

When: Saturday, February 18, 2017 from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM (CST)

Where: The Nerdery, 9555 James Ave S #245, Bloomington, MN 55431

Cost: Free

Learn more and register here and view the live stream using this link.

Take a moment and think about a piece of software you use and rely on every day. Maybe even pull it up in another tab or on your phone. Now, imagine what the interface would look like if there weren’t any words in it.

For example, we use Gmail here at The Nerdery, and Google is one of the most successful software companies in the world. However, here’s what Gmail looks like with no words:

As you can see, there isn’t much of an interface left. The words in software experiences go far beyond the content that fills them. Often, they make up a huge portion of the interface itself.

Words require as much design intentionality as interactions and visuals, but rarely get as much attention. No matter how beautiful a design may be and no matter how intuitive the navigation is, if you aren’t intentional about the words, your product won’t be nearly as effective as it could be.

Voice and tone

Imagine your product as a person who is speaking to your users. This conversation is actually happening whenever anyone uses your product. The software says things like “INVALID USERNAME/PASSWORD.” or “Get Started!” and users will nod in agreement or roll their eyes in annoyance. Testing language with your users is a great way to see how people are reacting to the language in your product, and being aware of this conversation will help you be intentional about your product’s voice.  

Voice is the personality of your product. It should reflect your brand and be consistent. Software is designed and built by people, often lots of people. If the team doesn’t come together to agree on the product’s voice, you’ll end up creating software with multiple personalities. Establishing a product’s voice takes away a lot of the guesswork around designing for the product’s business goals. It also frees up your team to spend more time in key features and less time debating the label of a specific call to action.

Tone is how the product’s voice plays out in different situations. You wouldn’t speak to your mother the same way you speak to your banker (at least I hope not). Tone decisions should be based on an understanding of the situation a user is in, how they are feeling at the time, and the voice you’ve established for your product.

How hard could it be?

While this may sound simple, intentional voice and tone requires commitment and an openness to iterate over time. One product that has gotten a lot of attention for its unique and engaging voice is Slack, a messaging platform for teams. Here’s one of my favorite error messages from Slack:

I love this way of addressing a momentary setback. It’s a good-natured attempt to break the tension and is clear about what’s happening with the technology. Slack sees this as a big priority for their product’s experience, so they employ an editorial team dedicated to making this happen throughout their software. For most companies, however, those kind of resources aren’t available or prioritized.

Additionally, while humorous messages like these work in this situation, most people would feel differently if this error was preventing them from accessing financial data or accomplishing a time-driven task. An attempt to engage your audience could backfire and cause your business to suffer.

Start small, dream big

Voice and tone are worth investing in. If you rub someone the wrong way during a checkout process, financial transaction or any action that’s key to the success of your business, it could mean lost revenue and irritated customers that are unlikely to return.

While voice and tone take commitment, you can make a big difference by starting small. I typically help clients by facilitating collaborative workshops where we define voice, then create prototypical content for different facets of the product experience. After that, my next priority is to document the results in a way that make them accessible to anyone involved in the product’s development.

Even if you don’t start developing formal guidelines, evaluating design decisions through the lens of voice and tone will help your product find its voice, and your customers will reward you with their time and money. Start running A/B and usability tests on UI text so you understand the business impact of the language you’re using.

Whether you go big or start small, you can be intentional. Your users will thank you and your design team will be more effective.

If this interests you, you may be interested in a workshop I’m teaching with Andy Welfle at Confab Intensive this year. It’s a deep dive into voice and tone for software interfaces.

Incredible technology design isn’t always good enough. If a business is creating a product, they have to be accountable to the user. There really are no sales that are strictly B2B anymore. Even if you’re selling a proposition to another business, that business will then put it in the hands of users. If people don’t use it, the value proposition typically fails.

In our latest Internet of X podcast episode we spoke with Scott Nelson, CEO of Reuleaux Technology, Tim O'Brien, Vice President of Sales for Intelligent Product Solutions and Mitch Maiman, CEO of Intelligent Product Solutions, about how to design IoT products that have the most impact.

Three criteria for useful IoT products

Scott explained that his company digs into the value proposition before a design is even started. Without the value proposition, they’re not designing something customers will actually use.

The end user is becoming more intelligent; they know the difference between a useful app and an unusable app. If the product becomes cumbersome at all, they’re going to set it aside and not use it.

Here are three criteria for a useful product:

1. You have to solve a real, important problem.

2. You have to be technically effective but also “behaviorally” effective in your design. By that, Scott means the product has to integrate with or modify the behavior of the end user. The use of the product is what generates the data.

3. You have to be accountable—particularly to the user. You must remove friction and make sure the product does what users expect it to do. Businesses often fail when they push technology at users instead of integrating into real problems.

So, what’s a good starting point for helping clients become successful? Where does design begin?

IoT, probably more than any other recent technology, is so tightly integrated with the business proposition and the user. Businesses must start with self-analysis: What user problems are we solving? What is the business model? Then go out and look at ecosystems.

Three differences in product design, then and now

The data.
Companies are no longer designing the product for the product’s sake. They’re designing it for the use of the product and the data that comes from that use. For example, think about all the things Fitbit can do with its data beyond measuring activity.

The ecosystem when you design.
Everything is interconnected.

The business change.
Businesses are no longer selling a product once. If companies have the philosophy of selling a product and moving on to the next, they’ll fail miserably. The real connected product sells every time a user operates it. It’s a purchase decision every time a user updates the product or app. If they’re not using it continually, they’re not buying it continually.

Conclusion

One of the worst things that could happen to your product is for someone to see it, think it’s great, but never consider using it. Design has changed. People must use what you create. It’s the only way products can make it today.

This post is based on an interview from the Internet of X podcast. Listen to the insights and wisdom from our guests by subscribing to Internet of X on iTunes.

If you don't use iTunes, you can listen to every episode on Stitcher by clicking here.

Welcome to Episode 08 of This Is the QA Podcast. The Nerdery’s quality assurance podcast is written, produced and recorded by our acclaimed quality assurance team each month. Need to catch up on our past episodes? Listen here.

In this month’s QA API segment, we’ll examine HBO’s Westworld and the importance of QA in pop culture. In QA News, we’ll discuss 2017 trends and how to secure software code in a world that will have 111 billion lines of new code this year alone. Finally, Kelly Lamkins moves one chair to the left to join us for our Repro Steps segment and shed some light on the often misunderstood concepts that drive QA and quality control (QC).

Links from this month’s episode:

Nerdery.com blog post: 2016: A Brief Year in Review
Article: Westworld and the Importance of QA
Article: QA trends to be aware of in 2017
Article: World will need to secure 111 billion lines of new software code in 2017
Article: Two out of three developers are self-taught, and other trends from a survey of 56,033 coders
Article: Application Security Report 2017
Reddit thread: QA vs. QC
Upcoming event: DevFest MN
Upcoming event: Chicago Overnight Website Challenge
Nerdery blog post: New Practices in Digital Strategy

This week’s community question:

Are there any other interesting examples of QA in pop culture, or examples of a glaring absence of QA in pop culture? Let us know at PodcastQA@Nerdery.com, or by commenting on our Facebook page or sending us a Tweet.

