What is Hybrid app development?

Hybrid mobile app are created in the same way as websites. Both use a combination of technologies such as CSS, HTML and JavaScript. Nevertheless, rather than targeting a mobile browser, hybrid apps target a WebView hosted inside a native container. This allows them to do things such as access the hardware capacities of a mobile device. Hybrid apps could be found in the app stores. With them, one could play games, engage friends via social media, and take pictures, track health and a whole lot more.

WHAT EXACTLY ARE HBYRID APPS?

At core, hybrid apps are websites packaged into a native wrapper. They feel and look like a native application, but outside of the basic frame of the app, they’re fueled by the website of a company. A hybrid app basically is a web app built with the use of HTML5 and JavaScript, wrapped in native container that loads most of the information on a page as a user navigates through the app.

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF HBYRID APPS?

ADVANTAGES:

1. Access to device data. Hybrid applications, similar to native apps could access data that devices pick up through functionality, like GPS and camera, but push notifications and address book information as well. Connecting with this functionality offers hybrid applications much more freedom to the kind of things they could do.

2. Easy scaling. The apps are also much easier to scale to different platforms and operating systems. The reason for this is that web technology is nearly 100 percent similar across various platforms and operating systems, to the could cod be reused simply without rebuilding the entire application from scratch.

3. Offline working. Due to their native infrastructure, hybrid apps could work offline. Although, while offline, obviously data could not be updated, users could still load the application and access data that’s previously loaded, unlike web applications. Data made while offline, whether captured through surveys, forms or any other way, could be stored on the device and sent to servers the moment a user connects to the internet.

4. More resources. Using web technology for application content makes hybrid application development much easier. Web technology knowledge far outstrips native coding, thus, there are a lot more resources and people available to deliver it. At the same time, costs and resources needed to code with web technologies are remarkably lower compared to native ones, so organizations could save money and time as well.

DISADVANTAGES:

1. Glitches. Another issue about hybrid and web apps is the way they render or load content. For instant, it is glitch, by loading various element of the app at different times. This is in contrast to the more polished and smoother native application user experience. Nonetheless, there are a lot of resources and solutions to fix the glitches.

2. Slower performance. Due to the content being based on web technology, hybrid applications could be slower to load compared to native apps. However, there are ways of managing this so it performs at its best.

3. Native vs. web components. A challenge to hybrid application developers is to make decisions wherein which components of applications must be native and which should be web-based. Obviously, this depends on every single application and its use, thus it’s something that every development team would have to individually decide.

4 Visual and interactive components. While visual and interactive components like 3D animations and games are available in hybrid applications, they still perform better on fully native applications. Nevertheless, hybrid apps performance is improving on a daily basis and getting closer to that of native applications.

THE MOST COST-EFFECTIVE WAY OF CREATING OPTIMAL MOBILE APPLICATIONS

Web applications and native applications seem to be very familiar, but they’re based on an entirely different infrastructure, both of which have their pros and their drawbacks. Hybrid applications now are letting developers take advantage of the benefits of both applications. While hybrid apps still pose some issues, developers are more and more coming up solutions to overcome them. Presently, the great benefits of hybrid apps make them the most cost effective ways to build optimal mobile applications and the differences in performance in comparison to native apps that are not that significant to warrant the extra efforts and cost.

WHY ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS SHOULD BE HYBRID

There is an overflowing of databases on the internet regarding the merits and faults of native and web applications. Obviously, some favor the former while others favor the latter. While these applications are built on considerably different forms of technology, most people have no idea about the difference between them. To add to the confusion of the mix, there are things like hybrid apps that combine the elements of native and web technologies.

Ultimately, both technologies have their pros and cons. Nevertheless, it appears like hybrid would become the norm, at least in the enterprise level. As mentioned earlier, hybrid apps combine the power of both native and web apps. A hybrid app is like a native application with a browser embedded within. By combining the technologies, hybrid applications could take advantage of tall the native features of a native application, accessing data from other applications, ability to be downloaded form an app store, and offline working, while the actual content depends on HTML rendered in a browser.

