Agile Methodology: User Stories
In the past few weeks we’ve been discussing Agile methodology to iteratively develop custom software that better meets the need of our customers. Probably more important than this concept, however, is to to define the business need before we ever begin a project. The way we accomplish this is by creating user stories.
Entrance is now a K2 Partner!
Entrance is happy to announce that we have strengthened our K2 partnership with additional training and certifications. This partnership allows us to provide the great services that our customers have come to expect, with the expertise that comes from certification!
“Partnering with K2 is a strategic move for our organization as we continue to offer our clientele best-of-breed solutions,” said Entrance Consulting Practice Lead, Carol Donnelly. “As the only implementation partner headquartered in Houston, we are excited to empower IT teams with an application development platform that allows them to deliver value to their business sooner, while simultaneously removing restrictions imposed upon them by legacy systems. K2’s forms and workflows are highly intuitive and deliver the right information to the right people at the right time, so they can make better, more informed business decisions – which leads to better business outcomes.”
About Entrance
Entrance consultants help companies buy, build, and integrate software that delivers better results for business users. Headquartered in Houston, TX and founded in 2003, we have dedicated practices in application management, application development, Microsoft Office + SharePoint, data management & analytics. We specialize in surfacing relevant information and data sources so that our clients can make the most informed decisions possible for their business.
About K2
K2 software helps people work smarter and get business done faster, with low- to no-code business application platforms and solutions that span roles, departments and data sources. Allowing companies to integrate, configure and evolve on their current systems, K2 makes business more agile while simplifying processes and workflows. With K2, the complexity of traditional software development is eliminated and replaced with easy-to-use, visual tools. Founded in 2000, SourceCode Technologies Inc. – the developer of K2 – is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, and has more than 1.5 million users in 80 countries, across the Fortune 500 and mid-market.
Click here for more information on our K2 consulting services!
SharePoint 2013 and Large Lookup Lists
SharePoint 2013 and an Unexpected Cost of Large Lookup Lists
SharePoint 2013 can handle very large lists (given a very restrictive set of requirements). There is however one error that slipped through the cracks from the Microsoft SharePoint development team. When the total number of items in a list exceed 20,000 items (mileage may vary); you may lose the ability to use the list as a Lookup Column while maintaining the ability to edit the list item via the default edit form. Read More
Celebrating Ten Years of Great Custom Software
A Custom Software Extravaganza
The Entrance team celebrated a decade of oil and gas custom software at the Petroleum Club on December 16th. A group of 200 honored guest and Entrance team members gathered together over drinks, dancing, and delicious food.
The menu for the event included lobster bisque, mashed potato martini’s, prime rib, and a make-your-own pasta bar. For desert, guests chose from a selection of mini desserts and a ten year anniversary cake.
Far from being your usual cocktail event, the party also featured a photo booth and a range of video games. Choices ran the board from old school pinball to the latest video game systems.
After guests had their fill of food and fun, Houston band Molly and the Ringwalds took the stage for a rocking 80’s performance. To make things even more fun, party goers received props like wigs, boom boxes, neon gloves, and more.
Entrance rounded out the night by handing out a copy of the Book of Entrance. This pocket sized book commemorates ten years of smart + fun with recipes, photos, interviews, and the coveted rules to Volley Pong.
For pictures of the custom software team and their guests, check out the Facebook album!
Entrance Custom Software Consultants See Doubled Growth in 2013
A Growing Team of Custom Software Consultants
2013 was a landmark year for the Entrance custom software team. Some of the business accomplishments included:
- Doubling headcount
- Increasing revenue by 50%
- Increasing work capacity by 50%
- Addition of several high profile Upstream clients
- Grew the already substantial footprint of oil and gas service company clients
A Bigger Office to Match
As the Entrance team has grown, so too has the need for office space. As a result, the footprint of the business has nearly doubled as well.Many new consultants have taken their place in what the team calls the bullpen.
Desks and cube walls can be moved around at will in this new space. This is meant to enable project teams to work together flexibly and collaboratively.
Most employees can agree that the best part of the phase two expansion is the addition of the Fishbowl. The Fishbowl features a ping-pong table, shuffle board, golf practice areas, and a soda machine, with more fun additions to come.
Company growth is projected to continue at similar rates. As a result, planning has already begun for phase three of the office expansion!
Great Managers for Great Teams
A growing company also demonstrates the need for more managers. In the past six months, Entrance has hired a new HR manager, a sales manager, and four new project managers.
As a result, the team can now benefit from several new skill-sets, like energy warehousing.
The need to keep employees while aggressively hiring new ones has also led to an expansion in fringe benefits. Entrance team members now enjoy a fitness room, locker room, fully stocked smoothie station, gym memberships, and healthy snack options.