We are looking for your comments, suggestions and questions. Did you love what you heard? Have suggestions on how we can improve? Either way, we want to know! This show is for the QA and QA-curious community; we want to serve you, our clients and peers, with the best QA podcast on the interwebs.

So don’t be a stranger — let us know how we can improve your listening experience.

Here’s an astonishing fact from IBM: 90 percent of all data on Earth was created in the last two years. With more and more connected devices coming online, we expect that percentage will only increase. Why do we bring this up when talking about digital transformations? Because as the sheer amount of data in the world has grown, assessing and understanding it has become a critical first step for a successful transformation effort.

For a digital transformation to become a real cultural change within your organization, you have to align around the things that will provide value to your users. That’s how you make your offerings better and get more users to take actions that achieve your business goals. Assessing data builds a route for strategic improvement in your business. Here’s how to make it happen.

Step 1: Get your data house in order

Data rarely comes in a nice, neat package ready for instant analysis. Most of the time it needs to be extracted from its source, whether that’s a point-of-sale terminal, website analytics, app metrics or something else. Then it will likely need to be transferred into a format that can be understood and loaded into a system to be analyzed. This is what makes having a partner who invests in understanding your data so valuable; a one-size-fits-all approach rarely fits.

Step 2: Derive business insights

Once your data is in order, you can start studying it to get business insights. Using tools like machine learning and mathematical modeling, data scientists pull out insights that can help guide your transformation. Sometimes the insights answer a question you’re already asking — a great result. Other times they will bring to the surface something you didn’t know and wouldn’t have thought needs to be addressed in your transformation. It could be a correlation you hadn’t spotted or a path through your digital product that converts at a phenomenal rate.

Step 3: Align your transformation

This is where the work in steps one and two starts to pay off. With insights in hand, you can focus the transformation on the tactical things that will have the biggest result. One of the biggest digital transformation mistakes we see is when businesses treat symptoms instead of solving underlying problems. When your transformation is aligned, you’re much less likely to make that mistake because the focus is eliminating roadblocks standing in the way of achieving business goals.

A successful digital transformation gets you to a point where digital is fully ingrained in the way you operate. It’s not an add-on or a separate project; it’s what your business is. Done right, it provides users and customers with better value and leads to higher returns.

For a full look at the reality behind the digital transformation trend, and how to make yours a success, download our eBook, The Truth Behind Digital Transformation.

“Without big data analytics, companies are blind and deaf, wandering out onto the web like deer on a freeway,” says tech author Geoffrey Moore. Many companies have effective data collection procedures, but few maximize their data with state-of-the-art analytical tools. Let’s walk through how machine learning can be used to improve customer personalization.

Improving user experience

All good websites and applications focus significant effort into providing a positive experience to the end user. User-centered design is a great way to engage consumers and to ensure their experience with your website or application is productive and positive. Typically, users are clustered into meaningful personas and design choices are informed by their unique traits and goals. The use of predictive analytics and machine learning makes it possible to extend UX principles beyond personas all the way down to the individual user. This level of specificity can help guide users to content that is most applicable to their unique requirements. Many top companies have used this approach to deliver bullseye-precision targeted marketing while providing an environment that is engaging and unique to each user. The most pervasive examples of this are Amazon and Netflix.

Amazon is able to track individual shopping habits, and suggest items that are highly relevant to each user. Amazon doesn’t rely on focus groups or persona matching to find these items; they use machine learning and individual usage data to provide useful product recommendations. Until very recently in retail history, personalization has required face-to-face salesmen to identify customer needs and guide them through the most applicable options, but massive amounts of user data and machine-learning techniques can now be used to provide that service in an automated fashion.  

The benefits of product recommendations in retail are obvious. Well-placed product marketing can have a direct impact on sales. However, personalization is beneficial in other ways, too.  Netflix’s video recommendations is a great example of this. While they are still ostensibly solving a product-recommendation problem, the business goals are quite different. Netflix operates on a subscription-based business model, so while they don’t directly benefit from improved recommendations, they are able to provide a user experience that is so unique and engaging that customers keep coming back for more.

Data science workflow

The first step always includes a critical evaluation of the available data. This stage is remarkably unsexy, but absolutely important. Typically, the data science team will work with analysts and Database Administrators (DBAs) to get a better understanding of what data exists, how it is stored and the level of quality to expect. Depending on the initial investigation, the project will go one of two ways. If the right data isn’t available – or is too low-quality – the next step is to suggest modifications to the existing data collection procedures so this project can be retried once enough high-quality data has been saved. Conversely, if the data is deemed acceptable, then the project can continue.

After data evaluation, the next step is to develop a testable hypothesis. Here’s an example of a hypothesis: “Implementing a neural network to provide recommended content will improve customer engagement.” From this statement, the data science team will have to determine effective strategies and appropriate metrics for qualifying success.  

Once the hypothesis is established, high-quality and objective tests need to be designed.  Testing is typically done offline first, then moved online in a production environment. The offline stage is where most of the work is done and where many data scientists prefer to live. This stage tends to resemble a typical science experiment, where the environment is controlled and the results are evaluated with rigid mathematical principles.

Once the best techniques are discovered offline, they are implemented online with real users and evaluated with A/B testing. While many data scientists prefer to rank models and algorithms with highly-mathematical metrics like accuracy score and root-mean squared error, A/B tests are critical to determine true effectiveness. While these advanced metrics typically correlate with online results, it is not uncommon to develop a model that is statistically superior at predicting outcomes – yet fails to improve member engagement. It’s important to identify the key business metrics and only choose techniques that provide tangible value.

Is your organization ready to unlock its data collection potential? Download our eBook, A Pragmatic Approach to Big Data.

It’s my pleasure today to report from CO+HOOTS, The Nerdery’s co-working space in Phoenix, that The Nerdery Foundation’s inaugural Overnight Website Challenge in Phoenix is underway. So, happy inauguration day, Phoenix. For 24 hours, I’m enjoying the collaborative company of these teams and their designated nonprofits:

• AKOS with Art Odyssey Arizona

• Buddhist Panda Posse with Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention Foundation (ARPF)

• Empollones del Desierto (Nerds of the Desert) with Pedal With Warriors

• Prism with Million Dollar Teacher Project

Here’s my opening letter to participants and in today’s event guide:

Dear Overnight Website Challenge participants,

This weekend, we’re glad to welcome the good people of Phoenix to our growing network of nerdathons. Today marks The Nerdery Foundation’s first tour date of our series of 2017 Overnight Website Challenge events, heading northward next to Kansas City and Chicago before bringing it all back home in Minneapolis.

