Austere Systems Limited

Choosing between native and cross-platform development can be tricky, especially if you’re building your first app or managing a team with limited resources. Both approaches have their pros and cons. As every operating system has its own structure, dependencies, compatibility with external libraries, guidelines and espacially security requirements , and the right choice depends on factors like budget, time, target audience, and app complexity in all this scenarios, important thing is users experience Let’s break it down simply.

What is Native Development?

1. Native development means creating apps specifically for a single platform, such as Android or iOS. You’ll use platform-specific programming languages and tools:

• Android: Uses Java or Kotlin with Android Studio.

• iOS: Uses Swift or Objective-C with Xcode.

2. These apps are optimized for the platform they run on, providing the best performance and access to device-specific features.

3. Pros of Native Development:

• Better Performance: Since native apps are built directly for a platform, they run smoothly without extra layers, that's why they ranked higher in order to user's performance.

• Access to All Features: You can use all the hardware features like GPS, Bluetooth, or the camera without limitations.

• Great User Experience: The design feels native to the platform, which users are familiar with.

4. Cons of Native Development:

• More Time-Consuming: You need to develop and maintain separate codebases for Android and iOS.

• Expensive: Requires hiring different teams (or developers) for each platform.

• Complex Updates: Any new feature or bug fix must be implemented twice—once for each platform.

What is Cross-Platform Development?

1. In cross-platform development, you write a single codebase that works on multiple platforms (Android, iOS, and sometimes even web or desktop). Popular frameworks include:
   • React Native (by Facebook)

• Flutter (by Google)

• Ionic and Cordova

2. These frameworks save time by sharing code across platforms.

3. Pros of Cross-Platform Development:

• Faster Development: Write once, deploy everywhere!

• Lower Cost: One codebase means fewer developers needed.

• Easier Maintenance: You only have to update and fix bugs in one codebase.

4. Cons of Cross-Platform Development:

• Performance Trade-off: Cross-platform apps may not be as smooth as native ones, especially for complex apps.

• Limited Access to Native Features: Some platform-specific features may be harder to implement.

• Inconsistent UI: It can be tricky to make the app look and feel the same across platforms.

When to Choose Native Development?

1. Performance is critical. If your app needs high performance (like a game or an AR/VR app), native is the way to go.

2. You need deep access to hardware. For apps like banking or health monitoring, native development offers better integration with device features.

3. Long-term investment. If you’re building an app with a long roadmap and expect frequent updates, native development ensures stability.

When to Choose Cross-Platform Development?

1. Tight budget and timeline. If you need to launch quickly with limited resources, cross-platform development makes more sense.

2. Simple or medium-complexity apps. Apps like eCommerce platforms, social apps, or MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) work well with cross-platform frameworks.

   3. Wide audience across platforms. If you want to reach both iOS and Android users without doubling your development effort, go cross-platform.

What’s the Best Choice for Your App?

1. There’s no specific and define answer for this. The best approach for your app depends on your goals, resources, and audience. Start by evaluating what matters most—whether it’s speed, performance, or cost. You can even start with a cross-platform MVP and move to native for specific features later.Additionally, if we have to deals with performance security and stability then prefer using native mobile apps and if you have tight budget and timelines and you want to maintain application easily then you can prefer cross platform development.

2. The key is to align your development strategy with your business needs, ensuring that your app delivers value to users while staying within your budget and timeline.

Written By: Swapnali Chaudhari

Designation: Software Developer

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/swapnali-chaudhari-143673242/

Performance Tuning: Enhancing System Efficiency and Speed

In today's fast-paced digital world, where user expectations are high and applications are complex, performance tuning is crucial to ensure systems run efficiently and deliver optimal experiences. Performance tuning involves improving the speed, responsiveness, and resource utilization of software systems, databases, networks, and hardware. This article explores the key concepts of performance tuning, why it's essential, and best practices to enhance system performance.

What is Performance Tuning?

Performance tuning is the process of adjusting and optimizing system parameters, configurations, and resources to improve overall system performance. It can be applied to various aspects of a system, including:

• Software: Optimizing application code, queries, or processes to run faster.

• Database: Tweaking database structures, indexing, and queries to handle data operations more efficiently.

• Hardware: Allocating CPU, memory, and storage resources to better support workloads.

• Network: Enhancing network configurations to reduce latency and improve data transfer speeds.

The goal of performance tuning is to maximize throughput, reduce response times, and minimize resource consumption while ensuring system stability and scalability.

Why Performance Tuning Matters

1. Improved User Experience: Slow applications lead to frustrated users, who might abandon the application altogether. Tuning ensures users experience faster load times and smoother interactions.

2. Cost Efficiency: Optimizing system performance reduces the need for additional hardware and server resources. This can lead to significant cost savings, especially in cloud environments where you're billed based on usage.

