Category Archives: Product

Engineering

Choosing the best web application development framework

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I’ve discussed web frameworks before and how they can help in rapid development. In this post, I’m presenting some general guidelines around selecting the best web development framework, based on your requirements, in the the preferred language: Java, Ruby, PHP, Python. The main criterion is evaluating the non-functional requirements it provides out-of-thebox, which can greatly aid rapid development.

What to look at in a framework?

You should know how the design considerations mentioned below are addressed by the frameworks you are evaluating. Depending on the business needs, some might be redundant, but tend to provide a holistic view of the framework’s capability.

  • Scaffolding code: What is the ETD to get a web-form with basic CRUD running?
  • Does it offer the flexibility to choose between convention & configuration?
  • How is input data validation achieved?
  • Is the View layer simplified with a template engine?
  • Does it employ object-oriented design patterns? and demand OOP?
  • Does it follow MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern? How is routing (URL management) achieved?
  • What ORM tools (object relation mapper) does it support?
  • Does it have built-in support for multi-tenancy?
  • Does it support I18n & L10n out-of-the-box? (Internationalization & Localization)
  • How is Authentication & Authorization managed: inbuilt, using a module or plug-in?
  • Does it allow rapid development/deployment in line with Agile principles?
  • Are there cases of proven success for enterprise class applications?
  • What is the performance benchmark vis-a-vis other frameworks?
  • Is there in-built support/plugins for caching, unit & scenario testing?
  • Is it easy to debug applications, and if possible with in-built support through an IDE?
  • Associated costs & TCO: to build developer & infrastructure expertise, hosting, licensing, support?
  • Does the licensing permit free use for all purposes and the right to modify code as necessary?
  • Does it have a clear product roadmap, sufficient documentation & an active community?

The decision

Don’t get carried away by flashy white-papers, classy developer events or generalized case studies. Your application is going to be different (a reason why you’re building that product in the first place) and while it is good to use guidelines, you need to see what fits your requirement best. Take a weighted approach to evaluating a framework based on the evaluation criteria above and make sure you have enough reason to be convinced.

This post is part of the SaaS Application Development series, extracted from my final dissertation submission at BITS, Pilani that closely looked at rapid-development of SaaS-based applications.

Being a Product Manager, Internet & Web-apps

7 non-functional demands from B2B customers

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Every Product Manager is a ninja when it comes to dealing with functional requirements. But it doesn’t end there in the B2B space. You may not be a technical product manager, but you still need to understand and address some non-functional requirements without which your product isn’t ready to sell – especially if its transactional in nature, holds sensitive data or requires integration with the client’s IT eco-system. By ‘address’, I don’t mean you need to plan these as features or get involved in the R&D – it’s just about getting answers to what has been done in this regard.

What makes non-functional requirements so important?

Good question! If your product touches any of the 3 aspects mentioned above, the client’s decision to buy the product is incomplete without involvement of the IT team. You might have the CXO’s approval, but even if a single IT executive deems your product unfit for the IT security standards the client is committed to – the sale is likely to fold. You need to make a compelling offer, not just to the functional decision makers, but also to these non-functional evaluators whose buying is equally important. And there is a fair reason to it. Imagine, if you’ve worked hard to keep a floor clean, and someone wants to walk in with their own shoes – no matter how clean they claim to be, would you let them in? IT doesn’t want to risk their network either. I really don’t see this coming in the way of B2C sales – a LinkedIn premium membership or even Online Banking for that matter.

What needs to be taken care of?

Here at at-least 7 areas for which you will need clear answers.

  1. Software requirements: With SaaS, customers have fallen in love with apps that railed on web browsers. But IT remains unsatisfied with the ‘my app runs in a browser’ response. They need to understand whether it runs ‘best’ on a particular browser or a specific version. As a product manager, you need to know the share of each browser version and build support accordingly. Dependency on components (e.g. FLASH) can cause the deal to hit a road-block.
  2. Data Security: Customers always question the security of their data while using hosted services. And this becomes all the more critical when you’re selling a multi-tenant application. If you’re able to help them get over the SaaS phobia, the next questions could be around data security & access control, data center certifications, third-party quality assurance reports, etc. Apart from this, customers solicit information about user authentication and authorization capabilities, user management from the application console and integration with existing user management solutions like LDAP. Don’t be surprised if a client demands a sandbox for a hands-on verification.
  3. Flexible application stack: Customers may explicitly specify software requirements such as the use of specific database engines or application servers. In some cases, they are even willing to pick the tab for additional license fees to ensure Continue reading 7 non-functional demands from B2B customers →
Being a Product Manager

Ideas for a trip/vacation planner app – Part II

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In the last 2 posts, I detailed the market needs, and the itinerary planner user story. Continuing with more features around maintaining content, creating a transactional marketplace for revenue generation, and finally some integration ideas to piggy-back on the success of others.

