Programmer: an organism that turns coffee into a software – Author Unkonwn

There are a lot of stories and urban myths that programmers are run by a coffee. It seems like they are drinking a lot of this delicious drink and that it helps them get into “the Zone”. There are also large number of discussions on this subjects all over the web.

I can’t really speak for everyone, but I know for sure that coffee is a No1 beverage in our company. In A51 coffee is drink to help us wake up and start our work day, to make us more focus on the job we’re doing, to make a break, or to refresh us while we’re discussing about new projects. It is something that is always available and always around.

We have mentioned before that we’re moving into our new office. We have moved but we’re not completely settled yet. Our workplaces are equipped and fully functional, but there’s still some polishing left to be done in other rooms in the office. When everything is set, we will be ready to show you how it all looks like, but we won’t reveal anything until then.

One of the first things that was installed in our new office was an espresso maker. This was completely reasonable decision, because our programmers are run by coffee, for sure.

This machine can make a cup of espresso from the freshly grounded coffee beans, make a cream out of your milk, or just supply you with the hot water for your tea or instant coffee. So there’s something for everybody.

Since programmers are not really famous as a good coffee makers, our guys have decided to brake this prejudice and they are all give they best to make a perfect cup of espresso. They are trying to find an optimal measure for the coffee, cream the milk on exactly the right level… It’s a real pleasure to watch them and enjoy in the coffee they are making.

Now that we have all we need – new spacious, nice and comfortable office and lots and lots of coffee you can rest assured that we’re doing our job the best we can. And if you’re in the neighborhood feel free to drop by for a cup of fresh coffee.

How to find our chat? Simply visit www.activeCollab.com and click the Chat link in the main toolbar. Myself and Dusan are here to help you out with all activeCollab related questions, issues and dilemmas that you may have.

At the beginning the idea was to use chat only for the pre-sale questions, but then pople started asking some simple things about activeCollab functionality that we could easily answer, and we have decided to help anyone we can. When we came across a more complex issue we simply direct people to our help desk where support programmers will help them out. In this way we help people find a solution much faster. They know that there is someone here who will listen to them and help them find a solution, one way or another.

By being in close contact with our current and future customers on a daily basis we have learned a lot about the way they are using activeCollab and the things that are the most useful, or confusing to people when they meet the system for the first time. It really helps, because based on that feedback we can improve the product. Such information can come in handy for designing some new features, or improving existing ones – because you know exactly what people are asking for.We have also get some ideas on how to improve our website, write new articles in the Documentation section, etc.  We have even created a whole new set of articles – activeCollab Tutorials, based on some of the most frequent questions we get on the chat.

Besides solving problems quickly and receiving really valuable feedback, the best benefit that we have from the chat is a happy customer. It is really great when you know that people are leaving chat with the :) We do our best to be open and help resolve all the problems that customers may be experiencing. After a while it has really become an enjoying task. Besides, it’s also a great opportunity to get to know our customers better.

So far, the whole chat experience was great. We have all learned a lot and get so much positive energy from all the people we talked to. If you wish to talk to us about your business and how activeCollab can help we’re here, so feel free to get in touch.

Some of you might have noticed the support request submission form on activeCollab website. Here’s how it looks like:

I need to mention that this is not something that we came up with – this is a request description box that HelpSpot offers to it’s users to be posted on the contact page.

It is not a secret that we are using HelpSpot to manage our customer support, and this type of contact form is one of the thing that turns out to be surprisingly useful to us. It makes communication with our users much, much easier.

When you are in trouble only thing that matters to you is to find a way out, you don’t think much how did you get here in a first place. It’s a similar situation with customer support requests. When people are asking for help they often don’t know what exactly went wrong and which part of the application they don’t understand. They just wish to see it working in a way they want. Because of that it is can be really hard for us to help people without knowing what really happened with their activeCollab.

This is where the contact form on the support page helps the most! Such type of contact form may seem confusing to people at first sight, but they still go along with it. In most cases users are trying to fill out all the fields and to give us all the answers. These answers are the key of figuring out where the problem is. We can reconstruct their actions and find out what they wanted to accomplish. The rest is easy – we simply give them instructions on how to set the thing properly, or which is the feature that they should use, or… Anyway, we manage to help people effectively and quickly.

Communication, as one of the most important aspects of quality customer support, is something that we have to be good at. People often don’t know what are all the info they need to provide us to help them solve the problem and that’s why they can’t say everything in a simple email message. And when we don’t have all the info we have to ask, and by the time we find out all relevant facts there are already 4 to 6 emails in the inbox that haven’t solved the real issue. In most cases we have managed to avoid this situation by using a different support request submission form.