3. Scalability: As your user base grows, a poorly tuned system will struggle to handle increased traffic or data. Performance tuning helps ensure that your system can scale effectively without performance degradation.

4. System Stability: Inefficient use of system resources can lead to bottlenecks, crashes, and downtime. Tuning minimizes such risks, ensuring the system remains stable even under heavy workloads.

Key Areas for Performance Tuning

1. Application Code

• Refactoring Code: Writing clean, modular code helps improve performance. Avoiding unnecessary loops, reducing complex logic, and minimizing redundant operations all contribute to faster code execution.

• Caching: Implementing caching strategies (in-memory, page, or object caching) reduces redundant data retrievals or computations, speeding up response times.

• Concurrency and Parallelism: Leveraging multi-threading and parallelism can allow your application to perform multiple tasks concurrently, enhancing overall efficiency.

2. Database Performance

• Indexing: Proper indexing speeds up data retrieval by allowing the database engine to quickly locate the required records. However, over-indexing can slow down write operations, so it’s important to strike a balance.

• Query Optimization: Writing efficient SQL queries ensures faster execution. This includes avoiding unnecessary joins, using appropriate WHERE clauses, and limiting the data returned by queries.

• Partitioning: Partitioning large tables improves performance by dividing data into manageable chunks, enabling faster data access and processing.

3. Memory and CPU Optimization

• Memory Leaks: Regularly profiling the application can help detect memory leaks, which cause the system to use up more memory over time, leading to slower performance or crashes.

• Garbage Collection Tuning: In languages like Java and C#, tuning the garbage collector can optimize how memory is managed, reducing the frequency and impact of garbage collection on performance.

• Resource Allocation: Allocating the right amount of CPU, memory, and storage resources ensures that processes run efficiently without causing contention.

4. Network Performance

• Latency Reduction: Reducing the number of hops between nodes, using faster protocols, and optimizing the payload size can significantly reduce network latency.

• Load Balancing: Distributing workloads evenly across servers prevents any single server from becoming overwhelmed, which improves overall system responsiveness.

• Compression: Compressing data before transmission reduces the amount of data transferred over the network, speeding up data transfers.

5. Hardware Tuning

• Disk I/O Optimization: Using solid-state drives (SSDs) instead of traditional hard drives improves read/write speeds, especially for applications handling large amounts of data.

• CPU and Memory Utilization: Monitoring CPU and memory usage allows for more effective tuning of hardware configurations. Allocating additional cores or memory where needed helps prevent bottlenecks.

• Virtualization and Cloud Resources: In cloud environments, scaling up or down resources like virtual CPUs (vCPUs) or memory based on demand helps maintain optimal performance without over-provisioning.

Best Practices for Performance Tuning

1. Measure and Profile: Always begin with performance profiling to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Tools like profilers, log analyzers, and monitoring dashboards help gather performance data before optimization.

2. Focus on High-Impact Areas: Don’t attempt to optimize everything. Prioritize the most critical areas that will provide the most significant performance gains (e.g., slow database queries, expensive loops in code).

3. Iterative Tuning: Performance tuning should be an ongoing process. Start with the biggest bottlenecks, apply changes, test the impact, and repeat. Continuous monitoring is essential to ensure performance remains optimal as workloads evolve.

4. Automated Testing: Use performance testing tools (e.g., JMeter, LoadRunner) to simulate real-world scenarios and test system performance under different conditions. Automated tests ensure consistency in performance tuning efforts.

5. Documentation: Keep records of tuning efforts, changes made, and their impacts. This helps the team understand what was done, avoid redundant efforts, and quickly troubleshoot future performance issues.

Conclusion

Performance tuning is not a one-time activity but an ongoing process that ensures systems remain efficient, cost-effective, and responsive. By focusing on key areas like code optimization, database performance, hardware utilization, and network efficiency, businesses can achieve significant improvements in both user satisfaction and system scalability. With the right approach, tools, and mindset, performance tuning can turn a sluggish system into a high-performing, resilient one.

Written By: Samir Dalvi

Designation: Software Developer

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samir-dalvi-87106b2a5

Database Optimization Strategies

Database Optimization: A Key to Fast and Responsive Applications

In today's digital age, data is akin to currency. It powers every application, with the database playing a pivotal role in managing and storing this critical information. As systems evolve over the years, one common challenge they face is the rapid growth of data. Whether dealing with legacy systems or modern applications involving human interactions, transactions, or IoT devices, data continues to grow exponentially, and database sizes increase steadily.

In such scenarios, ensuring that a live application’s database remains optimized is crucial for maintaining speed and responsiveness. No one likes slow systems, and databases are key components in determining how fast applications can perform.

To achieve fast applications with responsive databases, several strategies can be implemented:

1. Separation of OLTP and OLAP

Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) involves everyday transactional systems, such as UPI applications, office suites, and other operational systems. On the other hand, Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) is primarily used for reporting, where organizations analyze data to extract patterns and gain insights. OLAP typically deals with larger time spans—such as monthly, quarterly, or yearly data—depending on reporting needs.