Until this first-ever Overnight Website Challenge in Phoenix, volunteers at this community-service initiative have donated more than six-million dollars in professional services to 175 nonprofit organizations. We’re so glad to be able to add four deserving Phoenix nonprofits to this growing lists of orgs using technology to make an even bigger impact in the community. Nonprofits, thank you for your service; we’re honored for the opportunity to offer ours in return.  

The Nerdery Foundation’s mission is to activate the passion and skills of technologists to better our world. Today through tomorrow morning, all of you volunteers from throughout our community will further this mission. We’re grateful to spend this weekend with so many community-minded volunteers, and grateful for the generous support of event sponsors who contribute so much toward making this a positive and impactful experience for all involved.

Thank you,

Ginger Bucklin, Executive Director, The Nerdery Foundation

Ever had a project go over budget? Been on a timeline crunch? Built a product with too many features? Are you trying to figure out what Internet of Things means for your business? We’re excited to announce our new monthly event focused on helping you through these common project challenges and more: Nerd Therapy.

Our goal is to connect passionate technology and business professionals in our community—and for you to come away thinking, “Good talk.” Once a month, with the help of our Nerds, we'll walk you through the intricacies of applying technology to business solutions. You’ll learn how to untangle the users from the personas and the APIs from the IPs through panel discussions led by technology experts.

Each event will start with appetizers, beer from our in-house, data-collecting taps and networking – followed by a casual and interactive panel discussion. Therapeutic discussions will range from topics like website accessibility, mobile development, the Internet of Things and tools you'll need to aid you along your digital journey.

January’s topic: Why Everyone Hates Your Website

Tuesday, Jan. 24, 5:30-8:00 p.m. at The Nerdery Minneapolis

• When was the last time you edited your website content?
• Is your website accessible on all devices?
• Are your calls-to-action clear and easy to find?  
• Can users find what they are looking for?
• Most importantly, have you tested your site's functionality with real users?

Getting a process in place to build and maintain an effective digital presence is a challenge. We're here to help you navigate the twists and turns—we do it everyday. Attendees are encouraged to come prepared with their biggest or most common website concerns. Our panel of experts will address these issues from varying perspectives and dive into solutions that can be applied upfront in order to avoid costly speed bumps down the road.

Agenda:

• 5:30 - 6:00 p.m.: Appetizers, craft beer, networking and technology demonstrations, including a virtual reality room.
• 6:00 - 7:00 p.m.: Nerd Therapy panel discussion
• 7:00 - 8:00 p.m.: More appetizers, beer, networking and technology demonstrations

Panelists:

• Fred Beecher, Director of User Experience and Design
• Pam Butkowski, Director of Client Services
• Doua Xioung, Quality Assurance Engineer
• Brian Bell, Technology Manager

Don't you feel better already? We hope to see you there.

Register here.

Every month we feature one of our Nerds and have them share a little bit about themselves and what they love to do both inside and outside of The Nerdery. Today we’re highlighting Josh Anderson, Principal Software Engineer (Front-End) at our Minneapolis office.

How long have you worked at The Nerdery?
Six years

Area of expertise:
I work on the parts of websites that people interact with. I make sure that the sites we make are executed in a way that’s accessible, maintainable, secure and performant.

Favorite type of project:
It’s not really the “type” of project that’s important to me. What I really like is getting to know our clients and their businesses. I want our clients to be able to come to me with a problem and trust that I know enough about their business to help them make the right decision.

Quite often, when a new client comes in, they have a solution in mind and simply want us to execute it for them. Then, those clients start coming to us with problems they need helping solving. I really love when we start working with our clients to help them develop the right solutions for their businesses.

What do you enjoy most about working here?
Being a Principal Software Engineer allows me time to mentor other developers. It's really rewarding to see people grow in their careers and become leaders themselves.

When people ask you what you do, or what The Nerdery is, what do you say?
People always laugh when I tell them I work at the Nerdery. They usually say something like, “That fits you.” I tell them I work on websites. I usually try to spare most of the technical details so they don't fall asleep. I need them awake for my funny dad jokes.

Tell us a little bit about your life outside of work:
Ok, rapid fire... I have a wife, a son and two dogs. I grew up on a farm and have a Spotify playlist called, “Pickup trucks and mending fences” which is full of songs my dad and I used to listen to while we were working. I refuse to open crescent roll tubes. I recently tried contact lenses and it took me 57 minutes to get one in my eye. I prefer shorts with a five-inch inseam and my wife is very uncomfortable with that.

Are you an aspiring Nerd? Check out our open positions here.

Implementing a new piece of software once looked like this:

• Drive to the computer store
• Buy shrink-wrapped software
• Drive back to the office
• Install software
• ................
• Realize ROI

Those days are over, unless your target market is unreasonably excited to own the print materials for Civilization VI. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and mobile consumer applications have created entirely new business models for companies large and small—and require different ways of thinking about bringing digital products to market.

As you think about embarking on new software development, what is the best way to ensure that you are investing wisely in the effort?

Alignment, Alignment, Alignment

First, we consider where your business is. Are you starting a new venture? Are you a mid-market vendor trying to innovate and get ahead of the competition? Are you a mature, industry-leading enterprise? Is your business focused on services, product development or both? Shrink-wrap buying model, or SaaS? Awareness of where your business is, what your business is doing and alignment on business goals are central to building a successful strategy.

Next, let’s think about the target market for your new initiative. Who will buy this new product or service? How much value will they ascribe to your offering? Will they use your digital product in a server farm, at their workstation during the workday or on their mobile device while out on the town? User and market research can answer many of these questions and guide the development and design effort.

Finally, we’re ready to start developing a digital strategy: what you’re going to build, how you’ll build it, how much you’ll charge for it and what the ongoing feature roadmap looks like. The key is the preliminary business strategy analysis, with which the digital strategy is closely aligned. Without that alignment, digital efforts are doomed to difficulty or failure.

What Does Strategy Get Me?

Once you have a real digital strategy—alignment with business goals, a detailed digital charter and a project/feature roadmap—you have the tools to answer key questions about your new effort. Calculating ROI becomes a trivial task; you know that the new product or service will have an upfront and ongoing development cost, and will have specific positive impacts on revenue growth based on marketing and price points. Draw those lines on a timeline and their intersection represents the point at which cost turns into profit.

Digital Strategy The Nerdery Way

Once upon a time, The Nerdery made its name as an implementation partner for creative agencies. As we grew into user experience design, we brought a scientific, insights-driven approach to an area directed by so-called “genius” practices. “Genius” design practices were (and are) hit-or-miss, with an emphasis on “miss” when it comes to realizing real ROI.

Our strategy practice follows the same insights-driven approach as our software development and design practices. Every client is different—even within an industry vertical and market level, what works for one organization might fall flat with another. With each client, we spend upfront time understanding the business, the organization and its goals. This allows us to make recommendations and build a strategy that aligns with the client’s business instead of dictating terms that force significant and often painful changes to its operations and practices. Finally, as a one-stop partner, we can build a strategy that can move quickly into design and development with a consistent team and approach, making your partnership with The Nerdery an efficient and effective investment in your effort’s long-term success.