When problems are solved with a first reply email, you can get:

• a happy customer
• a lot of positive feedback
• less time spend working on support requests (we all work on many different things in A51, but customer support is our top priority, and as soon as we clear our inbox, we can devote to other tasks)

It’s a win-win situation for all parties! And all because of a small and insignificant thin, such as custom contact form.

Often in the business world you need to act fast and to decide what to do next in a short period of time. When you are in a small company, you can think that you’re off the radar from a busy and crowded business arena, but in fact you’re in the arena of your own and it’s completely up to you to build your position in the league. To do that you need to be effective in decision making.

It’s not easy to make a call and to resolve where to go next, and you need to be good at it if you wish to make some progress in your business. You need to create a framework for your business decisions and place it into a context that works for you. It will help you to avoid being stuck in the limbo of over-thinking and delaying things to happen.

The most important questions that you need to answer when you wish to decide on something are:

• Where you are at this point?
• Where you want to be tomorrow?

After you are clear with your current status, resources and position in the business arena, you can decide where to go next. The better you define position where you wish to be tomorrow, more clear your path toward it will be.

Unfortunately, it is not always easy to be objective and to see the current position of your business clearly. Figures and reports won’t help you much in this – they can be perfect, but you can still feel that there’s something wrong with your business. The best way to see where you are currently would be for you to make a distance, and to try to see the big picture. Only after you realize where you are at the moment, you will be able to move forward.

After defining the basis, you need to figure out where you wish to be next. This is a bit easier task. We all have some dreams and wishes, so feel free to be creative. If you decide to be a No. 1 company in your branch, make sure you’re working on improvements all the time. Go one step at the time, and analyze carefully what are the resources and means available to you. Use them wisely and you will be on your way to the top.

When you figure out where you are and where you wish to be tomorrow, all business decisions you need to make will be easier. You will have the frame and all your actions will be fit into that frame. You can think about it as a playground, where you are the leading player with all the toys in your possession.

Unlike previous spaces where our offices were, now we have a complete freedom to decorate and rearrange the place as we want. We can even move walls, drill holes and experiment with the ceiling. All with a purpose to provide a cosy and pleasant place for our team to work in.

Here’s how our new office looks like:

All unnumbered rooms are offices. They are all going to be spacious, with lots of natural light, comfortable and cozy, and completely adjusted for work. We already have some plans on how we will arrange the offices.

The other rooms, they are much more interesting, and we are going to talk about them now:

• 1. Meeting room – even if we don’t have meetings (as such) it is good to have a room like this. Plenty of space, large desk, big screen, and a whiteboard are quite useful when few people are working together. Here they can enjoy their creative chaos and work together away from the others.
• 2. Server room – the place for all our network equipment, server, printer, and all other stuff that comes in the package. The door of this room will be closed, so noise and blinking lights will not bother anyone.
• 3. Kitchen – All necessary kitchen equipment will be here. Since we already have a home cooked meal in our office everyday, and a number of employees is rising, we need to upgrade this aspect of our company as well.
• 4. Relaxing zone – this will be a common room where people will hang out and take a break. Since this room don’t have a source of natural light, we have an opportunity to be creative in this aspect. There’s already a glass wall here that will bring some of the light from the office next door, but we still need more light, and a few heavy lamps will do the work. The furniture is also something that we are going to play with and let our craziest ideas out.
• 5. Little room – the smallest room in our office. At the moment we saw it, we knew what we will be using it for! But, let’s leave some of the surprises for some other blog post.

We will keep you informed about our new office progress. And we promise that there are be some photos soon. At the moment there are only walls and construction workers, so there’s really not that much to see. The best is yet to come.

Enjoy and have fun!

Cheers,
A51 Team

We can’t tell exactly and for sure how a workspace should look like. Each person needs to figure out what suits her best – someone likes clean and tidy desk, while others like it to be messy and scatter things around. Nevertheless, there is a couple of general advices that we can give you, based on our company experience and desire to make all our employees settled in a best possible way.