One of the most effective ways to optimize databases is by separating OLTP and OLAP. This involves copying live transactional data into a separate schema, database, or server specifically dedicated to reporting. The advantage of this separation is that reporting queries, which often demand more time and resources, do not interfere with transactional operations. By offloading analytical tasks, the transactional area remains fast and responsive for end users.

2. Use of Materialized Views

Building on the idea of separating OLTP and OLAP, materialized views can be a useful semi-operational solution for OLTP systems. A materialized view is essentially a snapshot of table data, but it’s periodically updated using a scheduler to capture changes, known as the “delta.” This means the materialized view remains a near-live copy of the data that can be used for reporting without affecting the main transactional system.

Materialized views offer a practical way to avoid running resource-intensive queries on the live transactional database, thus maintaining its performance while still providing relatively up-to-date data for reporting purposes.

3. Optimized Use of Indexes

Efficient use of indexes is critical to boosting database performance. Indexes help databases quickly retrieve data without scanning entire tables, thus reducing resource consumption. However, it’s important to only create necessary indexes—over-indexing can lead to increased overhead during insert, update, or delete operations.

Queries used for business logic should be designed with the available indexes in mind. In particular, making use of primary keys and other key indexes helps speed up data retrieval and improves application performance.

4. Primary Keys as Business Entities

The design of the database should avoid the use of artificial or unnecessary primary keys. Instead, business entities should be used as primary and foreign keys directly. Many database designers create additional auto-generated primary keys that are not needed, which can complicate data structure and performance.

For example, rather than generating a serial number for each employee's monthly salary, a composite key combining the employee_id and pay_period should be used as the primary key. This has two benefits: it ensures data uniqueness and, when tables are joined, the indexes are automatically applied, speeding up data extraction.

5. Query Optimization

A poorly optimized query can significantly impact the overall performance of a database and, in turn, the application. Therefore, it’s essential to optimize queries before using them in live systems, whether they are part of data entry or reporting functions.

Optimization should involve reviewing the query for:

• Proper use of business conditions

• Efficient use of indexes

• Performance considerations based on the specific database vendor

It’s a good practice to test queries using vendor-supplied clients like SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), MySQL Workbench, or PGAdmin before applying them to live environments. Avoid third-party tools, as they may not be optimized for specific vendors and can introduce inefficiencies.

6. Additional Optimization Techniques

Optimization techniques can vary depending on the database architecture and use case. Some advanced strategies include:

• Table Clustering: Organizing tables to store related data together on disk, improving access times.

• Table Partitioning: Dividing large tables into smaller, more manageable pieces based on certain criteria (e.g., date range), making data access faster and more efficient.

However, these techniques depend heavily on the unique design and structure of the database in question. The strategies mentioned earlier are proven methods that cover the major aspects of performance optimization for most databases.

Conclusion

A well-optimized database is the backbone of any high-performance application. By implementing strategies such as separating OLTP and OLAP, using materialized views, optimizing indexes, and carefully designing queries, you can ensure that your database supports your application’s speed and responsiveness. Ultimately, this not only enhances the user experience but also instills confidence in the overall system.

Written By: Amey Inamdar

Designation: Project Manager

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amey-inamdar-43b149120/

Creating a user-friendly website is crucial for engaging visitors and turning them into loyal customers. A good user experience (UX) ensures that visitors can easily navigate your site, find what they need, and enjoy their interaction with your brand. Here are some essential UX guidelines for website development, inspired by insights from reputable UX resources.

1. Keep It Simple

Simplicity is the cornerstone of good UX. A clean, uncluttered design helps users focus on content without distractions. Avoid overloading pages with excessive information, ads, or complex layouts. Instead, use whitespace effectively to create a balanced, easy-to-navigate site.

Tips for Simplicity:

• Use a minimal color palette.

• Limit the number of fonts to two or three.

• Provide ample white space to reduce visual clutter.

• Prioritize essential information on each page.

2. Ensure Fast Loading Times

Nothing frustrates users more than a slow website. Ensure your site loads quickly by optimizing images, leveraging browser caching, and minimizing code. A fast website keeps visitors engaged and improves your search engine ranking.

Tips for Speed Optimization:

• Compress images and videos without compromising quality.

• Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to deliver content faster.

• Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files.

• Enable browser caching to store static files locally on users' devices.

3. Make Navigation Intuitive

Your website's navigation should be straightforward and intuitive. Use clear labels for menus and categorize content logically. A well-designed navigation bar helps users find what they’re looking for without frustration.

Tips for Intuitive Navigation:

• Use descriptive labels for menu items.

• Organize content into categories and subcategories.

• Implement a search bar for easy access to specific content.