Curious what comes next? Read our eBook, The Anatomy of a Successful Digital Experience.

2016 gets a bad rap but we’re pretty proud of some of the things we accomplished in the past year. Excuse us while we #humblebrag for a moment. In 2016, we:

• Made the Inc. 5000 and Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal Fast 50 lists for the ninth year in a row
• Launched a new brand identity and website
• Promoted Tom O’Neill to CEO, with co-founders Mike Schmidt and Mike Derheim retaining leadership positions on The Nerdery’s board.
• Launched the monthly Nerd Therapy and Nerd Interface events at our Chicago office
• Announced the Phoenix and Kansas City 2017 Overnight Website Challenges
• Helped Extra Life Nerds raise more than $50,000 for Gillette Children’s Speciality Healthcare
• Hired 101 new Nerds
• Collected 172 pairs of socks, 20 scarves, 14 pairs of gloves, 12 hats, seven coats and two earmuffs in our annual sock and coat drive
• Raised $1,000 and provided more than 75 toys to Toys for Tots

In the digital realm, we covered everything from our brand launch to content strategy and mobile performance. Take a look at our ten most-loved blogs from the past year.

Nerdery.com Gets Brand Evolution, Redesigned By Nerds
One year ago, we revealed our brand evolution and new website. Communications Director Mark Malmberg describes the challenges and triumphs of the transition.

5 Myths Holding Back Your Mobile Performance
We cover a few misconceptions surrounding mobile sites and mobile apps to help you think through the right direction for your business.

A Proud Nerd
Our CEO Tom O’Neill shares his thoughts on the anxiety, humility and hard work that went into the launch of our new brand and website.

Overnight Website Challenge Evolving
Our approach to the annual Overnight Website Challenge is changing in 2017. Mike Derheim, Nerdery co-founder and Nerdery Foundation board member, explains the reasoning and timing behind the changes.

Profiles in Nerdery: Mike Ross
Easily one of the most-loved Nerds around here, photographer and videographer Mike Ross shares what makes him tick.

Making Content Strategy Practical
Content is the fabric of websites and software and it’s worth thinking through. Nerdery Chicago UX Designer Michael Metts presents it in a realistic, approachable way.

This Is the QA Podcast: Episode 01
In our debut quality assurance podcast episode, our team of QA engineers covers the IBM Black Team, the rise of chatbots and the anatomy of a QA engineer.

What I Look For in a Quality Assurance Engineer
Director of Quality Assurance Kai Esbensen covers the must-haves when it comes to finding and hiring successful QA team members.

Profiles in Nerdery: Gregg Walrod
Gregg, a Development Manager at our Chicago office, shares some of his adventures from Shanghai to Chicago as well as advice for tech professionals and Nerds-to-be.

Martian-Driven Development
Projects that leave engineers burned out and product owners unsatisfied aren’t fun for anyone. Technology Manager Josh Klun explains how to avoid getting stranded on Mars.

What would you like to see us achieve or cover on our blog in 2017?

Welcome to Episode 07 of This Is the QA Podcast. The Nerdery’s quality assurance podcast is written, produced and recorded by our acclaimed quality assurance team each month. Need to catch up on our past episodes? Listen here.

In this month’s episode, we’ll examine the relationship between developers and QA engineers by talking to one of our developers who used to be one of our QA engineers! In QA News, we’ll examine Microsoft’s plans to make Windows 10 compatible with ARM processors, Apple's use of their screen-reading technology VoiceOver to help the blind create software, and Subway winning Cigniti’s “Most Innovative” Award for Quality Assurance. Senior QA Engineer Perry Goy returns for our Repro Steps segment to talk about his visit to this fall’s Selenium conference in London, and I think we’ll hear a thing or two about Screenplay.

Links from this month’s episode:

• Nerdery Blog Post: 4 Key Perspectives That Shape a Digital Experience
• Blockward by Alex Hofer: iTunes/Google Play
• Article: Microsoft-Qualcomm deal finally puts Windows 10 and Win32 apps on ARM devices
• Article: Apple's guiding voice(over) helps the blind create software
• Article: SUBWAY Wins Cigniti’s “Most Innovative” Award for Quality Assurance Practices
• Selenium Conference 2016 videos

This week’s community question:
Have you transitioned from QA to another role in the software industry? Has your perspective on QA changed? If so, how? Let us know at PodcastQA@Nerdery.com, or by commenting on our Facebook page or sending us a Tweet.

We are looking for your comments, suggestions and questions. Did you love what you heard? Have suggestions on how we can improve? Either way, we want to know! This show is for the QA and QA-curious community; we want to serve you, our clients and peers with the best QA podcast on the interwebs.

So don’t be a stranger — let us know how we can improve your listening experience.

Building a new digital experience for your customers is a daunting challenge. For businesses looking outside their organization, the task can feel more difficult. Finding the right people to work with depends on understanding which type of partner will best fit your business needs and project.

A development resource is someone who can fill a specific role: implementing a technology, resolving a bug, installing hardware, etc. The resource’s job is to execute that responsibility but they typically won’t be involved with the larger aspects of project strategy, which is a great fit for clients who have specific requirements or need some quick updates to code.

A strategic partner may fill specific roles as well but they can also identify problems and potential solutions to achieve your business goals. When different strategic perspectives of the project overlap, a strategic partner can help make sure every part of the project drives back to the business goals – like growth or revenue – that your business wants to achieve. Focusing on those metrics will help you get past silos and keep the overall success of the company at the top of everyone’s agenda. That’s the value strategic partners provide that development resources generally don’t.

So how do you know if you need a development resource or a strategic partner? You’re looking for a development resource if you already know exactly what you want to achieve and need help with execution. If you have more questions than answers about your project – or, if you know you need a solution but need help figuring out exactly what it should be and how to build it – you’re looking for a strategy partner.

As you might expect, working with a strategic partner leads to a deep and trusted relationship. While working together to make big decisions that shape your business’ future, you and your strategic partner build trust and feel a shared sense of ownership in the result. You know you’re both in it for the long haul to achieve your goals. You’ll learn, iterate and – yes, sometimes – you will fail along the way as you get there.

A strategic partner is someone you can lean on to analyze your business and work with you to determine the best approach to reach your goals. That’s where your development strategy partner provides amazing value and service. They’ll help you execute an experience that is meaningful to your users and will ultimately move customers to take the action that makes your business grow.

We find that when a client comes to us looking for help developing technology that is aimed to solve a more complex business problem, they’re really telling us they want a strategic partner who will help meet and exceed their business goals. For a detailed perspective on what goes into creating a digital experience that grows your business, download our eBook.

Our annual Toys for Tots drive is in enduring memory of The Nerdery’s founding President Luke Bucklin and his three sons. In October 2010, Luke’s plane went missing while returning from a family trip in Wyoming. During the weeklong search through the mountains, Noah Bucklin’s hopeful classmates at his school wore Noah’s favorite color, blue, in solidarity.

