Improving Software Applications
Our Software Engineering team at Design Ready Controls is a goal-oriented and effective team. We manage and maintain more than 50+ software projects all being utilized by teams across the organization. What I find the most exciting is being part of an incredible team that sets out to accomplish! Below is a quick review of what we focus on and how we do it!
Modernizing Our Existing Software
The team finds functionality and end-user experience very important when reviewing and planning any updates to our software. Our software programs have been around for almost 20 years and the software team is dedicated to ensuring they all continue to evolve. Right now, we are focusing on modernizing our existing software applications by utilizing new technologies that are dedicated to making generalized improvements, faster systems, and an easier end-user interaction. In summary, how we do it is by adding new features, controls and visual upgrades that provide more accessibility and/or enhancements for the end user.
Taking existing applications and systems and trying to be more intuitive with the user experience and improve workflows. We do this by adding new features or controls that might give the user more accessibility or enhance a certain process.
More Web-Based Applications
A few of the upcoming projects involve transitioning existing desktop applications to web-based applications and a microservice bases architecture. The outcome of this will enable the technology to exist outside of the computer itself.
When you think of a website, it is an application hosted on a server that all devices are a client of. Moving technology to web-based is better for the individual, computer and company. You no longer have to have information saved and stored on a specific computer. Our Software Engineers find these projects exciting and fun – we have the opportunity to help make a difference in furthering the technology, making it more user-friendly, and fun to use for everyone!
It’s Fun!
Speaking of fun, a lot of what we update and work on could be considered kind of boring or hard to look at. It’s basically just a bunch of data and information. The team however enjoys the challenge of making something boring and finding a way to make it engaging and fun. The goal is to create interfaces, so people aren’t just looking at a huge list of data but rather displaying it in an organized and user-friendly way.
The Sprint
How we tackle the updates and software development isn’t anything new. We set up a software sprint- a collection of tasks that have to be completed in a certain time frame. Those tasks are then weighted based on their difficulty and how long it should take to complete. The sprints represent the timeline to release a new update. We typically can complete 3-4 software releases a month across several different libraries and applications.
Our strategy with sprints and managing the 50+ applications is, smaller more frequent updates. This helps make sure everything is up to date and getting the attention needed. With some of our larger applications like AME, having over 400 users, these updates are typically larger, longer and less frequent.
Closing Statements
Our team of developers and engineers have large goals and visions for the future of software development at Design Ready Controls, and we strive to continuously improve our knowledge and skills as the technology grows and changes. We aim to provide new functionality and software solutions while assisting with issues or bugs that end users encounter. We function as a middleman, collaborating with other departments, working with the talented software engineers and developers from some of those groups (Electrical/Controls/Manufacturing) – to help offer support on design or integration into existing software.