• Use breadcrumb trails to help users understand their location within the site.

4. Optimize for Mobile

With a significant number of users accessing websites on mobile devices, optimizing your site for mobile is essential. Use responsive design to ensure your site looks and functions well on all screen sizes. This approach not only enhances UX but also boosts your search engine performance.

Tips for Mobile Optimization:

• Use flexible grids and layouts that adjust to different screen sizes.

• Ensure buttons and links are large enough to be easily tapped.

• Optimize images for faster loading on mobile networks.

• Test your site on various devices to ensure consistent performance.

5. Focus on Readability

Content readability is key to keeping users engaged. Use easy-to-read fonts, appropriate font sizes, and sufficient contrast between text and background. Break up content into smaller paragraphs and use headings, bullet points, and images to make your content optimized.

Tips for Improving Readability:

• Choose a legible font and maintain a font size of at least 16px.

• Use high contrast between text and background colors.

• Structure content with headings, subheadings, and bullet points.

• Use images and infographics to break up text and illustrate points.

6. Prioritize Accessibility

An accessible website is usable by everyone, including people with disabilities. Follow accessibility standards like WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) to ensure your site is inclusive. This includes providing alt text for images, ensuring keyboard navigability, and using ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) landmarks.

Tips for Enhancing Accessibility:

• Provide descriptive alt text for all images.

• Ensure all interactive elements are accessible via keyboard.

• Use ARIA landmarks to define regions of the page.

• Provide transcripts for audio and video content.

7. Provide Clear Call-to-Actions (CTAs)

CTAs guide users towards desired actions, such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase. Make your CTAs stand out with contrasting colors and clear, concise text. Place them strategically throughout your site to drive user engagement and conversions.

Tips for Effective CTAs:

• Use action-oriented language (e.g., "Sign Up Now," "Learn More").

• Make CTAs visually distinct with contrasting colors.

• Position CTAs prominently on the page.

• Limit the number of CTAs to avoid overwhelming users.

8. Gather and Implement Feedback

Regularly gather user feedback to understand pain points and areas for improvement. Use tools like surveys, user testing, and analytics to gather insights. Implementing this feedback helps you continually refine your UX and keep your users satisfied.

Tips for Gathering Feedback:

• Conduct usability testing with real users.

• Use surveys and feedback forms to collect user opinions.

• Analyze website analytics to identify user behavior patterns.

• Continuously iterate and improve based on user feedback.

Conclusion

By following these UX guidelines, you can create a website that not only attracts visitors but also keeps them engaged and satisfied.

Remember, a well-designed user experience is key to your website's success. Keep your users' needs at the forefront, and you’ll build a site that delights and converts.

References

For more detailed information and resources on UX, visit

Nielsen Norman Group: https://www.nngroup.com/search/?q=UX%20Guidelines%20for%20Website%20Development

Smashing Magazine: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/search/?q=website

Written By: Rajesh Madibone

Designation: Sr. UI-UX Designer

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajeshmadibone/

UI Testing

UI testing, or User Interface testing, is an important step in software development to make sure that an application looks good, works correctly, and is easy to use.

The main goal of UI testing is to simulate how a user would interact with the application. This includes actions like clicking buttons, filling out forms, navigating through different screens, and interacting with other visual elements. The aim is to find any defects, inconsistencies, or usability issues that might affect the application's performance or user satisfaction.

UI testing often uses automated tools and scripts to mimic user interactions. These tools interact with the GUI elements just like a human would, but they can do it with greater accuracy and repeatability. Test scripts can be created to cover a wide range of scenarios, from basic functionality checks to complex user journeys.

Types and Techniques of UI Testing

1. Exploratory UI Testing Exploratory UI testing is an unscripted testing method where testers interact with the application's user interface to identify defects and issues. The goal is to explore the application as a user would, using intuition and experience to find hidden bugs, usability problems, and potential improvements.

2. Functional UI Testing Functional UI testing ensures that the graphical user interface performs the required functions correctly. This type of testing checks the functionality of UI elements like buttons, menus, forms, and links to make sure they work as expected.

3. Regression UI Testing Regression UI testing involves re-running previous tests on the application's user interface to check that recent code changes haven't negatively impacted existing features. The goal is to catch any unintended side effects and ensure that the UI remains functional and consistent.

4. End-to-End (E2E) UI Testing End-to-end (E2E) UI testing tests the complete workflow of an application, simulating real user scenarios to make sure that all components and systems interact correctly. It covers everything from the user interface to back end services, databases, and third-party integrations.

5. Cross-Browser/Other devices UI Testing Cross-browser or other devices' UI testing ensures that a web application and other device works correctly and looks as intended across different web browsers and other devices. This type of testing makes sure that users have a consistent experience regardless of the browser or device they use.