Obviously, a hybrid app is a good choice if lacking in sufficient fund. Furthermore, even if the application will not be more customer-centered, hybrid application is good.

Technology trends that transform the Insurance industry

Confronted with a highly volatile, fast-paced environment, rapidly evolving customer needs, new regulatory initiatives and a host of disruptive and innovative technologies, few insurance firms have the luxury to sit back and ponder on longer-term technology trends and their implications in the field. In effect, market pressures have forced every insurer to be a digital insurer. Both property and casualty and life insurance providers now are using digital technologies to boost the customer experience, optimally manage risk and improve profitability. Some organizations are doing this on an ad hoc basis, while some carry out a bigger strategic plan.

Insurance brokers and agents are undergoing a main major shift on what the customers and clients expect these days. By the year 2017, ‘digital natives’ would dominate the workplace, which has a great implication for agents and brokers who wants to engage with customers and grow their business. With the maturing of the millennial generation and entering into its peak buying power, more automated and digital ways of doing business would be a fundamental part of daily workflows. With the fast growth of cloud-based technology and mobile users to social media interaction, a study on tech trends for insurance agents explains that agents have finally realized the need to be more efficient, nimble and accessible to serve the customers of today.

Insurance companies that are agile, flexible and could offer advanced technology to build the kind of business processes that the clients’ at present demand are the ones that pose a threat to the traditional, maybe even bigger insurance organizations. The first step for an insurance firm to stay ahead of the changes and challenges in the years to come begins with the deployment of the right technology within the document management workflows as well as day-to-day business processes. Insurers should embrace technology trends that transform the industry to create a user-friendly, more automated processes.

Embracing a cloud-based and on premise infrastructure is important. A couple of years ago, 84 percent of insurance firms were operating in the cloud. Additionally, more than half of these firms reported that cloud has minimized the amount of work. Today, as the insurance field adopts a more simplified workflow, people could expect a remarkable increase in the use of technology that could be operated through hybrid cloud and on premise, ultimately ensuring flexibility for the clientele and robust adherence to the ever-changing government regulations within the environment.

Automating business processes where necessary is another technology trend that insurance firms should do. The key to moving towards a more digital landscape and boosting customer service is by automating workflows where necessary. With the excessive utilization of social media growing, and on numerous channels, clients expect ultimate personalization and interaction from their insurance brokers and agents. As a matter of fact, a survey ways that online and cross-channel customer experience would get the most attention this year. Although the standard face-to-face interaction is less common between insurance companies and clients, still, relationships are just as important, if not every more important than in the past. Thus, insurance providers need more time to interact with their clientele and less time on sorting papers, scrolling through documents and remaining on top of processing claims. This is the reason why workflows automation would be paramount to moving the digital transformation forward.

Insurance firms should choose programs and systems with the customers in mind. This year is dubbed as the ‘age of the customer’, wherein the customer experience is at the center of the digital movement. Meaning that technologies as well as new digital processes could not be implemented with an admin-first mindset. Today’s customers expect an intelligent, uncomplicated process from insurance providers. Although this could signal several internal processes disruption for the agent, the end result should be to make the programs easier to use for the clients, not just the IT team. Keeping the clientele on top of the mind this year would be the key to a successful digital transition.

Now is the time for insurers to adopt more digital practices to stay ahead of the competition. Rather than just adding value to the sector, technology underpins its very evolution and growth. The use of mobile devices, social media, GPS and CCTV footage have all hugely impacted the way claims are processed and policies are assessed. The value and analysis of ‘big data’ gleaned through client interactions has become more than ever important, as insurers are looking to maximize profits and efficiencies while keeping the customers happy. Now, technology enables insurers to move from the traditional broker scenario to a direct-to-market approach, cutting out middlemen and going straight to the client.

Bootstrap themes and plugins

In itself, Bootstrap is full of JavaScript components that are very useful, which cover a lot of use cases, be it for instance modal window or user login, alert messages to show an important message to a visitor, carousel for the homepage. However, in some instances one may need more than that. This is the time to find some of the Bootstrap themes and third party plugins. Usually, they are built on top of the current Bootstrap components and extend them in a lot of ways.