Here’s what we can say about a workplace:

• Make yourself comfortable – you need to feel good and cosy in a place where you should spend your working hours and display your creativity. Maybe you can’t choose a desk, or a chair, but you can certainly adjust them to your size and habits and place them as you fit best.
• Eliminate the clutter from your desk – I’m sure you heard this one before, but it is really important to get rid of all the distractions and to remove the things that are stealing your attention. Leave only the things you are using on your desk, no matter if they are properly sorted out, or in a mess. The important thing is that you have only what you need around you.
• Get enough light – light is very important to your mood and it helps get in the zone of creativity. The best light is natural, sunlight, but white office light can do the trick. If your corner is too dark, you can always get a lamp whit a white light and you’ll see that your perspective is going to change. When you make a pause, use it to go outside and to feel the fresh air and the sun on your skin. It will move and shake you up.
• Find what’s inspiring and motivate you – the biggest motivator in the business is the money. You can’t get motivated and inspired by a photo of your pet in a frame in front of you. Better try with a photo of a desired car or a thing that you want really bad in there. In this way you are not thinking about feeding the cat after getting home, but about giving your best to do the work, to get a rase, bonus, or increase a sales to get more money for the thing you desire.

Our office is a collection of all styles and types of workspaces, but one thing is for sure – everyone can have their own space, and freedom to arrange their desk and space around as they wish.

You can do that too. Maybe you can’t change the office policy, but you can rearrange your desk, replace your chair, get a lamp, find a motivational photo or a poster, and make a fresh start. All it takes is a strong will and a wish to make a step forward.

The most important thing about forum is that it will always keep you in touch with the people who are using your software and are interested in the things you do. In a software business that is one of the important points – to have an audience. And if you make it to gain a few friend and fans out of the audience, then that’s a real pleasure!

From our experience with activeCollab Forum we have learned a lot of useful lessons and we are going to share it with you. They are not a must and a recipe for a success, they are just a couple of friendly advices and conclusions that we have made from our practice:

• People like forums and they are really enjoying discussion and the ability to speak up. Give people an opportunity to talk about the things you made and the way you do your business. You can hear a lot of interesting points and constructive critics. Of course, there will be the ones who are going to bash you, but that’s the part of a business, isn’t it?
• Feedback you will get is really valuable. After you make a new release or introduce a new feature share the news with your community. The feedback you get will be honest (they will tell if something is not good enough), valid (because it’s from a people who are using the software) and will point out the direction your future development should be turned into.
• Pay attention to feature requests. Forum is a great tool to find out what is missing in your software and how people wish to use it. You don’t have to make every wish come true, but sum up a few frequent ones and you’ll have what to add to your next big version.
• Customer support can be done via forum. People who have a question or a problem with your software can use forum to get a quick answer to their questions. Some will simply create a new topic with a question, while others will search first to see if there’s already an answer to their question. As your community and number of discussions grows, forum becomes a really useful place where people help each other and search for answers.
• Organize your forum well. If you do that at the beginning it will be much easier for you and for your community members to find a place to post a topic. It will also make things easier when you are looking for a specific info – you will know in which sub-forum to look at.
• Communicate, share and be relaxed. After all, forum is a place where you can “talk” to a real people, so feel free to communicate in a more relaxed way. You don’t need to be uptight and formal here, people will notice, and they will feel uncomfortable. Instead, relax and make sure that everyone feels welcome.

Our forum was helping us a lot in the past – it enabled us to gather some great people around activeCollab, teach us a lot about our software, and give us the opportunity to find some friend. That’s why we recommend a forum to you at any time!

The guy who is in-charge for the desktop application development here at A51 is Aleksandar. He is the person who can tell us more about the application and development process.

me: Hi Aleksandar, activeCollab Timers are up and running, and we expect to see the first stable release soon. Can you tell us how soon?

A: Hi, we have completed Beta testing phase quite successfully. Users has been very helpful and the feedback they provided was great! It helped me a lot to decide what will be the features that will have priority in development. Since we’re running Release Candidate 1.1 we expect to hit the stable version in a couple of weeks. We wish to make sure that everything is running in a way we want.

me: activeCollab Timer is multi-platform application. Can you reveal what tools have you been using in development? What framework and programming language?

A: activeCollab Timer was built on Qt/C++ framework. We choose this setup because it enabled us to create native apps and let us exploit the full potential of targeted systems. We have worked on one code, that was running on both Windows and Mac OS, thanks to the framework. It saved us a lot of time, because we didn’t have to write two different sets of code.

me: Was it difficult to create an application that would act the same in different environments? We all know that Windows and Mac OS have some similarities, but that they have completely different logic in the background.

A: It’t was challenging, but not difficult. Most of the crucial things are solved in the framework itself, so all I had to do was to use this solutions in a smart way :-)

me: Can you share some tips and tricks on multi-platform development?