6. Performance UI Testing Performance UI testing assesses the performance of a web application's user interface by measuring various metrics such as load time, responsiveness, rendering speed, and overall user experience under different conditions. This type of testing ensures that the application performs well even under heavy load or stress.

7. Localization UI Testing Localization UI testing verifies that the user interface is correctly translated and adapted for different locales. This includes checking the accuracy of translations, formatting dates, numbers, and currencies, and ensuring that the UI elements are displayed and aligned correctly for different languages and regions.

8. Security UI Testing Security UI testing evaluates the user interface to identify and mitigate potential security risks. This type of testing ensures that the UI does not accidentally expose sensitive information, provide opportunities for malicious activities, or fail to enforce proper security controls.

Conclusion UI testing is essential for delivering high-quality, user-friendly applications. By using a combination of manual, automated, exploratory, regression, cross-browser, other devices, performance, and localization testing approaches, you can ensure that your application's UI meets the highest standards of quality and user satisfaction. Follow these testing methods and best practices to create robust and reliable user interfaces that delight users and stand out in the competitive market. Happy testing!

Take Reference From

1) test sigma : https://testsigma.com/guides/ui-testing/

2) chat gpt

Written By: Vaibhav Bobade

Designation: Software Tester

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vaibhav-bobade-789932231?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=android_app

Introduction

Relational databases are now part of most IT project as knowledge is stored in them. I am saying knowledge and not data because, now a days, Object Relational Mappings or ORMs are happening in the majority of IT systems and the relation between multiple business objects make it active linked network of information. Such databases are backbone of any system as they closely work with data generated by users. They are no longer standalone systems as backend.

In the systems, databases work as data managers by storing, updating and retrieving the data for the systems ahead to them. In this task, their efficient working decides the response time of entire system you develop.

So coming to the point, time taken for storing and updating data is little bearable for users however time taken to retrieve the data is matter of concern where the database performance is to be observed. If we hustle in designing database and go ahead, the data accumulated in the database becomes structural and creates bottleneck in the performance throughout the lifetime of the database design for particular system. There can be arguments that using indices, one can make them faster however if you want it the ‘fastest’ i.e. inherently fast, you should consider following dos and don’ts of design principles -

Dos

1. Always prepare database based on sample data provided by customer - have a memorandum of understanding with client does not share data with third party but for design purpose, actual data makes lot of sense.

2. Identify ‘entities’ of the business logic and prepare separate master tables for each of them. e.g. Users, Roles, Materials, etc.

3. Where the second layer of master data is getting generated, keep them separate like User_Roles.

4. Try to achieve ‘third normal form’ in the design for entire design to balance the space and performance.

5. In major databases, Primary keys and foreign keys constraints also bear built-in indices. So whenever multiple entities generate a new layer of data like ‘User_Roles’, foreign keys must be used. It is observed that designers are reluctant in implementing foreign keys. Then they get hit by low performance, rework in design and poor validation in every corner of system.

Don’ts:

1. Never design a query without consideration of indices. Indices inherently cover primary keys and foreign keys. So, secret behind fast queries, is use of primary keys and foreign keys in the joining conditions. e.g. instead of joining conditions like follows -
   select A.user_name, B.role_name from users as A inner join roles as B on A.user_name = B.user_name where B.role_name = ‘user’;
   Consider following - select A.user_name, B.role_name from users as A inner join roles as B on A.user_id = B.user_id where B.role_name = ‘user’;

2. Never design a table without keys: it is the converse of Dos sereial 5. However, it is always tempting to create a table quickly for business requirements. We must avoid it and should always try to identify keys before implementing a table. Never design database in a hurry.

3. Never use query without indices for business logic. Whenever queries require conditions that are not related to previously designed keys, use indices. e.g. consider where condition in earlier query - where B.role_name = ‘user’;

4. Here, firstly, instead of role_name, role_id should be used to avoid indexless operation. Secondly, if at all, you want to use the column, implement an index on the database column.

5. Never allow anybody else to design your database. It means that you should design your own database as system requirements and business requirements are clear to you. Always design database after having discussion with end user.

6. Never put business logic in triggers. As far as possible, avoid triggers to implement business logic. It has catastrophic effect on the performance of database. Always use an application layer to clock the business logic. In case application layer is not to be concerned and you find the series of steps can be performed in database without input of further layers, implement the same in stored procedure but not triggers.

   Written By: Amey Inamdar

Designation: Project Manager

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amey-inamdar-43b149120/

Agile Development in the world of IT is a process designed to make app development easy with predictable results.

Agile software development is a defining set of principles that gives software developers tips and ideas on how to respond to unpredictability, find solutions and requirements that usually evolve during individual and team interactions.

The entire development and testing activities are concurrent, unlike the Waterfall model. The term “Agile” has been around for several years now, with newer and better tools presenting itself every year. In this article, we will discuss some of the best tools for effective agile development.