Content

  • Search public itineraries based on destination
  • System should suggest ‘hot’ holiday options – not in a salesy way – but genuine, recent itineraries that are verified for feasibility, cost estimate, etc.
  • Suggestions/searches should be based searches based on demographic information: age, gender, marital status, profession, origin city
  • Rate, review itineraries
  • Maintain places with linked information: map, entrance fees, best-time-of-day, visit duration
  • Maintain cities, categories, modes of transport, currencies, exchange rates
  • When creating my itinerary, similar itineraries from other users should be suggested – verified, promoted, voted itineraries on top

Marketplace

  • Directly contact agents on public itineraries
  • Agents can view & receive alerts for shared itineraries in their service area
  • Agents can submit bids that be reviewed compared side-by-side with included places/meals & merge itineraries or individual items [versioning]
  • Collaborate/negotiate with agents on a bid, and finally award
  • Allow agents to attach confirmations, visas, etc. – that remain private even when the itinerary is shared

Integration

  • Accommodation: get best prices from top 3 websites for the selected date location
  • Transport: get best prices to the destination, with “flexible dates” option, and suggest best transits worth a stop-over
  • Rentals: for road journeys, suggest available rental options
  • Traffic: use traffic information to estimate journey times between places
  • Fares: get entrance fees and estimated taxi fares
  • City cards: analyze entrance fees and suggest savings from city cards (e.g. iVenture card)

Strengths:

  • Solves a real problem for backpackers
  • Integration & market-place: lot of stickiness for a content + transaction website

Challenges:

  • It might be a while before there is enough content – itineraries
  • Ensuring simple design to handle required interactivity on all browser
Being a Product Manager

Ideas for a trip/vacation planner app

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Being a product manager is about not being content with what is around. I looked all around the place for a complete vacation planner app and finally created a wish list of what such an app would constitute. Continuing from the previous post on the topic, here is a high-level user story for each of my needs:

Itinerary Planner

  • Start with a destination of my choice and add places to it [content]
  • Each place can be placed on an interactive itinerary map
  • Add category, description, images, comments, expenses (entrance fees, meals), attachments (bookings, etc.), hyperlinks, mark them as optional
  • View ratings [integration]
  • Auto-insert the place on the interactive calendar based on best-time-of-day information [content] and allow me to adjust
  • Plan the journey between places by specifying mode of transport, journey time & estimate cost [content, integration]
  • Add meals to places & journey with preferred joint & cost estimate
  • Validate if too much is planned for a day based on visit duration [content] and highlight optional places from the ‘Going to’ bucket that can be moved to a ‘May be’ bucket
  • When moving places around, system should remind to update the journey between places
  • Total itinerary cost should be constantly updated and displayed in local currency so I can budget; highlight places & journeys without estimates
  • Filter places on the by category, expense
  • Share my itinerary with others on the website; email the web link
  • Collaborate with co-travellers on the itinerary [roadmap]

Travel

  • Print/Email the itinerary with selected elements
  • Allow including embassy information, emergency numbers, weather, etc.
  • Mobile site to rate places, enter actual cost & time, add public & private notes
  • Update current location, upload photos & add notes that loved ones can view on a shared link
  • Mobile app [roadmap], share location on social media [integration]

In Part 2 of this post, we talk about more features ideas and concept’s strengths and challenges.

 

Innovation, Travel

There isn’t one great trip planner for my vacation!

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A few months back I was planning my vacation and things weren’t as easy as I thought. I had figured out the destination, booked air tickets, short-listed places to see and hired a car. The challenge however was to set up a local itinerary. I had X places to cover in Y days with optimized routes so we weren’t spending all our time travelling.  This required finding exact locations & distances between them so as to figure how much could be covered in available time. I had nothing at my disposal but Google Maps & notepad.

Based on my own needs, and the way I go about planning my vacation, here are some high-level ‘market needs’:

  • Itinerary Planer: Create, visualize & execute itineraries on interactive maps & calendar
  • Vacation Content: Genuine holiday suggestions, based on demographics, with verified itineraries[
  • Marketplace: Get quotes from interested agents on my itinerary
  • Integration: Link with booking, review, customer engagement & social media platforms
Google map for my Singapore trip
Settled with a Google map

Am I working on this project? Continue reading There isn’t one great trip planner for my vacation! →

Culture, Engineering, Gadgets, Thoughts & Opinions

Everything has an expiry date – except software?

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I was having a discussion with my friend/colleague Amit Shinde about the quality of things, and he brought up this topic of expiry dates. Fortunately for us, here in India, we now – at least – have an expiry date for most food stuff sold on the primary economy. The underground economy – or System D as it is known – is so vast and so uncontrolled that the government cannot even dream of regulating it.