A: Well, I don’t have that much to say… In general, people should be aware of all the advantages that tools they are using can offer, and use all of their benefits. If something is already solved, don’t try to outsmart the system. That would basically be everything that I can advice :-)

me: What was the most difficult issue to solve?

A: Hmmm… it’s hard to say, nothing in particular wasn’t that difficult, but if I had to pick one thing, I would say: the interface. It was tricky to adjust the same code to two different interface. Just when you think  you have set everything up in one system, it goes nuts in the other. Then you need to get back to the start and see what went wrong. Luckily, I managed to find the troublesome spots quite quickly.

me: You have mentioned that the feedback helped in application development, and that we have received a lot of cheers for this app. People really like activeCollab Timers. How do you feel now, when you know that people are happy and using something that you created?

A: The feeling is amazing :) I’m happy to hear that I made somebody’s work easier and more comfortable. I hope that people will like and use Timer even more in future.

me: Thank you for your time Aleksandar, it was great talking to you :-)

A: You’re welcome :)

activeCollab roadmap is not publicly available, sorry

and:

Sorry, we do not discuss features that are not yet part of activeCollab. Because of that we can’t share any details or give an estimate when that feature will be available. We’ll consider it for one of the upcoming releases, but we can’t make any promises at the moment.

The clearest answer that you can get is when we know that particular feature will not be added in activeCollab any time soon (or ever, in some cases):

Sorry, we do not have plans to introduce that feature in the near future. If you need it now, you can build it yourself or hire someone to do that for you.

I can just imagine how frustrating it may be to use a software product as one of the key components of your business and not knowing what future lays ahead of it. I really do, but although we completely understand desire of our customers to know what’ll be added to the product, secrecy about upcoming features has its purpose.

By not commenting on upcoming features or making promises we:

1. Don’t waste time daydreaming about features. While activeCollab was open source product, I have used to spend hours discussing feature requests on the forum, going through all of its pros and cons, implications that it will have on the rest of the system, etc. Guess what – software does not get built like that!

It just doesn’t. You can spend hours talking about something, without writing a single line of code. That’s not software development or “listening to your customers” – that’s just daydreaming.

Instead, we agreed that we’ll use a different approach for activeCollab 1 and later – we’ll discuss features only when we have working code to back up the discussion. Something like: “OK, here’s the feature X. Give it a try and tell us what you think!” and than improve it over a couple of iterations.

It’s not the perfect approach, but it seams to produce good results over time. It’s releases that count, not talk.

2. Don’t make promises that we have to break. What seams like a really good idea at one point, may turn out to be a dud when you get to implement it. If you already made a promise, it’s really hard to back up from it without getting someone mad. Plus, changing your mind all the time in front of your customers damages your reputation as a vendor.

Here’s an example. A customer posts a request on the forum about feature X, you get a couple of +1 from other customers and you make a promise that you’ll implement that feature in the next release. After that, you get a couple of more +1 just to confirm that other customers are interested as well, and can’t wait for the next release, and how much they appreciate that you are listen to them and are committed to improve the product, and so on…

All seams good, right? Right!? Well… It depends.

What you created is an expectation that you may not live up to and unnecessary pressure to you and your team. When you said “next release” you probably meant six months (development cycles get longer as product matures), while your customer meant next week; while you mean this:

your customers imagined this:

and while it may seams like a good idea now, it may turn out to be way more complicated or impractical when you start to actually work on it. You may be forced to move it to the other release because you can’t get it done without postponing the current one, or you may even need to throw it away.

Been there, done that. Now I’d rather lose a sale or two than to make a promise that has the slightest chance of being broken.

3. We get a chance to surprise you. This, by itself, is not a goal, but a side effect of our decision to develop major releases in secrecy.

Conclusion

Transparency can make people happy, but it can also make your life a living hell. Based on previous experiences, we opted for less transparency and this approach is not going to change any time soon.

When you are questioning something, don’t assume. Instead, just look for clues and patterns in data that you already have. This is something that I’ve learned from hiring people – don’t fall for fancy titles and charisma, but look for repetitive behavior. In this particular case, don’t look for big promises or developers who talk too much, but look at how they ship software. That’s what counts at the end.

Some of you will think that I’m completely and utterly wrong and that we’ll be out of business because we don’t appreciate our customer’s time and money. That’s fine, everyone is free to have their own opinion. We think that we found model that works well in the long run (and we are here for the long haul, not to make a quick buck) and we plan to stick with it.