1. Jira Agile Jira, an issue and project tracking software, is originally from Atlassian. Over the years, more features have been added since its launch. It is easy to assign work collaboratively, where tasks are prioritized, and ideas shared as documents or email.

Thanks to its workflows, it is easy to manage different projects at a single time. It has an intuitive screen with a number of features like customizable queues, real time reporting to customers and automated request management.

Apart from that, Jira Agile allows for great product integration with other Atlassian tools like Stash enterprise, Git repository management and Bitbucket for unlimited private code responses. Right from project conception to launch, everything can be handled here. Jira Agile comes in several versions and the latest one conforms to the requests made by customers.

Companies like Square, Adobe, BNP Paribas, NASA, eBay, Cisco, LindkedIn, Salesforce, BMW use Jira Agile.

2. Activ Collab If you are looking for agile project management, collaboration, customization, budgeting, tracking, notifications, resource managements, task management, learning and support, issue tracking apart from collaborating with clients for transparency, you are looking at the right solution here.

Each user in Activ Collab has his or her own unique dashboard where one can see their own work. Activ Collab helps you to track your working time so you can bill your clients accordingly. Harvard University, NASA, Ogilvy, Intel, Adobe and Apple are some of the companies using Activ Collab.

3. Pivotal Tracker Pivotal Tracker is a tool designed by Pivotal Labs, a software development consultancy. As the tool can easily handle multiple projects, you would find this tool highly popular among users. The tool can be used for messaging, preparing and monitoring projects and creating turndown charts. Pivotal Tracker is well known for its feedback tools, making QA possible for all project undertakings.

Groupon, Sharethrough, GoSpotCheck, Accuweather are just a few of the companies that use Pivotal Tracker.

4. CA Technologies CA Technologies (Previously known as Rally) is a cloud-based solution that helps software companies through the entire software development process. The aim is to shorten development cycles through dedicated agile techniques while enabling the teams spread across the globe to collaborate with each other seamlessly.

The tool helps you to reallocate development resources to help grow your portfolio. Various editions of the software are available for on-premise use. CA Technologies acquired Rally for $480 million in May 2015.

Intel, Cognizant, Capgemini, Sol, Choice Hotels,Getty Images, GE are just a few of the big names that use CA Technologies.

5. SprintGround If you are not quite happy with the way your agile development is shaping up, then consider SprintGround. It helps developers to parse out projects and versions and manage releases. There is a specific framework in SprintGround that allows you to look at feature requests, customer requests and suggestions.

Bug tracking functionality is another feature of SprintGround. It is the best option for customer-driven product development as it is integrated with several traditional Scrum functions. Stacker, Croz Desk, and iT Meester use SprintGround

6. Aha! Quite an interesting name for an agile development software! Aha! calls itself the world’s first product roadmap software that would help developers plan their business by shortening product cycles and improving user ranking. The best thing about Aha! is that you can integrate it with the applications that you already use.

Many of the big names are already users of Aha! like GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Visual Studio, Google Apps and HipChat

7. Yodiz Yodiz is an agile management platform that is easy to use, customizable when you want to plan and track several teams at one time.

Some of the best features of Yodiz are:

Product Backlog, where you can plan your backlog management through an online repository Sprints to help visualize, schedule and plan your sprints Releases to help you assign and prioritize the various functionalities and their releases Epics to help you channel your business requirements to a particular goal Real time collaboration with all the members of the team and so on Companies using Yodiz include Associated Press or AP, Checkout.com, Team Elena, Nokia, Satmetrix

Wrapping Up The best bet of agile development would be for small projects, which can be implemented quickly, because errors can be fixed quickly. As the development process with agile method is iterative, a project can be executed in shorter time frames.

We hope this article has brought some of the important tools in Agile product development. Of course, there are plenty more out there, so you need to find your best option, choosing the one that suits your requirements.

According to Austere Systems who is also a Staffing company in Gurgaon, Staff augmentation is outlined as a technique for filling the supposed ‘skills gap’.It permits corporations to interact with superior professionals for an individual comes while not having to incur an equivalent price of hiring new regular staff.

IT employee’s augmentation vendors assist you to add skillful technical resources to your in-house development team on a short or long basis. These resources square measure used directly by the seller, so eliminating the price and liability of creating new regular hires. That being aforesaid, remote developers employed through a workers augmentation firm square measure managed by the shopper they work with, and square measure usually dedicated to 1 project at a time.

The main goal of this is to handle staffing requirements with an existing set of talent. In other words, It is also known as a strategy for filling the so-called ‘skills gap’ that allows companies to engage top-level professionals for individual projects without having to acquire the same costs of hiring new full-time employees.

At some point in time or another, most of the businesses, need a few more hands on deck. And it’s not just any hands, but people who are trained, skilled and certified for the job you needed them to do. In the traditional way, hiring these people can be a time consuming and drawn-out process involving like job advertisements, interviews, referencing, onboarding and endless paperwork. This is an inconvenient way if your business has mission-critical deadlines to fulfill. For some companies, and IT companies, in particular, it acts as a secret weapon when you need rapid access to skills or headcount.

