entrepreneurship
They say it takes ten years to sharpen a sword, and this year, it has been ten years.
At the beginning, a small studio, three people who are not satisfied with the status quo, in less than an hour of communication, together with a passion into the army of software entrepreneurship, the first year, almost did not survive.
Because don’t have much experience, at the beginning it was not until about half a year received the studio’s first order, at that time, studio or just not into, was much worried, this project is to give us a boost, but expected project cycle in a year or so, deposit to cover over the next six months, it is good, is comforted.
Finally, in about five months, the project requirements were basically completed, but the acceptance took a lot of time. Fortunately, there were some minor changes in the end, and the delivery was smooth. After half month, the first customers recommend the project for us, it shows that we has received the recognition, the in the mind very happy, but the project is very big, the next is difficult, but to the mouth of the meat can’t give up, so the heart below company, again for two people together to do (not hiring process is that the firm is too small, may think we are cheater, Finally recruited two young men less than two years old, fortunately learned fast). Everything pays off. With everyone’s continuous persistence, customers have gradually accumulated, and the company also began to slowly go on the right track, and then began to promote, and gradually improved.
lost
But then, just when things were going well, executives made a mistake that most entrepreneurs now make — expansion (when everyone believed money would come in). After two years of capital accumulation, the scale of the company expanded to dozens of employees, but with the rapid rise of labor costs, in order to bring benefits to the company, they desperately to accept projects, more requirements are also varied, development and maintenance costs also rise, but there is no way, can only stick to it.
A year later, appeared problem, year-end summary, company profit is almost zero, everyone began to find problems, we are time-consuming, laborious work overtime, only to find that one year effort was almost useless, then compare the simple way is to reduce the cost from the human (layoffs), in order to improve the account balance in the coming New Year, but for various reasons and did not execute.
A different approach
So what went wrong?
Why are customer needs never met?
Why are you always so busy making changes?
So we discuss, verify, want to find a new way, in order to fundamentally solve this problem.
However, it is not easy to cross the river by feeling for stones.
The first thing you encounter is the agile development in China is still immature, but this kind of products, in addition to the foreign counterparts have certain reference value, domestic information is few and far between, from the architecture planning and design, the function layout should be starting from scratch, who also don’t know can become, will not be accepted, however, is a challenge and opportunity, after many discussions, The consensus was that this product was a good thing, a trend, and worth doing!
So, after a series of planning and design, through the efforts of the core developers day and night, half a year later, this proud child was finally born, it is soft agile development framework V1.0. Due to the adoption of agile development, the first version only made some basic functions, later can be gradually expanded, until now, has been developed to v7.0.6 version.
Such a project has a lot of people at that time, by every possible way to caress, many projects so out of the way, but due to the domestic corporate personality information demand is not so strong now, in order to introduce the child to others know, we almost to bargain in the sales, the difficult degree beyond imagination, thought is the blue ocean, the results hit his face.
Of course, when it comes to blue ocean, we have to mention China’s software development industry. The history of China’s software industry is not long, but the era of blue ocean has passed.
What kind of era are we living in now?
In software development, there are three groups to mention: software companies, technicians, and end users. With the continuous development of Internet information, the user’s demand for information is increasing. In ten years, the demand is almost geometric growth. It can be foreseen that in the next few years, the growth of this demand will not decrease, but many software companies have not seen the hope.
What’s the reason?
Development costs are too high.
As we said just now, ten years ago, when we were working on a project, a large number of technical research and development team members were required to work on each project day and night. One project was completed and another was started again. The cost of time and manpower was huge.
Finally, the project was completed, but the customer’s constantly changing needs, and constant maintenance, improvement, and then repeated modification, debugging, such a day, is really endless.
So, in order to solve this problem, rapid development platform was born, of course we call agile development framework. However, the first opportunity is not only left to Force soft, but force soft entered relatively early, with a certain first-mover advantage, some peers also smell the first opportunity, a number of similar platforms will respond, such as recently, there are dozens of companies into the research and development of this project, the competition is more intense.
