The past few years, Bridge has experimented with several delivery models. The two models we have built and used most for our customers are ‘fixed price’ and ‘dedicated team’. And every day we are wondering: which of these two models delivers the highest value to our customers and makes offshoring work most effectively? Fixed prices have one crucial pre-condition: it needs to be clear what exactly has to be built, when it is not, the estimate of the workload will be completely wrong. And more often than, people are wrong about the workload. As with building houses, I have never seen a house ...

The past few years, Bridge has experimented with several delivery models. The two models we have built and used most for our customers are ‘fixed price’ and ‘dedicated team’. And every day we are wondering: which of these two models delivers the highest value to our customers and makes offshoring work most effectively? Fixed prices have one crucial pre-condition: it needs to be clear what exactly has to be built, when it is not, the estimate of the workload will be completely wrong. And more often than, people are wrong about the workload. As with building houses, I have never seen a house ...

I was just reading a chapter in the book ‘wikinomics’ written by Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams. It is always interesting to find your own beliefs written down on paper. As the topic offshoring, outsourcing and the future of global cooperation is always on my mind, I wonder how people in my network think about it. I often read thoughts of people that believe offshoring is ‘hype’ or some temporary movement and companies are on the move back. I also have the idea that many people are not aware of the massive change in economic value creation that we are undergoing today. Now my vision ...

I was just reading a chapter in the book ‘wikinomics’ written by Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams. It is always interesting to find your own beliefs written down on paper. As the topic offshoring, outsourcing and the future of global cooperation is always on my mind, I wonder how people in my network think about it. I often read thoughts of people that believe offshoring is ‘hype’ or some temporary movement and companies are on the move back. I also have the idea that many people are not aware of the massive change in economic value creation that we are undergoing today. Now my vision ...

Afgelopen dinsdagochtend 6 oktober om 9:30 uur is de eerste Open Coffee van Alkmaar van start gegaan. Met een goede opkomst van ruim 50 man kunnen we dit als een succes bestempelen. Het soms wat “saaie” karakter van netwerkbijeenkomsten is hiermee verleden tijd.Open Coffee is een informele bijeenkomst waar eenieder die iets met “online” heeft elkaar kan ontmoeten, ideeen bespreken, kennis delen, brainstormen, meetings houden of samenwerken. Ontspannen netwerken dus, onder het genot van een kopje koffie.Open Coffee is een open concept dat begonnen is in Londen en inmiddels iedere week ...

Last Tuesday, the first Open Coffee of Alkmaar has started. With a great amount of people (more then 50), we can call it a success already. The sometimes ‘boring’ character of a networking meeting doesn’t fit open coffee. In a very relaxed atmosphere and with a cup of coffee (how can you start your day better than that?!), you easily get in touch with other people. Open Coffee is an informal gathering where everybody that has a link with ‘online’, can meet, share ideas, knowledge, brainstorm, keep meetings or cooperate. Relaxed networking, taking pleasure from a cup of coffee.Open Coffee is ...

In our series ‘inside perspective’, we describe the development process of Bridge in launching medium sized web projects. In this article our developer Aneesh describes his experience with Rentautobus.The project Rentautobus is one of the best projects I have done. It’s a complex web application, built to automate the process of renting buses for trips. A team of two developers (including me), 1 analyst and 1 project manager were doing this project.As in all complicated projects, we took sufficient time to analyze the requirements. The specifications document we received from the customer was ...

In our series ‘inside perspective’, we describe the development process of Bridge in launching medium sized web projects. In this article our developer Aneesh describes his experience with Rentautobus.The project Rentautobus is one of the best projects I have done. It’s a complex web application, built to automate the process of renting buses for trips. A team of two developers (including me), 1 analyst and 1 project manager were doing this project.As in all complicated projects, we took sufficient time to analyze the requirements. The specifications document we received from the customer was ...

Beautiful decorations, festoons of flowers, chains of lights in every imaginable colour, sales signs nearly everywhere … – Kerala, especially Kochi seems to wake up out of a long winter sleep. As I am a German, the current course of action reminds me of Christmas season in Europe. People either silently or in huge excitement are awaiting a special, high-spirited time, they are going crazy with preparations over the Kerala state festival of ONAM. With ten days of feasting, boat races, songs, dances and merriment late in August or early in September, the people of Kerala, the Malayalees, ...