THEMES AND PLUGINS

The plugins and themes could be divided into few groups, such as:

1. Component package

2. Lightboxes and gallery plugins

3. Buttons

4. Navigations and Navbars

5. Forms

COMPONENT PACKAGES

More than a dozen reusable components built to offer dropdowns, iconography, input groups, alerts, navigation and many more.

Fuel UX – extends Bootstrap with more lightweight JS controls for the web applications. It includes combo box, checkbox, data picker, loader, infinite scroll, radio, placard, repeater, search, scheduler, spinbox, select list, tree and wizard. The complex library is truly worth checking out.

Jasny Bootstrap – Is a component package that many would find useful. Included are off-canvas menu component, fixed-top alerts, labelled buttons, input mask for text inputs, file input with image previews and a whole lot more.

LIGHTBOXES AND GALLERY PLUGINS

EkkoLightbox – it is a lightbox Bootstrap module that supports YouTube videos, images and galleries and built around the Modal plugin of Bootstrap. It could be styled easily, the same as Bootstrap modal, supports header and footer section. Working with it is very easy.

Bootstrap media lightbox – It is lightweight and borderless media lightbox Bootstrap 3 extension. It supports image galleries, single images, videos and frames.

Bootstrap image gallery – is a responsive, touch-enabled and customizable image and video gallery. It displays videos and images in the model dialog of the framework, mouse and keyboard navigation, features swipe, transition effects, full-screen support and on-demand content loading that could be extended to display more types of content.

BUTTONS

CSS3 Microsoft modern buttons – helps to easily re-create stylish buttons that are used by Microsoft on their sites. It is a nice addition to default Bootstrap buttons.

Social buttons – Social sign-in buttons made in pure CSS-based on Bootstrap and Font awesome. It is very easy to work with, it only requires adding one of the prepared classes.

NAVIGATIONS AND NAVBARS

Yamm – is another mega menu for Bootstrap 3. It uses standard navbar markup as well as fluid grid system classes from Bootstrap. It works for fixed and responsive layout and could include nearly any Bootstrap elements.

Bootstrap sidebar – is a responsive sidebar plugin or Bootstrap 3. If the menus are too large to fit in a horizontal menu bar, or a responsive sidebar is required, that’s compatible with the platform, then this is the plugin of choice.

Hover dropdown – It enables opening dropdowns only through hovering over them. A nice features is the possible setting of timeout.

Tab drop – it’s very useful when the tabs do not fit in one row. The script takes the not fitting tabs and creates a new drop-down tab. In the dropdown, there are tabs that do not fit.

Bootstrap tree navigation – it is a JavaScript plugin for Twitter Bootstrap 3. It helps create tree navigation menus, build and maintained by Morris Singer.

FORMS

Tokenfiled for Bootstrap – is an advanced tagging/tokenizing plugin for Twitter Bootstrap and jQuery with a focus on copy-paste and keyboard support.

JqBootstrap Validation – is a jQuery validation plugin for Bootstrap forms. It could validate number, email, min, pattern, max and a whole lot more.

Bootstrap markdown – is a simple markdown editing tool that truly works. It is designed to be integrated easily with the Bootstrap project. It exposes useful API that enables fully hook-in to the plugins.

Bootstrap Combobox – It is easy to implement to boost user experience with long select elements.

Bootstrap color palette – is a simple color palette plugin for the platform that enables a user to choose from the basic color palette or one that is defined by the user.

Bootstrap Maxlength – a visual feedback indicator for the maxlength attribute. It uses a Twitter Bootstrap label to reveal a visual feedback to a user regarding the maximum length of the field wherein a user is inserting text. Moreover, it uses the HTML5 attribute ‘maxlength’ to work.

Bootstrap Colorpicker – is indeed nice and customizable plugin for Bootstrap. The interface is great where one could choose from a complete color palette, which includes opacity option.