Others throughout our community adopted the “Blue for Bucklin” rallying cry. Our Nerds began wearing blue bracelets featuring the word, "Co-President" – the term Luke had recently coined in reference to all of his Nerdery colleagues. In that same spirit, the Christmas tree in our lobby is blue, for Luke and the Bucklin boys. For the past seven years, Nerds and their friends and family have donated hundreds of new, unopened toys to Toys for Tots and placed them beneath our blue tree.

Toys for Tots historically has unmet needs for gifts for boys and girls in their early teens, so we collect presents geared toward teens and tweens in remembrance of Nick (14), Nate (14), Noah (12) and Luke (forever 40, going on about 14). The Nerdery also matches donations for the value of all toys purchased, totaling about $1,000 this year. We also thanked the hard-working Marines at the Toys for Tots warehouse by providing a Jimmy John’s dinner.

Last year, Twin Cities Toys for Tots collected nearly 240,000 toys, books and stocking stuffers for children in our community. There’s still time to donate and you need not be a Nerd to do so. You can bring donations to the Toys for Tots warehouse on January 4, or contribute monetarily here.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to our 2016 drive.

You’ve heard about it hundreds of times: So-and-so got hacked! Thousands of users’ data has been stolen!

These events point to an alarming trend: The internet is under siege. Hackers are relentless and it seems that sooner or later they’ll break through whatever defenses are used to keep them out. If that happens to you, what will those hackers find – and what damage will they inflict on you and your users? Theft of sensitive data is often extremely costly – both financially and reputationally. When we store sensitive data online – whether it’s passwords, contact information or financial details – it’s our responsibility to ensure that data is as protected as possible from everyone who shouldn’t have access to it.

The following are some key steps to being responsible with the sensitive data you store. Keep in mind that this information isn’t exhaustive – the techniques described here are relevant for the time this article was written. Readers beware: cryptography is a broad and complex subject which is constantly evolving so as to keep up with the equally-evolving methods which seek to break through the defenses it can provide.

Limit Access to Sensitive Data

Although it may seem like a simple and easy thing to do, severely limiting the access to data is a key step towards being responsible. Access to sensitive data should be given strictly on a need-to-know basis. Each and every person that has access to said data – even when it’s encrypted – is one more point of weakness.

The fewer gatekeepers, the better

Those special individuals within your organization who are given broad access to your sensitive data should be few in numbers. They should also be carefully vetted for the responsibility which you assign to them. Guidelines should be established that govern how and when they can access the data, and how that access itself is managed. These individuals also need training; if someone is writing passwords down on a sticky note and hiding it under their keyboard, that’s not very secure, is it?

Secure every gate to the castle

Not just applicable to the actual stored data, this concept should be applied universally. Do you have applications or services that expose sensitive data because that is part of their function? Software should also be designed to limit the access of sensitive data to those who need it within every layer. Often times a hacker doesn’t have to actually do any hacking to steal the data they’re after – it’s just left unprotected by some part of a service or application that no one thought hackers would look at. Go ahead, be overprotective – you’ll thank yourself for doing so later.

Encrypt All Sensitive Data

Encryption is a method of converting data in one format (usually plain text) into another format which is meaningless to someone that doesn’t have the rights to read said data. If certain data is considered sensitive, then you should be encrypting it. Never store sensitive data in plain text. Ever. Encryption is your last line of defense against hackers that would seek to do something nefarious with your users’ data. If you do get hacked, then the damage to your users will hopefully be minimal.

Not all encryption is created equal

It’s not enough to just say “encrypt all sensitive data.” As mentioned earlier, cryptography is broad and ever-changing. If you encrypt sensitive data using weak or outdated techniques, then you might as well have not bothered to do it at all. Excellent resources on the latest standards in cryptography can be found at OWASP, a not-for-profit organization that focuses on improving security in software. As long as you adhere to the latest standards and routinely re-evaluate your encryption practices, you can take solace in the fact that you’re doing what you can to prevent theft of your data.

Change is good

Since encryption works by protecting data with some kind of secret key, you want to be able to change that key whenever necessary. This process is sometimes referred to as “key rotation.” Encryption keys should be changed on a regular basis, and since doing so will require the re-encryption of all of your data, some forethought into this process is required. Ideally this rotation process should be as automated as possible and not require human intervention (see above about limiting access).

Protect Users from Themselves

It’s an ugly fact, but users won't always act in the best interest of their own security. When asked to create a password to protect their own sensitive data, many users will choose something that isn’t very secure at all. When you see news headlines about particular high-profile individuals getting their social media accounts “hacked,” nine times out of ten it’s because of a poor password – or a reused password – and not because of some vulnerability in the software. There’s only so much you can do to prevent these types of hacks, but requiring your users to pick secure passwords and/or regularly change their password will help. You can, however, be responsible in how you store your users’ passwords.

Hashing it out

When it comes to actually implementing password storage, you need to properly hash them. “Hashing” is like encryption (but it only goes one-way) and to spare the technical details, it’s enough to say that it’s a mechanism for ensuring that only the user knows their actual password. That’s right, there’s never a reason to store users’ passwords in a way that someone – anyone – could see what it is. When implementing password hashing, it’s imperative to use a strong method for doing so. Again, refer to the OWASP website for more information on these techniques.

A little salt goes a long way

It’s said that salt enhances food to taste more like itself. In the same way, using cryptographic salting techniques enhances the strength of your hashed passwords. Again, you’ll be spared the technical details – just know that you should be using a salted method for password hashing.

I hope you’ve found this information useful in helping to determine if you’re being responsible with sensitive data. Taking all the right steps requires a lot of effort, planning and especially vigilance. That’s why so many people and businesses are the victims of successful hacking attacks. Secure data storage is not an easy task – but it’s a worthwhile one… a responsible one.

Having trouble coming up with gift ideas for that special nerd in your life? Or, is your answer, “I don’t really need anything” when someone asks for your holiday wishlist? We’re here to help you blur the lines between “want” and “need” with our annual Nerdery Holiday Gift Guide.

Each year we ask our Nerds to share what they’re hoping to give or get. The results range from practical to extravagant but with the help of this list, everyone’s wishes can come true this holiday season.