Strategy to Lead the Way Forward
While every successful company relies on a little luck, a good CEO will tell you that the strategy behind explosive growth has to be sound. As such, the Entrance management team rolled out a new three year strategic plan in the second half of 2013.
In addition, the team has also developed a new 25 year vision for Entrance to become the world authority on software for the energy industry.
As Entrance closes the chapter on its first decade, the entire company looks towards even bigger and better things in the next ten years.
Said Entrance president Nate Richards, ” It’s exciting to celebrate a decade of successful business! Our success so far really feels like the beginning of the next chapter.”
For more on the growing Entrance team, read this post about quarterly goal celebrations!
Bad Software Consulting: Offshore Voicemails Part 1
Software Consulting that Works for Your Business
There are a lot of bad software consulting vendors out there. Let’s face it, lots of people can write code. But the ability to understand your business needs and execute effectively is another story!
If your company is looking for a software consulting company, it’s important to consider a number of factors, such as:
- Do they know your industry?
Clients come to us all the time saying about their previous software consultant, “They were OK, but they didn’t understand oil and gas.” - Do they understand good UI (user interface)?
There is software, and then there is software that is easy to use and navigate. Not every developer has the skills to accomplish this. - Do they off-shore?
Off-shoring always sounds cheaper from the get-go, but take into account factors like language barriers, different time zones, and a lack of understanding how an American business is run. All of these together can add up to software that is confusing, over budget, or never completed.
We get calls all the time from off-shore telemarketers asking us to outsource our development work. Whose hands do you want to leave the success of your software project in?
For more, check out our post on the “Top Five Signs of Bad Software.”
Entrance Software Consulting Team Celebrates 10 Years
Happy Birthday to Entrance
On December 16th, the Entrance software consulting team will be celebrating ten years of business. During that time, the company has moved to progressively larger offices, shifted focus to serving the oil and gas industry, and grown to be 60 plus people.
Entrance started out with only a couple of employees and a few solid energy contracts. The company has grown from there based on prudent leadership, a clear focus on customer service, and a deep hands on understanding of what makes oil and gas software different.
Remarked Entrance president Nate, “Growing Entrance has always been a labor of love for me. I wouldn’t have chosen to do anything else.”
Growing Up to Become an Energy Leader
As Entrance has grown as a company, it has become clear to the leadership team that the energy industry is under-served in their access to software that fits their needs and is well integrated. As a result, we have made it our mission to become the global authority on software for the energy industry.
Celebrating in Style
The team at Entrance knows how to celebrate. Every month, we host happy hours, team lunches, and more. A ten year anniversary calls for something special, however. Honored guests, partners, clients, and Entranceans themselves will take part in a party at the Petroleum Club to mark this exciting milestone.
Said Entrance’s director of consulting Chad, “We think this is a fitting location to celebrate how we have grown into our oil and gas software consulting role.”
Head of HR, Amy, had this to say, “We’re all particularly excited about the performance by Molly and the Ringwalds. I’ll probably leave my neon scrunchie at home, but we’ll be ready to get our smart + fun on to the 80’s.”
Entrance Custom Software Developers Awarded Houston Business Journal’s Best Places to Work
Custom Software Excellence Translates to HBJ Award
This past month, the Houston Business Journal announced the winners of their Best Places to Work award. Entrance’s Houston software developers are proud to be on the list for the second year.
The award celebrates “companies that not only are top performers in their industries, but that truly value their talented employees.”
As Entrance has grown from a fifteen person company less than two years ago to 60 people today, the leadership team is proud to rank on lists like the HBJ’s Best Places to Work.
Remarked Entrance’s director of consulting, Chad Modad,”Our consultants are what make Entrance great, basically our most valuable resources. As a result, we’re always looking for ways to be a best in class employer”.
Keeping Up With a High Bar
Entrance is particularly proud to be part of the Houston Business Journal’s list this year, as the standards for this award were raised for 2013. “A firm must have scored at least an 85 in its employee surveys to be named a finalist.”
Particularly in the competitive market place in Houston, it’s not just awards like these that encourage Entrance to keep up. Said Entrance president Nate Richards, “We’re hiring one and two people per week. They’re just not going to stick around if our offerings don’t keep up with the industry.”
See Entrance’s job openings on our website, or visit the Entrance Facebook or LinkedIn pages for a daily peek into the fun!
Great Custom Software: The Five W’s
Improving Custom Software
This quarter, Entrance is making quality a focus for improvement, both for custom software development and our software consulting efforts. Although we always strive to deliver the best possible result to clients, we know that we can always implement new techniques that will make these results even better.