JQuery file upload – is a widget with numerous file selection, progress bar for jQuery and drag and drop support. It supports cross-domain, resumable and chunked file uploads. It also works with any server-side platform, such as Ruby on Rails, Python, PHP, Node.js, Java, Go and more that supports a standard HTML form file uploads.

Data Range picker – a JS component for selecting data ranges. It is designed to work with the CSS framework of Bootstrap.

Bootstrap select – is a jQuery plugin that uses Bootstrap’s dropdown.js to style. Moreover, it also brings more functionality to normal select boxes.

Each and every Bootstrap theme offers an extensive set of tools that are super easy to get up and running. It provides a great leg up when beginning a project.

How does QA fit into the Product life cycle?

THE LIFECYCLE CONCEPT

The product life cycle concept nowadays is about the state that the Copernican view of the universe was three-hundred years ago. Many people knew about it, yet, hardly anybody seemed to use it in any productive or effective way. Today that a lot of people know and in some way understand the product life cycle, it is about time to put it to work.

QA is the process wherein the entire software development activities would strictly adhere to the regulations and rules. The rules are called Standards, that’s followed in the development lifecycle. If the standard is not adhered to, then there is a possibility of errors in a lot of ways. These standards ensure that the process of development is free from bugs. Simply put, QA is very critical. QA testing is employed to minimize possible defects in each development life cycle stage. The focus of software QA is to continuously monitor all throughout the development life cycle for quality products. This needs monitoring both products and processes. The objective is to determine and eliminate defects as early as possible, thus lowering maintenance and test costs.

MAIN GOALS OF QUALITY ASSURANCE

The main goals of quality assurance during the software development are to develop software that is error free, determine if there’s any variation from the requirements, use the software in real-time and provide confidence in the product, among other things. The inclusion of QA in the product lifecycle could contribute to the reduction of billions invested on IT software project rework.

The life cycle process begins with requirements, and as it evolves inside the SDLC, more efforts are made to build or modify a solution, more people involved and the cost of the project rises. Bugs that are discovered at the end of the process have the tendency to need considerably more effort for fixing. The sooner the bug is determined, the cheaper it would be to fix. In testing, the cost of bug fixing could be represented by something around a logarithmic function, in which the cost could increase by over ten times as the project progresses via the life cycle phases. A bug that is identified during conception will cost something like zero. However, when the same bug is found only after testing or implementation, the average repair cost could get to something from ten to one thousand times more.

The advantages of QA Testing in the earlier phases:

1. A lot of problems are introduced to the system during design or planning. Testing anticipates future issues at considerably lower cost.

2. Testers would be more familiar with the software, since they are more involved with the product evolution in the earlier stages.

3. Since testing is involved with all SDLC phases, management would not feel like testing is the bottleneck for product release.

4. The test environment could be prepared ahead of time, anticipating risks as well as preventing delays.

5. Test cases written during requirements and shared with the team before construction could help developers think outside the box, evaluate more chances of code failure.

6. Involving QA in all product lifecycle helps in making a ‘quality culture’ inside the company.

7. The risk of short time testing is significantly reduced, boosting test coverage as well as the kinds of tests done.

Developers should be aligned with the expectations about the requirements. In most instances, to be able to keep pace with the schedule, developers don’t invest ample time for reviewing the specification. Often, they ignore vita documents or misunderstand some requirements. This type of ambiguity will generate more bugs to be identified at the end of the project and the repair cost would end up more expensive. Moreover, developers should also build unit tests and review code before commits. Together, the small day-to-day activities make great contribution to prevent defect during the construction stage. Additionally, some types of tests definitely worth the consideration of being automated and the automation team will get involved with the process. The automated tests execution, such as load, UI, performance, unit and more could be linked strongly to commits of developers in the construction phase. Preventing a defect is an integral investment with short-term return. The joint actions not just boost the quality of the product by anticipating problems, but reduce the cost of product maintenance as well, increase overall productivity and lessen the development time.

The bottom line appears to be that QA is integral and customers would opt to wait a bit longer for a quality product than receive a potentially flawed one faster. An organization is better off taking time to complete a project than not.

