Important things to consider when looking for software development help

Louis Stevens - Associate Software Engineer - Metafora

The translation process

• Turning business goals/ideas into functional intuitive software

• This process can seem straightforward but there’s a lot that can be lost in this translation

• By the time a business goal gets rolled out into software and is in the user’s hands that idea should be enhanced by the execution process

Importance of great communication on a software development team

• When the product/engineering team fully understands a feature, understands the (“What are we building”) and (“Why are we building it”) than the question of (“How to build it”) becomes very clear

• At Metafora, I think our communication is what sets us apart, we take the time to communicate, ask probing questions and fully understand a feature before we begin translating to code

• Our channels of communication with experts in different fields is what allows us to massively cut down on wasted engineering efforts and helps us to better serve our clients and users (Its the secret sauce of what makes us a good partner)

The iteration process

• Good software development is an iterative process - we often will build a mockup of a user interface or build an MVP(minimum viable product) and get feedback from experts in logistics at our company to understand how our implementations can be optimized

• We take this feedback and we tinker and tweak and change, always seeking out more feedback along the way, to come out the other end with truly useful software for the logistics space

• Because of our communication channels this is a speedy process and that is important because that allows us to bring meaningful technology to the logistics space quickly

End users

• As a developer who is focused on the front end of an application - my goal is to advocate for our users 

• On my current project, our users are seasoned logistics professionals and their job is to move freight efficiently and reliably

• To do our job well, we need to have empathy for our users, put ourselves in their shows and be curious about what makes their jobs and lives easier

• Seeing data about how a feature is being used and hearing about happy users from our customer support team is very rewarding

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