The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel ($12.78): A follow-up to the classic The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook, the Travel edition helps you maneuver tsunamis, runaway camels, high-rise hotel fires and anything else you could possibly encounter on adventures around the globe. — Kaitlin Muth, Senior Software Engineer

Amazon Echo ($139.99), Echo Dot ($39.99)/Google Home ($129): Connect your music, listen to traffic and weather reports, control your thermostat and more. Which device is superior is open for debate among Nerds but the Echo Dot easily wins on price point and size. — Dan Holbrook (Team Echo), QA Engineer and Patrick Fuentes (Team Home), Principal Software Engineer

ThermoGloves Rechargeable Heated Gloves ($115): Winter in Minnesota is no joke and these gloves are on my personal holiday wish list. It’s going to be -22 (not a typo) on Saturday night so these are practically a must-have. With three temperature settings, ThermoGloves keep your hands warm up to 111 degrees for four hours.  — Emily Rinde, Social Media and Community Manager

NES Classic Edition ($59.99): Relive your Nintendo glory days. The new NES system is a mini version of the original system and comes with 30 pre-installed games, from Donkey Kong to Castlevania. Unfortunately, these systems are sold out nearly everywhere. — Justin Colestock, Senior Software Project Manager

Hidrate Spark water bottle ($54.95): Hydration meets the Internet of Things. Hidrate Spark tracks your intake, syncs with your smartphone and glows when you need to drink more water. For the super competitive water drinker, you can even set goals and compete among friends. — Megan Daoust, Event Coordinator

Bulbasaur planter ($26.87): Take your love of Pokémon Go from virtual to analog with this 3-D printed and handpainted Bulbasaur planter. Ready to evolve your botany skills? This shop sells a “big bro” Bulbasaur, too. No Etsy sightings of Ivysaur and Venusaur planters yet. — Vincent Luman, QA Engineer

Barkbox subscription ($20-$29 monthly): On any given day there are about 20 dogs at our Minneapolis office. We know what dogs like, and dogs like Barkbox. Each month your pooch receives toys and treats based on its size. If your dog doesn’t like something, Barkbox will replace it for free. — Lacey Kobriger, Senior User Experience Designer

360-degree camera ($349.99): Take 360-degree HD videos and photos with this lightweight camera you control with your smartphone. You can connect over Wi-Fi to stream live, and the built-in 8GB memory lets your store up to 1,600 photos or 65 minutes of video. — Hilary Dixon, Associate User Experience Designer

Playtable Console ($349 if you reserve now for $99): Playtable is the world’s first board game console. Store all of your favorite board games digitally, search rulebooks, create your own games and play others located anywhere in the world. The coolest part? You can still use actual game pieces to interact with the digital display. — Mark van Oudheusden, Software Engineer

Yeti Cooler ($200-$1,300): The cooler for the serious outdoor enthusiast, the Yeti has more than twice the insulation of a normal cooler and they’re extremely durable, as in grizzly bear resistant. You can’t say that about too many things. — Michelle Ferguson, Senior Accountant

Have something to add to our list? Leave a comment below. Happy holidays from all of us at The Nerdery!

Innovation is the food that helps your company grow.

The problem is, innovation is also one of those nebulous concepts that’s kind of hard to pin down and doesn’t have a map handy to help figure out how to find it.

One path that more and more companies are taking each day is researching how to make the Internet of Things (IoT) work for their business to improve products and give them an edge on the competition.

This makes IoT an important tool for future growth, but how do you frame it in a way that justifies the investment of both time and money?

In this article, we’ll explore a framework for business growth in general as well as how IoT specifically fits into it.

What are the Three Horizons of Growth?

The Three Horizons Framework first appeared in 1999 in the book The Alchemy of Growth by Stephen Coley, David White and Mehrdad Baghai.

It’s sometimes referred to as McKinsey’s Three Horizons, as McKinsey & Company used the framework introduced by Coley, a director emeritus with the company.

So what are the three horizons and why are they important to your business?

Horizon one is your basic business functions. This is the core of your business where the most profit is made quarter-to-quarter. It generally gets the most focus because it’s easy to see where progress is being made.

Horizon two has to do with opportunities that are still in the works. These are ventures beyond the scope of the core business that could be profitable down the line but require some investment.

Horizon three is even more long-term possibilities: things like research and development that don’t necessarily produce an immediate viable product.

Basically, the framework lays out how much time and budget should be applied to each horizon to keep the company growing at a feasible rate. It doesn’t provide hard and fast numbers, but it does give you a way to visualize how to combine short-term gain with long-term growth.

What is IoT?

Let’s elaborate a bit on the Internet of Things.

At its most basic, IoT is the melding of hardware and software. It is making physical devices interconnected through electronics, software, sensors, etc. to exchange data and make those physical devices more efficient or convenient.

The ability to lock your house or car with an app on your smartphone is an example of IoT at work.

Another would be a transformer with a sensor that enables maintenance crews to know when it is about to fail so they can have another ready to go to avoid a surprise loss of electrical power.

These two examples don’t even scratch the surface of what can be done with IoT and it’s impossible to say just how many applications there are for the field. However, the many ways it is already being used by a variety of companies shows that we’ve still barely scratched the surface on the possibilities.

How They Work Together

IoT can be seen as a journey where you move from products to services to solutions to outcomes. Innovating through IoT isn’t something that happens overnight or even over the course of one quarter.

It’s a more long-term look at how to grow, which puts it in horizon two and three of the growth framework.

Many companies don’t intentionally shy away from innovation, but they do have trouble forsaking some of the immediate profit that comes with focusing on horizon one in favor of the longer outlook required for R&D.

But the problem isn’t really the research or development of new products. Yes, it requires investment of both budget and time, but there are ways to cut the cost of innovation to lessen the scary factor.

The simplest change is to stop doing R&D just for its own sake. Innovation has to start with business value. If you don’t start out knowing where you’re going, the costs will mount while you’re still trying to figure out which direction to head in.

The other way to cut down on the fear is to realize that you aren’t trying to solve all of the world’s problems at once.

Pick a specific problem to solve and figure out a minimum viable product for it. You don’t even have to have the software completely ironed out in the beginning. As long as there’s reliable hardware with basic software integrated, updates can fill in the blanks.

Conclusion

IoT research and applications provide the potential for massive innovation in any field that can lead to company growth, but it’s not an overnight profit-generator.

By understanding the three horizons of growth, and how IoT fits into them, it’s easier to bear the shock of a potential dip in horizon one profit in favor of the possible long-term gains in the other two horizons.

This article is based on an interview with Prith Banerjee, Executive VP and CTO of Schneider Electric.

Listen to the insights and wisdom from our guests by visiting our page on Stitcher or subscribing to Internet of X on iTunes.

Modern consumers expect you to deliver perfect digital experiences in more ways than ever. They connect with you on tablets, smartphones and watches; through mobile apps, web apps and desktop browsers. For consumers, a digital experience is a smooth interaction or solving a problem in a mobile moment. For creators of digital experiences, it is a string of decisions and months of work behind the scenes before it reaches a user's device.

Four perspectives will shape decisions and influence the digital experience for your customers and visitors. By documenting the strategic focus and goals for each of these aspects, your business will set a baseline to make sure the project stays on track. If an idea or feature does not align with any of these four lenses, you can set it aside to consider for future development.

The Business Lens. Your digital experience has to help achieve your business goal, whether it’s turning a profit, generating leads or building brand awareness. By sketching out broad goals and refining them as you go on, you’ll help clarify what success looks like through the business lens.

The Experience Lens. This is what your customers will really see. The experience lens is where you’ll strategize for the ways your digital product will stand out from the competition and delight your users. It can help to start with a “grand wishlist” of features and solid research to know who your visitors really are and what they want.