So, in order to stay ahead, we have to make more efforts in the product, find out where we have enough advantages, but the original intention should not change, the basic configuration should not be less.
The original intention was to make development easy, so that instead of writing code day and night, we could write all the programs and procedures, and they could just drag and click and do it quickly, so that they could completely focus on more logical and functional aspects.
Yet the idea has been in the works for nearly a decade. Because the more we think about it, the more work we have to do, like:
1. In order to free the hands of technical personnel, it is required that the platform must have strong background support, reasonable architecture, and sufficient stability and fluency.
2. Operations need to be as simple as possible so that they can be understood and learned by even novice technicians at all levels, and even to some degree without code development.
3. Universality is very important. To achieve this, the platform can be applied to various industries, which can not only conform to the common characteristics of relevant industries, but also leave enough expansion to support the personalized development of enterprises.
In order to achieve these features, we analyzed hundreds of excellent customer cases and summarized them continuously to complete the personalized component features of LeaRun.Framework 7.0.6. This process took several years.
4. Effectively reduce the development cost of enterprises and improve the development efficiency.
So here, how to combine the advantages of the framework with the enterprise, to meet the needs of enterprises?
Let’s start with common enterprise software.
1. Service management software
Business management software needless to say, usually including ERP, MIS, CRM, WMS, MES, TMS, logistics and express management, but I think some small and medium-sized software companies also understand that these systems have been productized by several large companies, can fight out their own world here, personalized service is essential. And the so-called personalized service, is for the different business needs of the industry, to achieve the standard products can not do the function.
Independent development from beginning to end a system needs a lot of manpower material resources, in the end the cost may be higher than purchasing software products, and agile development platform already preset set framework for the development of all kinds of basic module can be used directly, the other system according to the characteristics of the various system established development more templates, developers can according to the development of the guide various business systems developed fast, More targeted, more in line with the development needs of enterprises, but also to better control the cost.
2. Collaborative office software
OA, HRM, KM and other collaborative office software are indispensable internal management platforms for enterprises in the Internet era. It also costs a lot to develop independently. Agile development platforms usually have built-in workflow engine, custom form engine, instant messaging module, and later with a complete framework of authority management module, can quickly customize collaborative office software, or even achieve code free development.
3. E-commerce platform background
The rise of the Internet has given e-commerce enterprises the soil for growth. I don’t know how many people have used the background of A Treasure, presumably without professional training, so I’m afraid no one can fully understand its functions, which may also be related to its complex model. However, the conventional e-commerce background should have clear functions and simple operation. At the same time, it should also take into account the current mainstream background management functions, wechat module and SMS platform module.
4. BI software
Business intelligence (BI) software, it is a complete set of solutions, used to effectively integrate the existing data in the enterprise, quickly and accurately provide statements and put forward decision-making basis, to help enterprises make wise business decisions, generally speaking, is to convert data into decisions. Agile development platforms are open to interpretation in this respect, as it involves powerful data collection and analysis, graphical presentation, and even UI considerations.
As for soft power, function, considering the diversity of user requirements, we strive to do the top in the technical level, in addition to the above enterprise applications cover, other directions are also expanding, WeChat, small procedures, app gradually fall to the ground, such as business on precipitation in precipitation, simple is simple in operation, program stability in stability, make the soft now powerful force.
After the function is perfect, we had felt all right, but it is not the case, the success of a product, in addition to the function, and appearance, just as some people look like, some people see inside, many development platform didn’t notice this, and we have to do, is the internal and external double major, to create high-quality goods.
Finally, five SETS of UIs were selected
Of course, everyone has different feelings about the interface, and their evaluations are different. However, as children grow up, they need to experience maturity. Naturally, they should be able to tolerate criticism and receive guidance, so as to make better progress.
A big one.