Professionals Mix in Research & Development
I’ve been complaining about the speed issue over and over, yet the improvement is still a little far from satisfaction even though TimeTec Cloud development team has poured vigorous efforts in tackling the problem.
And,
I suddenly saw the light when I tried out one of TimeTec Cloud newly launched
features. I immediately called the head of development team to discuss my idea
and the existing blind spot.
“Yes, it’s achievable, but don’t you think the real-time function is more important as a cloud application?” R&D Head replied.
“But
user profile or configuration won’t be updated too regularly.” I said.
“If
they do?” Ha! What a typical response from an R&D team!
“Then
that’s something extraordinary, our priority should set on the majority
first.”
At the end, we came into a conclusion that only the present day’s attendance records require real time, and the system should automatically perform data retrieval from the server every time upon request; but for the rest, once downloaded, the information should be kept on the cache memory on local CPU for recurring use until the user logs out.
Technical
problem solving does not only depend on how advanced one possesses the
technology know-how, but it’s rather more often resort to rational thought
based on the user experience. Like in our case, speed versus real-time, we
asked the same question for all the features, and we were surprised to reverse
our initial priority for most of the answers.
Sometimes,
you may not have to be a technician to solve a technical issue. The same goes
to R&D; a non-programmer with the logical dissection can unravel some
entangled codes. Problem solving always requires different mix of
professionals. Especially when we aim to develop a system that can meet
world-class standard; besides technology, we have to be more holistic. One way
to achieve this goal is to channel more expertise from different fields into
the same development. Therefore, we have people from different departments
getting involved in research and development ‘assisting’ software
engineers.
And,
this mix is not an ad-hoc task in FingerTec; we have adopted it as part of the
routine duty in our business operations.
Hence
our Big Data analytics to improve user experience continues….
By Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ
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