The Technical Lens. When done right, tech is the invisible hand guiding a great digital experience. Its job is to work so well that no one notices it’s even there. To nail the technical lens requires a thorough understanding of the anatomy of your experience and what it will take to make it sing.

The Future Lens. Every digital experience has a different lifespan to account for as you build a strategy. If the experience is tied to an event or has a short lifespan, the strategy likely won’t need to include scaling for the long-term. If it does need to be scaled, you’ll have to be realistic about its long-term goals so the project stays under budget.

It’s important that the stakeholders who guide your digital experience represent all four perspectives. They will contribute to the strategic focus and take responsibility for delivering in their area. They will also work together on areas where their strategic elements overlap. Failing to solve problems caused when one focus overlaps another can derail a project. When technology and experience overlap, the experience can suffer if tech can’t implement a must-have feature – or, if scalability is necessary but the business strategy can’t deliver the budget, the project goals are at risk. Your stakeholders will have to work through the true obstacles so everyone remains focused and the experience meets what the customers need.

For an in-depth look at how to build successful digital experiences that keeps all four perspectives in mind, download our latest eBook, The Anatomy of a Successful Digital Experience.

Trust is the most important aspect of any relationship and a business-to-business relationship isn’t any different. But how do you build trust? I use the verb “build” because if you have the materials, you can create something that starts out small and continues to grow as you add more materials and perform the labor.

While there are many ways to build trust, I'll focus on four key ways to grow trust on a project: listening, vulnerability, simplicity and follow-through. These are the keys to building the level of trust necessary for a successful software project.

Listening

Listening is one of the most valuable skills for building trusting relationships. Jim Rohn, author and motivational speaker, once said, “One of the greatest gifts you can give to anyone is the gift of attention.” Listening is hard to do because you must cede something (giving a gift) and listening to someone makes them feel important and appreciated (receiving a gift).

I’ve often noticed that the people I admire most and that I enjoy spending time with in my life are those that willingly give me the gift of their attention. I walk away from the conversation with them and I feel energized and important – only to realize that they didn’t really say anything at all. It was a one-sided conversation where they were giving me the gift of their attention.

Elicitation sessions, client calls and other communications with stakeholders are the business analyst’s opportunity to give the gift of attention. Your stakeholders are dying to tell you about their business needs. However, they don’t always know how to articulate those needs. You must pose questions and create an environment in which you can extract the information.

The more you listen, the more the stakeholders will say. And when you can take that information and repeat it back to them concisely, you know you are on the right path to satisfying the business’ needs.

Vulnerability

Vulnerability is the ability to let others win. Believe it or not, being right is not the way to be successful. Instead, it’s more important to have self-awareness to see your own mistakes and allow others to see them in you as well. This builds trust.

Each of us has within us the desire to be right; this is part of our competitive nature.

Think back to your time in kindergarden when your teacher asked the class a question. You know the answer and so does the rest of the class, so you all raise your hands and furiously shake them in the air hoping that the teacher will call on you. Luckily she calls on you and you get to answer the question. This feels good, doesn’t it? You got to answer the question first and you got that emotional rush from being right.

Now suppose in that same situation the teacher calls on someone else. Another student gets to answer the question and you lower your hand in disappointment. You didn’t get to answer the question; even though you knew the answer, you didn’t get to prove it.

Being right causes a flood of positive emotions in us but at the same time it can cause negative emotions, like disappointment or embarrassment, in others. If you can recognize that letting others win makes them feel good, you can build trust. In order to do this, you must be comfortable with the uncertain feeling that comes with vulnerability. According to Dr. Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, vulnerability is something that we admire in others but rarely have the courage to show in ourselves.

When working with stakeholders, it is okay if you don’t understand or have the answers. In fact, the best business analyst is the curious business analyst that isn’t afraid to ask for clarification —  or simply say “I don’t understand.”

In order to be curious you must deflate your ego and allow others to teach you. Become a student of your stakeholders' business and their needs. This is the only way to get past what you think you know about your client and dig down to the requirements that will support their success. They may speak a technical language or marketing language; whatever it is, you need to learn to speak their language.

Simplicity

Simple, concise and straightforward are all words that I use to describe great project requirements. If you can’t explain an idea simply then you don’t understand it well enough. That means that if I don’t understand your business need then I can’t meet that need with an appropriate solution.

Unfortunately our brains can be lazy and – just like electricity – take the path of least resistance  when faced with a vast amount of disparate information. The first thing we try to do is place that information into categories and simplify it so that we can understand it.

Imagine you are at a restaurant and instead of seeing the appetizers in one group, the drinks in another group, the entrees in another group and so on — the restaurant has made the decision to mix the appetizers, drinks and entrees all together on the menu. The first thing you do is look for all the drinks among the other items on the menu in order to group them together and make your choice. Then you do the same with the appetizers and entrees.

Sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? Our brains like to consume information as simply as possible because our brains are lazy. Fortunately for us, restaurants have recognized this shortcoming of our brains and they have categorized their menus in order to make our dining experience as effortless as possible.

Just like restaurant menus, you must present the requirements that you’ve defined as simply as possible. The business analyst is the funnel that has the ability not only to capture all the information at its widest point but also to transform that information into concise requirements.

The goal of sending the information through the funnel is to show that, “Yes, I’ve listened to what you’ve said and this is what I understood.” There’s an incredible amount of trust that is built when someone knows that you are not only listening to them but that you understand what they are saying and you can articulate it back to them.

Creating requirements that are simple, concise and straightforward isn’t as easy as it sounds, though. Business analysts look for themes in the information and tease out those themes to repeat them back in a variety of forms as concise requirements.

There are many techniques for eliciting the needed information from stakeholders, including workshops, prototyping, brainstorming, interviews and research. However, sifting through the information to pull out the core of the need is where the business analyst shows their value.

Just like organizing a menu, it is the business analyst’s job to identify these ways of categorizing information — even if the client doesn't present them in a categorized way.

Follow-through

Follow-through consists of two parts: what I say and what I do. When there is consistency between what I say and what I do, I know that I am following through.

Before trust is built within a team, people tend to look for gaps between what you say and what you do. For example, I say I’m going to deliver a blog post of 1,500 words by the end of the week but I deliver the blog post late and it only contains 1,000 words. You probably won’t trust me when I say I can deliver the next blog post on time and with the appropriate amount of content.

Follow-through with respect to project requirements is the traceability of requirements from the beginning of the project to the end. The job of the business analyst is to ensure that what gets defined as a requirement is what gets built, tested and delivered.

You don’t want to have any surprises when the solution is delivered. No surprises! In a software project, surprises are viewed as a negative outcome; set expectations as soon as possible (what I say), and deliver a solution that meets those expectations (what I do). Connecting what you say and what you do equates to follow-through.

Listening, vulnerability, simplicity and follow-through are the keys to building trust, which forms the core of the most successful software projects. The great part about trust is that the more of it you have, the less you need to have to mitigate risk because the risk mitigates itself.