Entrance Q3: Software Consulting Wrap-Up
Software Consultants in Oil & Gas
As we look towards 2014, Entrance has spent Q3 preparing to grow as the market leader in oil and gas software. To that end, we created and followed through on a number of new initiatives that will help to grow and improve the company.
Goals for our software consulting organization in Q3 included:
- Growing our team with a goal of two people per week
- Building out partner relationships
- Re-vamped bonus structure for team members
- Improved project management processes
These initiatives should provide the basis for better employee retention and happier clients.
Q4 Entrance Consulting Initiatives
Moving into Q4, we will continue to grow the Entrance consulting team to meet the needs of our many projects. In addition, the company is moving forward with goals to create an energy software lab and database.
One particular focus for the month of October is to find strategies that will improve the quality of our work for clients even more! For an inside view on our internal discussions on this topic, check out our ongoing blog series from the software consultants themselves!
Glitch-Ridden Healthcare.gov: It pays to have a custom web development plan
Custom web development gone wrong
NBC reported today that the custom web development project to create Healthcare.gov is many millions of dollars over budget. The website, which is intended by the government facilitate sign up for health care exchanges, has many bugs and appears to be unable to handle the necessary volume.
Custom Software Projects: Planning, Projection, and Agile Methodologies
Agile and Custom Software
Starting a new custom software project is both exciting and daunting, both for the customer and the developer. I read a blog this week on Microsoft’s website that highlighted one of the most difficult parts: accurately estimating the scope of a project.
Entrance Expansion: We Have Lift-Off!
A Beautiful Space for Our Growing Team
This past week, Entrance was excited to complete the build-out of our expanded office space. We have rapidly grown in the past year, so this new space couldn’t have come any sooner.
Expansion Under Way: Entrance’s Corporate Office in Houston
So excited about our new build out at our corporate headquarters! Thanks #1 to all my Entrance Teammates for driving the growth, and welcoming change! Also thanks to our Clients, who drive the market’s demand for a software consulting firm that is truly “fluent in energy.”
Agile and Custom Software: Getting the Most for Your Money Part 2
I started a series a few weeks ago about Agile methodologies and how many end users are uncomfortable with what the end result of a custom software project will be. This week I’d like to cover how software planning is different when it comes to Agile, and how this plays out in your favor.
Custom Software: Your Business Logic, Codifed
When it comes to software, every company has to evaluate whether an off the shelf or custom software option makes the most sense. Off the shelf products are often cheaper, but they may not be able to provide the complete functionality that your team needs to get their job done. For one pipeline engineering services firm, a custom software application made the most sense for them because they needed a product that could specifically encode their business logic.
Software Consulting Best Practices: Branching and Merging Part 1
When it comes to good software consulting, Entrance spends a lot of time on maintaining good best practices so that we can produce awesome custom software for our clients. To that end, I’d like to cover a few things that I’ve learned recently about code branching and merging. It should be helpful not only to technical leads on projects, but to all developers on teams as they seek to work together efficiently and seamlessly. The terminology used in this article is defined at the bottom.
Building a Case for Custom Software
We meet new prospective clients on an almost daily basis, and one way or the other they all come to us with the need for custom software or consulting. What separates the clients with super successful final products from the others is their understanding of the business value behind a software project. This isn’t to say we don’t put 100% behind every project, because we do. But this understanding makes a huge difference in overall satisfaction with the final product.
Software Developer Tricks for VML, jQuery, IE 8, and SharePoint 2010
As a SharePoint consultant, I run into and fix bugs all the time. One of my recent custom SharePoint 2010 projects required the use of HighCharts.js and jQuery. I’d like to share how I fixed one bug that that caused jQuery to break in combination with VML, jQuery, IE 8, and SharePoint 2010. So let’s get started solving this problem!
Entrance Unveils “Frac Your Data™” Campaign at P2 Energy Solutions Conference
Houston Software Consulting Promotes Data Management and Integration for Texas Energy Companies
At this week’s P2 Energy Solutions conference, ASCEND 2013 in San Antonio, Entrance reveals its new “Frac Your Data” campaign to promote data management for energy companies. Nathaniel Richards, President and CEO of the Houston software consulting firm, will share insights and strategies with ASCEND 2013 attendees in the oil and gas industry.
With energy software development experience including data integration, process automation, and business intelligence analytics, Richards is experienced in connecting the industry and the field to the corner office. “By centralizing information from various departments, energy executives can gain valuable insights and efficiencies unseen before. Our clients see their own processes and tools made better through custom software applications,” says Richards.
For more on Entrance’s oil and gas software solutions, visit our knowledge base!