QA or Quality Assurance is an integral aspect in the software product lifecycle. This is particularly true for customers who choose to wait longer for a quality product instead receiving early a potentially flawed one.

Data analytics, the good, the bad and the ugly

Today, consumers are researching, comparing and buying online more than ever. Big Data and data analytics is here, has been around for some time and probably would be here for many years. Data could become one’s worst nightmare if it is just allowed to sit there, buried under boxes. On the other hand, it could be a best friend with the right analytics, fast and smart analytics for extracting valuable nuggets from the data an apply insight here, there and everywhere.

UNLOCKING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF DATA ANALYTICS

Successful organizations know how to unlock data’s full potential, transforming information into insight and insight into action and using it to competitive edge. Moreover, the organizations know how to democratize decision making as well as move it from the few elite to the empowered many, another major way of avoiding data hoarding.

DATA ANALYTICS, THE GOOD

Human judgment is the center of successful data analysis. This may appear at odds with the current frenzy in Big Data and the focus on data management and machine learning methodologies. However, while the tools offer great value, it’s necessary to keep in mind that they are just that, tools.

A company knows its goals, know the actions within the web space, which generate the most meaning to the business strategy. Consider the key performance metrics and create a holistic strategy around garnering data points. Keep the focus small, objective clear and construct an analytics implementation, which reflects the decisions. The strategy enables higher focus, maintaining accuracy within metrics. A marketing strategy is easier to develop. Strategy optimization is more precise with a major focus on conversions generation. The scope of data integrity maintenance is more impactful and less daunting when the ecosystem has 3-5 metrics in contrast to 10 or more.

Big data is good when trying to sell stuff. It helps build more sturdy models with more data, particularly when it has the characteristics, such as variety, volume, veracity and variability. Structure of unstructured, big data could provide greater clarity.

DATA ANALYTICS, THE BAD

More data does not always mean better information. Intelligence is a key component of national security and could be invaluable in wartime and peacetime. However, it’s just one security tool among many and there are considerable costs as well as limitations.

Tracking plenty of data across websites isn’t a bad thing. However, there’s a pitfall when a strategy morphs into tracking simply to track. This could cause a snowballing effect of bigger volume of data, less actionable understanding of the story the data points are telling and poorer integrity. More is not always better. An inferior strategy in analytics usually is a derivative of business goals that are not clear. As data accrues and more variables are tracked, their relevance gets diluted. It becomes easier focusing on the metrics that appear favorable even if they’re weak barometers of the business success. Keep it focused and keep data collection insightful.

DATA ANALYTICS, THE UGLY

The key to making clear decisions from digital data is context. Frequently, time is a major contextual factor. With accurate long-term data, an organization could see normalized trends that tell them they are doing better than last year and the reason why. However, when overbearing analytics strategies are implemented, often, there are inconsistencies, which corrode the benefitting factor of data collection in long term. Changes in website functionality, tracking tags dropping, altering data point focus and volatile marketing strategies all interrupt the ability of making recommendations from normalized sets of data. Most of the ugly scenarios could be avoided through keeping an eye on actions that matter and making certain of the accuracy over time.

Is it possible to keep sensitive data out of government hands and corporations? There is a reason for old-school devices, such as typewriters being used. The defense and emergencies ministries of Russia for document drafts, special reports and secret notes prepared for President Putin. The outdated technology has turned into an ultimate security system exactly because it is ‘off-line’ and has a unique advantage, which documents could be linked to a certain machine. Identifiable information or PII is at danger of exposure. There are indeed mechanisms and schemes for keeping data secure, but locks could be picked and accidents could occur. The more data, the more vulnerable to identity theft or even worse.

Nothing, not the cautious logic of mathematics, the statistical models and theories and not the awesome arithmetic power of modern computers, nothing could substitute for the flexibility of the informed human mind.

Truly, big data and analytics is a wonderful thing. However, there are always drawbacks to big data usage that could impact an organization, big or small.