The industrial space is the new frontier of IoT— for real. While IoT has been around in this industry for a very long time, the sector is lagging in understanding exactly what IoT can do to turn its products into services. To find out the many places where industrial IoT is headed and the many places you can jump aboard, the Internet of X brings you Dan Yarmoluk of ATEK Access Technologies and Jeff Liebl of JFL Advisors. These two have their fingers on the pulse of industrial IoT and understand how you can link into the opportunities it offers.

1. IoT is where industry actually happens

Consider the evolution of ATEK Access Technologies itself. The company got its start manufacturing objects—medical devices, motorcycle components and so forth. The “access” component comes from making memory keys and military data keys, pressure safety mats, and handicap push plates. Can you see how these sensors have to do with access? Right.

But all this technology wasn’t called IoT back then, even though it’s the same thing. These embedded wireless-sensing products just needed to be hooked up to the cloud to explode with potential.

You see, IoT is tied into what actually happens in industry.

Before it was ever the Internet of Things, IoT in industry was called machine-to-machine (m2m) communications… and before that, telematics… and before that, SCADA systems. All this proves is that industrial automation has been around for decades – it’s always been in this space of sense control.

“We’re thinking of IoT like we’re plugging in something, but we’re finding nowadays that it’s just part of the chain that we’ve been talking about,” said Dan Yarmoluk, who has a background in technology and component design. “The sensor’s been there. We just want to extend the chain to a broader audience.”

Things are so much easier to access today, so there’s really no reason why most sensors can’t go mobile. Especially since the systems are already electronic or have some sort of processor attached to them. With just a little bit more connectivity, industrial IoT will explode with possibility.

Industry has been viewed as a “lagger” industry, but it’s on the cusp of true connectivity. 

Take a tank sensor, which is one of ATEK Access Technologies’ specialties. It came about, explained Yarmoluk, because drivers or distributors who went on milk runs had to physically look at the gauge to see how much was in the tank. But in the Midwest, this spans a huge territory and was costing money. TankScan not only addressed this problem, but it also evolved to measure all kinds of fluids. It standardized cooperation into a product that now serves precision agriculture.

This is the fantastic thing about industrial IoT. If you’re already measuring something with a sensor, just hook it up to the cloud. Once the basic statistics and metrics are being turned into data, you can apply analytics to it to open up the whole field.

2. IoT democratizes solutions

Here’s a problem. Automation systems tend to be closed systems, which – though they might be sophisticated – are not set up to connect to other data sets in the cloud.

So, a big piece of what we’re seeing today is already-existing data moving onto the cloud, so that it can hook up with more sophisticated analytics or third-party evaluations. This is becoming easier because chips, data plans and all the necessary infrastructure for IoT are lower in cost.

“All the technology bits and bobs are just a means to an end—to make a smarter business decision,” said Jeff Liebl, Principle of JFL Advisors. “We want to do that through delivering better product to customers.” Liebl is focused on helping companies that are in or wanting to be in IoT, and is a frequent presenter at technology shows.

When you move out of physical area, Liebl emphasized, you can iterate needs better. Data becomes less static. Algorithms can be tested to reality. Connection isn’t expensive or difficult anymore.

IoT is about democratizing the concept of connectivity. By the end of the decade, IoT will have gone from 10 billion connected things to 35 billion. (Yeah, that was a 250% increase.) And we aren’t talking about tablets, either. It will be devices and wearables that multiply the numbers.

Nowadays, you can put a business case together to focus on connecting a specific device (or to ensure that the connected device continues to be effective and secure).

The reason industrial spaces offer so much opportunity is that manufacturing represents a convergence of three different words: information technology; operations technology; and telecom. Each of these industries has its own language, which can mean you kind of need a “translator” for each one’s distinct history. IoT provides that communication between these mature practices and methods and the connectivity that makes it all work.

In industrial IoT, there’s a real gap between talent in a factory and talent in the digital space to span both sides of the aisle to create change. A big responsibility—and opportunity—is to motivate people to appreciate the new set of values. 

In short, you need to democratize IoT in terms of availability to the market. And this doesn’t mean starting from the ground up but encouraging people to add-in or opt-in to existing infrastructure.

But how to do that?

3. IoT turns products into services

Industrial IoT as it relates to predictive analytics is still fairly primitive. It hasn’t earned its PhD in analyzing data science problems yet. On the other hand, big data isn’t always what’s best at analysis or forensics anymore—sometimes it’s an individual specialist (like a climatologist used to predicting with tons of variables).

Compared to the sophistication of direct-market advertising or credit-risk scoring, industrial IoT is still in elementary school when it comes to gleaning insights from collected performance data. Industrial IoT has to learn how to look at a whole different class of data than info in file cabinets in order to detect the signal in the noise. “The opportunity is huge,” Liebl said. “That’s the ‘new frontier.’”

With all this new data—new noise—coming in, what kind of infrastructure can you hang this data collection on? Companies like ATEK help with this answer, Yarmoluk pointed out. People who vend IoT solutions have no need to build from scratch every single time.

There’s already a market for TankScan, which means tank managers don’t have to worry about the dashboard of their IoT solution. Continuous innovation—which is how ATEK’s AssetScan was born—means that someone can look at the sensor for liquids and ask if it can measure grain, too. Or, since this sensor already monitors fuel, can it also monitor pressure? And so forth.

Given the volume of machine data, we’re coming from a qualitative state to a quantitative state, a data based service, Yarmoluk explained. We’re traveling from tribal data to communal data because now data can be contextualized, visualized and used to drive decision making in multiple sectors.

Someday, all data will be available and commoditized, which will transform the way the technology school cuts to the heart of the problem in its business models.

Meanwhile, the most successful outcome of industrial IoT will be business models based on service. A manufacturer that figures out how to create a new recurring revenue stream for offering a service presents that to customers in the best possible manner.

Of the reasons why someone creates a new product, a new business model is the biggest and most exciting. When a business thinks about an innovation not as an existing feature of a current product but as a service rather than a thing, that’s when they win.

Find Dan Yarmoluk on LinkedIn, Twitter, or at ATEK. Contact Jeff Liebl on LinkedIn or at jeff@jfl-advisors.com. Co-host Ben Dolmer can be reached at The Nerdery or bdolmer@nerdery.com.

Listen to the insights and wisdom from our guests by visiting our page on Stitcher or subscribing to Internet of X on iTunes.

Welcome to Episode 06 of This Is the QA Podcast. Our team of Quality Assurance professionals has scanned the latest and greatest in the world of QA to bring you this monthly podcast. 

In this month's episode, we'll discuss job hunting as a QA Engineer in our QA API section. In QA News, we'll discuss a report about Bluetooth beacons being used to maintain connectivity through tunnels, as well as the "rough" landing on the red planet by the ExoMars mission. In our Repro Steps segment, Nerdery Senior QA Engineer Perry Goy joins us to give us a little Automation 101.

Our previous month’s podcasts can be accessed here. Thanks for listening!