The benefit to staff augmentation services/staffing company The main benefit to staff augmentation services is that you can hire contractors who can jump straight in and get to work without needing to be walked through all the process. There are hardly any hiring formalities, so there is not wasting valuable time with recruitment, background checks, and onboarding.

Some other pros associated with Staff Augmentation are as follows Control over staff, Integration, Reduce employee burdens, Employee acceptance, Experience matters, Cut Costs Without Sacrificing Quality, eliminates the additional costs of having in house employee, no bound by geographical limitations, Boosted Flexibility and Reduce the labour overhead.

As with most things in business, the method of employee’s augmentation is not entirely safe. Here are a unit a number of the risks or cons associated area unit additional superintendence, Time-focused, standardized employees, Poor cultural work and better prices.

IT Recruitment Process Process of recruitment involves initial screening, shortlisting profiles, Interview rounds, selecting and hiring appropriate candidates for the position (either permanent or temporary) inside an organization. It can also refer to a process involved in choosing individuals for unpaid roles. Managers, human resource generalists, and achievement specialists are also tasked with concluding achievement, however, in some cases public-sector employment agencies, business achievement agencies, or specialist search consultancies area unit wont to undertake elements of the method.

Inside of Staff Augmentation services at Austere Systems-a staffing company in Gurgaon In IT recruitment services, our well-trained recruitment consultants who are from IT backgrounds strive to exceed the clients expectations via great selections. Candidates are personally called by these IT recruitment specialists and they make sure to go with the personal interviews, written tests, psychological tests, reference check, medical exams, and others to give the best candidates to the companies. And also we conduct ongoing programs and workshops to get a better understanding of what our clients expectations and requirements of the new staff members are. As well to give them proper and great talents, our services make sure to determine the clients corporate culture and ambiance, for exact understandings of what the new staffing requirements are, in-depth researches and analysis, we generally conduct these programs and only the suitable candidate’s call for further processing.

Austere Systems staffing company provides staff augmentation services do their level best in shortlisting someone who got great talent, experience, knowledge and best for the company.

Require SAP Staffing services? or Hiring permanent staff or staff augmentation and fascinating them into your organization could be a serious commitment, thus you better check that that you’re creating this commitment to the proper individuals. We are here to assist you in deciding out the right candidate.

Find The Right Employers For Your Business If you discover yourself walking knee-deep in resumes from candidates who don’t meet the necessities of your project or business, you’re squandering precious time, money, and energy. Leave staffing issues to the professionals, thus you’ll focus your energy and a focus on what very matters – your core business. You can place confidence in our skilled recruiters to seek out the proper staff for you to either increase employee’s strength for brand spanking new business, or to fill your worker numbers.

At ASPL Consulting and Staff Augmentation services, we have a tendency to recruit candidates that match for our clients requirements. With us as your permanent staffing solutions provider, you’ll rest assured that you simply can get the foremost appropriate staff who are able to work flat out and keep loyal to you.

SAP Staffing Services In the technology system, as a result of the dynamicity and fleet, major dynamic businesses have presently subdued the employment of SAP Consulting Services and trended in IN-House Management Systems. Thence the benefits of SAP can only be accomplished with the linking proficient candidates profiles inside the economical and price economical vogue.

Building your in-house SAP Support team plays a significant role in your booming preparation of SAP. As an end-to-end provider supporting all aspects of SAP products & Services, Austere systems offers a specialist SAP staffing services with numerous methodologies.

Austere Systems being an SAP Staffing marketplace shares its knowledge of more than 150 ERP systems to its Pool of Consultants which suggests our Recruiter and consultants each perceive the client desires and check out to measure to the fullest to the conclusion of the ERP system at our clients timeframe.

Whether it’s a niche notice or something generic we’ve got entire complete information of passive and active SAP professionals who will deliver significant results to your projects without wasting your precious time, which otherwise may delay your project or increase the time period of the project.

Why choose Austere systems for your recruitment services Austere Systems offers full-fledged SAP consultants on a contract basis to fulfill immediate want for skilled talent. This selection provides the most flexibility to clients whereas providing the experience required urging the work done quickly. Austere Systems provides experienced SAP consultants on a contract basis whereas clients think about every placement’s long-run fit inside the organization. We have a tendency to matches you with the correct direct-hires through in-depth pre-qualification of candidates and position needs. This selection is on a contingent or preserved search model in keeping with your organization’s wants. We have a tendency to manages the complete recruiting method for an SAP implementation – from technical resources to project managers to subject matter specialists and on the far side. This selection ensures that your top employees won’t be swamped by the magnitude of the SAP implementation and might instead specialize in your company’s core business activities. Our SAP staffing and resource acquisition services enable your organization to act with speed, flexibility, and experience by accessing the correct talent within the right approach. We have a tendency to facilitate organizations cultivate SAP resources quickly and make sure the correct fit every clients specific desires and objectives.

