Ever Notice Custom Applications Are A Lot Like A Cat You're Always Tripping Over?

Custom applications can seem as though they're always underfoot, mewling (demanding attention) or coughing up a hairball ("crashing" or doing something strange) at the most inconvenient times.

Pre-packaged ("canned") applications are guilty of behaving this way, too (example, Microsoft Word — does anyone actually use every feature in it?). There's really no excuse for it with custom applications.

All too often, they just seem to get in the way of getting the job done.

Custom applications don't have to be this way. They don't have to behave badly.

Why do applications behave so badly?

A big reason is the way in which technology projects are set-up, managed and planned. It's far easier to design a program that's "feature-rich" than figuring out what a customer (the user) really wants.

By packing features into a custom application, information technologists and software engineers believe they are delivering value to you.

What they usually end up doing is creating programs with steep learning curves, toolbars that never get used, defaults that shouldn't be. And what do you end up feeling?

If you're in the majority, you're confused and (not to be insulting here) feel dumb when you use them.

If you express frustration and confusion, info-technologists do you a grave disservice — they blame you because you "aren't computer literate".

Well, the only people who are "computer literate" are information technology specialists. And, sometimes, even they're hard-pressed to figure out the strange behavior exhibited by computers and the software that runs them.

Well, we're going to say something really unpopular here: It isn't your fault. The fault lies entirely in the design of computer programs.

(We can hear IT executives, managers and engineers sucking in their breath now.)

You can't entirely blame them, though. Information technology specialists are highly linear, rational people for the most part. They've learned how to think and solve problems in computer-like ways. They have to be able to do so to do their jobs. They spend their days thinking about and solving problems that you don't and probably wouldn't want to.

Let's assume for a moment that you're looking to commission a custom application that will support a business process. (Fancy that!)

Computers need to know absolutely everything about your process. They need to know what the first step is right through to the last. On top of it all, they must respond to various stimuli like mouse clicks, button pushes, and typing on the keyboard (to name a few).

Now, the average human being, like you, doesn't think linearly like a computer. You think associatively. Computers need information in 1-2-3-4 form where you may think of a process as 1-3-4-2.

You can see the problem.

In the process of designing the application, you're zooming along out of sequence while the programmer needs to know the exact sequence.

The nature of information technologists is to get coding as quickly as possible to create the solution you need. Often they break work down to tasks and proceed from there.

Idle programmers cost money, so the pressure is heavy to keep them busy. Programmers genuinely like writing code. They love solving problems and overcoming technical challenges.

Contributing to the problem, also, is that computers are so darned complex. Alan Cooper, father of Visual BASIC, describes most of today's software as "Dancing Bearware".

In effect, you're like the villagers of old who paid money to see a bear dance in the town square. When the vendor had collected enough cash, he would tell the bear to dance. It would rear up on its hind legs and shuffle back and forth.

People were in awe not because the bear danced well — but that it danced at all.

And isn't that true of computers today? Isn't it amazing they actually work at all even if poorly?

Now there's a better way to build well-behaved custom applications

Synergy employs the best design practices to build computer programs. Yes, we do use standard development tools, like Microsoft Visual BASIC™, to build the custom application.

We employ interaction design before we begin the coding process.

We understand that you don't think like a computer. Nor should you.

We know that well before coding begins, there are going to be changes. That's why we don't begin coding straight away.

We allow you to be you. You get to figure out the process instead of shelling out money to write an application that simply won't do what you want it to do.

Unlike our competition (and a lot of large software manufacturers), you don't get unnecessary features that don't get used. Your custom application will not be like the proverbial cat described above.

We follow a similar process to that of an architect. We call it the Synergy Success Plan (the same process we use to build Web/Ecommerce Applications). The process is:

How do you benefit?

First, you don't pay for programming until the project gets to the Construction Phase. It's not necessary to do so until the application is ready to construct. That's not all, it's ill-advised to rush the Basic Floor Plan and Blueprinting/Modelling Phases.

Our method is to provide and promote clear communication between the architect and you, the client and your team (if there is one), and between the architect and the programmers.

In the Floor Plan and Blueprinting stages, we're involved but not as intensively as during programming. That doesn't mean we leave you to your own devices nor sit you through interminable meetings.

You are intimately involved with the design where you must be involved. We encourage it. Because you see the front-end of the application evolve, you know it will work exactly as you know it should.

Armed with the blueprints and model we proceed to coding the application.

Every application must meet the following goals as closely as possible —

• Your custom application will be well-behaved.
• It will be polite (known in design as "not whining about its needs all the time" and "insisting you do the process its way or not at all").
• Your application will function as intended, designed and specified.

Ultimately, we want you to purr contentedly and wonder how you ever got by without such custom applications. It drives us. Drives us to the point where we offer an ironclad guarantee:

How many other software developers have you talked to who offer that kind of guarantee?

We stand behind our custom applications. We believe in our process. We'll prove it to you.

Fill in a Contact & Information Request now. Due to the volume of requests we receive, we can only respond to qualified clients.

Our very best regards and to your success,

P.S. Yes, we mean it about our guarantee.