Beautiful decorations, festoons of flowers, chains of lights in every imaginable colour, sales signs nearly everywhere … – Kerala, especially Kochi seems to wake up out of a long winter sleep. As I am a German, the current course of action reminds me of Christmas season in Europe. People either silently or in huge excitement are awaiting a special, high-spirited time, they are going crazy with preparations over the Kerala state festival of ONAM. With ten days of feasting, boat races, songs, dances and merriment late in August or early in September, the people of Kerala, the Malayalees, ...

De 1%CLUB, de eerste Nederlandse online marktplaats voor kleinschalige projecten voor ontwikkelingssamenwerking, is vandaag met een geheel vernieuwde website 'live' gegaan. Tijd dus voor een interview met de oprichters Anna Chojnacka en Bart Lacroix. Steekwoorden: luisteren naar je community, Facebook van ontwikkelingssamenwerking en 'the crowd' als redder van ontwikkelingssamenwerking.Allereerst complimenten voor de nieuwe site. Vanwaar deze vernieuwing?Bedankt! We hebben het afgelopen jaar goed geluisterd naar onze community en naar alle wensen van de mensen met de projecten in ...

De open source webwinkelsoftware van Magento wint sterk aan belangstelling onder webwinkels wereldwijd. OScommerce verliest volgens kenners zijn status als publieksfavoriet snel. Een jaar na de lancering van het open source webwinkelpakket Magento is er veel belangstelling van ontwikkelaars en winkeliers.Dirkjan Vis, beheerder van Webwinkelweblog, implenteerde met zijn bedrijf Zietuwel.nl tientallen e-commercepakketten: “Onder professionele bouwers is het Magento dat de klok slaat. Je komt bijna geen OScommerce meer tegen. Beginnende webwinkeliers komende in hun zoektocht naar de juiste ...

One of the major denominators of web 2.0 is ‘online collaboration’. As Don Tapscott puts it in his book ‘wikinomics’: ‘The old notion that you have to attract, develop, and retain the best and brightest inside your corporate boundaries is becoming null. With the cost of collaboration falling precipitously, companies can increasingly source ideas, innovations and uniquely qualified minds from a vast global pool of talent’. While offshoring has been growing in popularity over the past 10 years, the real breakthrough is yet to come. And while Linux started about 15 years ago, the open source ...

One of the major denominators of web 2.0 is ‘online collaboration’. As Don Tapscott puts it in his book ‘wikinomics’: ‘The old notion that you have to attract, develop, and retain the best and brightest inside your corporate boundaries is becoming null. With the cost of collaboration falling precipitously, companies can increasingly source ideas, innovations and uniquely qualified minds from a vast global pool of talent’. While offshoring has been growing in popularity over the past 10 years, the real breakthrough is yet to come. And while Linux started about 15 years ago, the open source ...

Have you ever outsourced a web project to an offshore supplier, getting completely stressed because it all looked very promising but in the end the project just never finished? Or you simply had to redo everything yourself?If you did, you probably feel that outsourcing just doesn’t work. You probably started your project with a clear idea of what you wanted. You made an extended word document describing everything that had to be designed and programmed. Then you sent the specifications to the supplier you chose (of course the choice of supplier is a crucial reason for your frustrating ...

ICT Office en enkele Nederlandse softwarespelers, waaronder Exact, Afas en Unit4, zijn een campagne begonnen tegen het gebruik van open source-software door de Nederlandse overheid.Het overheidsbeleid rondom open source zou de innovatiekracht van de Nederlandse softwareindustrie miskennen en zelfs de kenniseconomie op het spel zetten.Aan de andere kant krijgen de voorstanders steeds meer bijval. De voordelen van open source winnen aan populariteit, want bedrijven hekelen vaker het zogeheten vendor lock-in, de afhankelijkheid van één leverancier.Bij software met een gesloten licentie ...