Month: May 2020

Remote work: Tools and best practices

I am writing this post during the COVID-19 lockdown. Companies have found ways to enable employees to work from home. While 100% remote work does not work for manufacturing industry, there is no problem with full blown remote work for soft service industries like information technology, digital content production (text, audio, video), live online coaching and customer care.

That said, my work life has seen no alteration during the lockdown. Why? I have been a software freelancer since August 2015. I have been choosing to work with clients who don’t ask me to come to their premises. Very few clients ever mandated that I work from their office. They cared more about getting work done than seeing me in person 🙂 . So COVID-19 or not, I have an experience of five years in remote work. Which means I have a lot of guidance to offer you.

Continue reading “Remote work: Tools and best practices”

How to make video tutorials for ZERO cost

Whether you are making a course on Udemy, like I do (my Udemy courses), or helping your grandma learn how to use her new microwave oven, making a video tutorial with a voice over is extremely useful. Whether you are a software engineer, a businessman or a chef, a video tutorial can go a long way in making things clearer for your audience, rather than a voice-only tutorial or a blog post. In my opinion, learning how to make video tutorials should be considered as important as learning how to work on a spreadsheet or learning how to program.

Here is my way of making good video tutorials which may not be of the highest professional quality, but so effective that your audience will love it. And I have ratings for my course as a proof that your audience indeed will love it 🙂

Continue reading “How to make video tutorials for ZERO cost”

Beware of 100% Agile

The Agile method of software development took the software world by storm in early 2000s. It has continued to grow significantly in the last two decades. So much has it grown that its predecessor, the waterfall model, is now seen as an outdated Jurassic method of approaching software. Very few companies still stick to the waterfall model. And those companies are considered luddites!

But is the Agile method as good as the hype surrounding it is? Or is it just another management fad that software engineers are tolerating in silence to keep their jobs? Turns out that Agile is superior to waterfall model on several counts. But a 100% move of each and every process in a company from the so-called outdated methods to the nimble Agile methods can do more harm than good. How? Read more to find out.

Continue reading “Beware of 100% Agile”