As a recruiter, many Staffing Company in India is principally working for their customer and the employer. This can be difficult for certain experts to comprehend as an HR selection representative needs to pay a special mind for the best interests of both their clients and candidates. But at the end of the day, their client is the one with a position to fill, and a recruiter will be looking for the best person that fits their criteria.

Recruiters are working for a company which is the one who will be paying their fees. Charges vary between offices, businesses, and sorts of jobs. They are generally determined as a $ worth or Percentage of a competitor’s first years compensation or hourly. A compensation extends for a position is set dependent on an organization’s pay structure for that job. A Staffing Company only gets paid if they find the perfect person for the role; and remember, the client always makes the final decision on who they hire.

What is important for you to tell a Staffing Company in India is that a candidate’s salary should never be affected by that fee. A salary range for a position is set based on a company’s salary structure for that role. A recruiter’s charge is a completely different entity from that salary range.

The process followed by a Staffing Company in India Though each recruiter and staffing agency will operate slightly differently, generally they all follow a very similar process.

1) Open position : The first step of this process occurs when a client calls with an open position that they need help filling. Staffing company/Recruiters will then get all the details they need to start working on the role. This involves more than just getting a job description. They will do a deep dive and hunt for things like regular payment range, interview queries, any benefits to operating within the role/for the corporate, vacation compensation, management styles, reason the role is open, hard and soft skills needed, start date, and even advancement opportunities.

2) Posting a job : Recruiters, as a general rule, post all of their open jobs on their company website as well as any job boards that are relevant to that role. Positions may also be advertised on social media sites. Recruiters will also reach out to their network to find out if any great candidates are looking for work at the moment.

3) Finding great candidates : The average job posting gets 250 applications, and those applications can start coming in within 5 minutes of the position that has been posted online! A Staffing Company needs to review all of these resumes to identify the candidates that have the hard and soft skills their clients are looking for. Once they do, they will reach out for telephone or in-person interviews or a combination of both.

These interviews are vital as a result of presenting an under-qualified candidate to a consumer might probably cause a recruiter to lose that client. Today some good staffing companies are also providing IT Staff Augmentation Services for their clients.

A good interview also provides an opportunity for a staffing company to find out all those things that aren’t on a resume. Sometimes it is these hidden skills and personality traits that are so important to prospective employers and make the difference between a candidate that gets hired, and one that is passed over.

Once the recruiter has ascertained that a candidate matches the experience and personality that a Client needs and that the candidate is still interested in the position, they will present that candidate to the client.

4) Presenting candidates : The Best Staffing Company in India, don’t simply email resumes to clients and hope that one thing sticks. They will talk to their clients about each candidate, and “bring them to life” off the paper through discussing their work experiences, career aspirations, and why they will be a match with the client’s needs. Recruiters know that employers hire for both hard and soft skills, and will make sure to express both to their clients.

5) Client interview stage : Clients are busy people, often managing large teams, and their schedules get filled up quick. A Staffing Company knows this and schedules interview slots in advance so they match the schedules for all involved. This helps keep the hiring process as short and succinct as possible. No client wants to miss out on an exceptional candidate because they couldn’t be interviewed for the next month.

After the interview, the recruiter will collect feedback from both the candidate and client. Recruiters want to make sure they can give their candidates as much feedback as possible – good or bad – so they know where they stand.

6) Job offer : When a job offer is extended to a candidate, among the best staffing company in India will often be there as a sounding board for both sides. They will assist any negotiations and work to keep this process seamless. This also entails letting unsuccessful candidates know that a role has been filled. Recruiters may be involved in the onboarding process and can provide the first day details that candidates will need.

7) Stay in contact and recommend top performers : A good Staffing Company working as a recruiter, follow up with clients and candidates on their first day, the end of the first month, and at the end of a probation period. Should any small problems come up at this time, both clients and candidates can be hesitant to voice any concerns as theirs is a new and fragile relationship. A recruiter stands outside of that relationship and can be a good mediator if needed. Little issues can be easily overcome, rather than becoming something that leads to resignation.

Once a candidate has been placed in a role, a leading staffing company in Gurgaon should keep in contact with their recruiter. You never understand once things might modification and you may like their help once more. Recruiters are always looking for great people and also are happy to have you recommend top-performers to them.

A staffing company’s job as a recruiter is rarely straightforward and there are good reasons why the process is the way it is. Make sure you get the most out of your with your recruiter relationship. That being said, if you have questions along the way, or are confused by where you are in that process, always reach out to the recruiter and ask questions. Remember, even though a recruiters fee is paid by their client, they are also working for you.