Why Event Storming?

John Hoestje Dev Methodologies, Opinion Leave a Comment

My last Event Storming blog was like a stew I made by throwing in everything from the fridge and pantry. Maybe the stew was okay, but most of the individual ingredients got lost in the mix.

This time, I’m including the points to back my position as to why you should start using Event Storming now. Although, in my opinion, choosing Event Storming doesn’t take a lot of convincing to make it sound more appealing than other techniques.

So why should Event Storming be used in place of other more established domain modeling processes?

While it isn’t beneficial to always try out the latest and greatest whiz-bang gadgets, not keeping tabs on emerging and promising trends can prevent your team from becoming more efficient…

The Jury is Still Out: Blockchain in Healthcare

Zach Gardner Blockchain, Hyperledger, Opinion Leave a Comment

Blockchain has gotten the software world buzzing about its potential applications in different business areas. With the US spending 17.9% of its GDP on healthcare in 2017 per CMS, many companies are considering how to enter into a market that has such potential for growth as well as the potential to positively affect patient’s lives.

Keyhole Software stays ahead of the curve by investigating new trends in software so that when clients come to us asking for advice we can provide an informed opinion. We do not want our clients to be guinea pigs, and we help provide guidance so that the solution they choose is the best one regardless of the trends of the day.

Blockchain is something we feel could be a good fit for the right use case, which we’ve elaborated on in our Blockchain Case Study. It is, at the end of the day, just a tool, and should only be used when it is beneficial to do so. Healthcare is an incredibly complex industry, so it is important to understand what Blockchain is, what it is not, and what needs to be considered before using the technology.

The purpose of this blog post is to think through how Blockchain can be applied to healthcare software applications. This blog post does not dive into the technical implementation of Blockchain, only its application in healthcare. A technical deep dive into Blockchain can be found in our Blockchain White Paper.

JavaScript Bake-Off: Angular, React, and Vue

David Pitt Angular, JavaScript, Opinion, React, Single-Page Application, Vue.js Leave a Comment

As Keyhole consultants, we are exposed to a plethora of technology stacks and implementations from client project to client project. Particularly with our enterprise clients, great care must go into selecting the best technologies for the company’s technical needs and current landscape. After all, they don’t want to be re-writing the same application in just a couple of years due to lackluster choices and shortage of developers to add functionality.

In this post, we present an open source reference application developed three times using three different frameworks, React, Vue & Angular.

Web Development Business

Performing Technical Interviews For Consulting Clients

Clayton Neff Consulting, Opinion, Soft Skills Leave a Comment

The situation will occasionally arise when we have gained enough respect and confidence from our clients that they will ask us to help them interview new technical people to join the team. As consultants, it’s important for us to be the person that our client needs us to be at the time, so we are definitely willing to help. But, needless to say, this situation must be handled with ‘kid gloves.’

Many managers are uncomfortable performing a technical interview in an area they do not feel competent in. Typically, that is when they will ask for your help in the interview process. As technical consultants, we should be able to provide useful feedback to them about the person’s apparent abilities. When it comes to the ‘soft skills,’ we want to ensure we’re on the same page with the client as to if we should limit the interactions to just the technical topics.

Whether you’re a consultant helping your client, or the client manager looking to fill your employee team, there are a number of topics that must be considered when searching for the right technical person. In this post, I will point out some useful topics to concentrate on while performing a technical interview– and why they are important questions to ask before hiring a new person to the team

Web Development Business

Life as a Software Consultant

John Boardman Consulting, Keyhole, Opinion Leave a Comment

I’ve been in the field of programming professionally since 1990. I started out as a corporate employee for 14 years, then as a consultant, back to an employee, and finally settled with consulting. In both positions, I’ve worked with small, medium, large, and huge Fortune 50 corporations. There are many similarities between being an employee and a consultant, but there are also some significant differences.

In this blog, I’ll explore what life has been like in each role and hopefully give some perspective to others who might just be starting out. Keep in mind when I write “employee,” I am specifically targeting programmers.