Evaluating what will work and what doesn’t in the Information Technology

In the IT era, the best of times are the worst times. Computer hardware gets cheaper, faster and more portable. New information technology systems and business analytic systems captured people’s imagination. Furthermore, corporate IT spending has bounced back from its plunge back in 2001.

COPING WITH TECHNOLOGY ABUNDANCE IN THE MARKETPLACE TODAY

As the drumbeats of Information Technology become louder, they pose a threat to overwhelm general managers. One of the biggest issues that companies face is coping with technology abundance. It’s difficult for executives to determine what all the apps, systems and acronyms do, let alone decide which to purchase and how to adopt them successfully. Most managers feel unequipped to navigate the constant change in the technology landscape and so involve themselves with IT less and less. The digital transformation of the business environment is at the top of the agendas of CEO and CIO, as it should be. Customer expectations and behaviors change at dizzying pace. Furthermore, innovation that’s needed to compete effectively would be defined more and more by software.

DETERMINING WHAT TYPES OF IT PROGRAMS ARE VIABLE FOR THE FUTURE

Thoroughly inventing the IT wheel isn’t a sustainable starting point. Rebuilding existing services and processes on new platforms consume a lot of valuable resources, introduces unacceptable risk and will take a long time. How do CIOs decide what parts of the Information technology infrastructure have a viable future and what would be phased out to make room for advancement? The decision essentially should be based on business impact, value and risk. Also, there are technology hurdles, which investments should also get over simply to be taken into consideration. When evaluating where it makes sense to push IT to the new digital age, there are three major areas to measure against. These are the following:

1. DevOps ready. If innovation’s defined by software, the capacity of delivering software capabilities more effectively and faster defines successful organizations. DevOps practices and the culture of continuous delivery, which accompanies will be the heart of the competitive weapon. For a technology investment to live a happy and long life in the brave world of more agile and faster software delivery, it requires effectively meshing with a DevOps worldview. For instance, a lot of mainframe developers integrate actively what are very traditional app development environments to high-speed DevOps world with huge success. The compatibility of DevOps soon would need to be part of the evaluation criteria or that information tech investment these days may not be able to keep up with the future.

2. Security lifespan. As more and more of the core business model of companies’ runs on IT, thus the scope and criticality of intellectual property grow in proportion. Security therefore would finally complete the slow evolution from business impediment that is often forgotten to pivotal element in innovation strategy. It’s important that tools and systems, both present and future have long security lifespans. The recent ransom ware attacks in the world were in no small part successful since they targeted systems that already were well past the security sell-by dates. CIOs in response should always have the security vulnerability assessment lens nearby when reviewing if an existing technology could make the all-important leap to the future of the digital enterprise. Without a security path forward, it’s time to decide if a replacement is required to prevent future compliance and security damages.

3. Flexibility and connectivity. Hybrid information technology environments would rule the business information technology world. It’s not only an accumulation of cloud service and on premise solutions but a real hybrid model as well. A complex and mixture of platforms, consumption models and delivery mechanisms that are built and operated with ample agility to keep pace with the continuous change in the business requirements.

For any technology, the question would be how well it would coexist in the world with everything else. Standalone platforms are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Everything would have to be flexible, connected and responsive to change soon. If a critical business system could not find a new connected home, it could be near its end of days. Nonetheless, the most venerable business systems can have long lives ahead if they could make the critical connectivity work. The rising pressure to digitize business would continue to skyrocket in the years to come as the rate of change in customer demand accelerates, along with the technology landscape’s complexity. Nonetheless, enterprise CIOs have a lot of tools to create an innovative hybrid infrastructure, provided that they could evaluate carefully the suitability of what exists these days.

Much of legacy information tech actually is highly applicable to the next generation of digital business. Furthermore, with the right metrics to evaluate against, enterprises and businesses could rapidly move nowadays to build what they would need tomorrow.

The common practices of project managers for effective software implementation

There are numerous software apps available that could help with project management tasks, but there are also various opinions on what kinds of functionality one wants. A project management software is a tool that has the capacity to help in planning, organizing and managing resource pools and develop resource estimates as well. Depending on its sophistication, the software could manage estimation and plan, schedule, cost control and budget management, allocation resource, collaboration, communication, decision-making, quality management and documentation or admin systems. Nowadays, many browser-based and PC-based project management software solutions exist and finding their way into almost any kind of business.