But Amit’s concern was much beyond perishables. He mentioned his iPlugs for example (I’m not a Apple guy and don’t know if they call the iPhone earplugs that). He said that although there was no visual damage, they weren’t performing as they did. After all, everything has a shelf life – which may or may not be straight-forward to predict.

Take vessels for example. The old copper & brass vessels – now costly souveniers – have served families for years. There even exists a maintence process to extend its life. But the non-stick we use today in our fast lives is not built for centuries. Who knows how the coating disintegrates or how the lower layers react with oil/soap. I’m sure there is a point at which it has to be discarded – which is left to the consumer’s discretion. And when it comes to Indians, experimenting overage tolerances on expiry dates

Continue reading Everything has an expiry date – except software? →

Code

PHP: Print amount or number in words

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Its been real long since I updated this space. And instead of adding something for the heck of it, I thought of posting something really useful. This is a piece of PHP code that returns an amount/number in words. This is in English, but you can easily translate it to your own. Hope this helps!

This reminds me of Semester 1 assignment given by Shalini Puri ma’am to determine the optimal number of currency coins & notes required to put together a specified amount. Good old days!

Engineering

Rapid application development & web frameworks

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Rapid Development

Over the last decade, there has been a massive growth in the number of web-based applications. For every category – email, collaboration or knowledge management to name a few – there are a large number of applications available, and new ones on their way. This has created extreme competition in the market with each application claiming to be better than the other. Even if a new concept exists that is strong enough to drive the market, time-to-market is a crucial factor that will decide the success of the product.

To address this, a rapid application development strategy needs to be in place so that the product and incremental features can be delivered at the expected rate which is dictated by the market & customers. Besides this, development needs to also follow an agile model so as accommodate ever-changing business requirements. This is especially true in the case of product development, where a single product must fit multiple customers with varying business requirements, and the classic waterfall model can lead to complete failure.

Web Application Frameworks

A web application framework (‘framework’ hereon) is a software framework that is designed to support the development of dynamic websites, Web applications and Web services by providing core, non-functional features out-of-the-box. A framework streamlines application development by automating many of the patterns employed for a given purpose and thus resolve the overheads associated with common activities performed in web development.

A framework also adds structure to the code, prompting the developer to write better, more readable, and more maintainable code. It promotes code reuse through the use of libraries for database access (using ORM), template engines, session and user management, logging, internationalization, etc.

Framework selection (we’ll elaborate this in the next post) is thus crucial in delivering the required functional & non-functional requirements within stipulated timelines. Non-functional are the primary influencers Continue reading Rapid application development & web frameworks →

Engineering

Definition of Multi-tenancy

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Multi-tenancy was a relatively new concept back in 2010 when I was writing the dissertation report for my MS. This extract from the report aims at providing a clear understanding.

Multi-tenancy is an architectural pattern in which a single instance of the software is run on the service provider’s infrastructure, and multiple customers, or tenants, access the same instance. It is an organizational approach for SaaS applications today. SaaS-based software providers are believed to have evolved from Application Service Providers (ASPs) from the previous decade, which differ from today’s multi-tenant applications which are provided via a software-on-demand model specifically designed for SaaS distribution. Although the interest in this concept is rapidly growing since its inception in 2005, research is relatively slow.

Key aspects of multi-tenancy

  • The ability to share & optimize the use of hardware resources
  • The ability to offer of a high degree of configurability
  • The architecture to support the use of a single application and database instance to serve all tenants
  • Cost benefits from economy of scale & improved utilization
  • Ease of deploying a single instance
  • Simpler management
  • More frequent releases with bug-resolutions & new features
  • All customers are upgraded at once
  • Reduced operational costs
  • Easier to scale-up with the advent of cloud computing

Benefits of multi-tenancy

Code

Something for your empty home

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Here are few lines of code that I have repeatedly found useful, especially when moving home between different web hosts.

Print the complete address of the page from where it is hosted:

<?php
$pageURL = $_SERVER[‘HTTPS’] == ‘on’ ? ‘https://’ : ‘http://’;
$pageURL .= $_SERVER[‘SERVER_PORT’] != ’80’ ? $_SERVER[“SERVER_NAME”].”:”.$_SERVER[“SERVER_PORT”].$_SERVER[“REQUEST_URI”] : $_SERVER[‘SERVER_NAME’] . $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’];
echo $pageURL;
?>

Everyone knows about phpInfo – a dump of all the PHP settings:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

When using a shared host that allows overriding your PHP ini file, it is worth while knowing the path from where the file is loaded:

<?php var_dump( get_cfg_var(‘cfg_file_path’) ); ?>