Selecting the best project-management tool would depend primarily on what one needs as well as the project managers view of project-management software. The best project management program in the world could not help a company complete tasks faster or more effectively if the staff do not or will not use it. A management tool will only become effective when the task manager will be able to use it at its full advantage.

The following are some tips for project managers to get the most of the software.

1. Begin with a needs analysis. Project management solutions come in all sizes and shapes. The first thing to do is to determine what type of management collaboration tool the business or company needs. For instance, a manager should determine if all the tasks are internal or working with external vendors and customers. Other things to consider is if the tasks should be assigned or simply require a space where everyone could collaborate and if the task would involve budgets and invoices.

2. Make certain the software is easy to use. Find a program that is both intuitive and as a whole in-line with how the company works. If it fails to meet the company specifics out-of-the-box, then a solution should be one with built-in custom fields and the capability to rename categories and fields.

3. Consider a cloud-based service. This is preferable for a number of factors, such as deployment ease and overall ownership cost. It could also save thousands of dollars over a solution that has to be installed and managed. Users could also access the system on any device, anywhere and upgrades are automatically delivered since it is web-based.

4. Select a solution that could scale. Implementing a solution throughout the company is in itself a long-term project. That is why it is necessary to go for a solution that would grow with the company and provides features that the a manager may not even consider using at the start.

5. Ensure that the PM software incorporates with core applications, like email. An important factor in choosing a product is the integration capabilities. Since everyone uses email, a solution should be able to post messages to email that would boost user engagement and extend the product reach.

6. Solicit input from the people and departments who will actually use the software. Choosing a program that would be a good overall fit is critical. The best way of doing this is to include an entire team in the process of selection. Gather feedback from people and departments as they may have goals they would like to attain.

7. Compare various management solutions. Make a checklist based on the needs and compared products. Both the project manager and members of the team should review the software. If outside parties would also be using the software, solicit their opinion as well.

8. Opt for a solution that offers good community and vendor support. When choosing a project management software, find a vendor with a rich user community. This is important when questions arise since there will be fellow users to turn to for advice.

9. Establish goals from the start. Define the goals for clarity on how to set up the program, how to use it and how to train people on it. Otherwise, the software implementation will just be like a ship without a rudder.

10. Provide ample training. Consider numerous training sessions to ensure that everyone could attend. Set up a project immediately so employees could practice making posts, attaching files and using the program.

Having a project management software however will not entirely spell success to an organization or business if the project manager fails to do his or her responsibilities. Here are skills that task managers need to be effective and successful:

1. Be a good multi-tasker and highly organized. A good manager is one who knows how to manage numerous tasks and track concerns daily. The success or failure of a project lies in the difference between a project manager who is highly organized and a manager who is not.

2. Take charge and know how to lead. Task managers need good leaders. Managing a task is all about leading vendors and stakeholders to a successful outcome. Tasks must be lead in a way that builds consensus while at the same time flashing out the true roadblocks and risks. Effective managers showcase an image of a better tomorrow as well as foster confidence in the abilities of the members of the team to realize the vision.

3. One should be an effective communicator. Effective communication means that the manager should consistently ensure that they are clearly understood by all stakeholders and that they understand what is expected of them throughout the lifecycle of the task. Moreover, it is necessary that all stakeholders effectively communicate with one another as well as with the task head.

4. Know how and when to negotiate. Managers should also be excellent negotiators. A good head invests time to understand and negotiate the relationships and determine the stakeholder's interests. Without negotiating skills, one could spoil or ignore the crucial relationships, which make the success of a task very unlikely.

5. Recognize and solve issues fast. There would be times when issues and obstacle arise that require immediate resolutions. The way the project managers handle these issues would set him apart from others.

6. Become detail-oriented. Managing a project is all about details, big and small ones. That is why project managers should be meticulous when it comes to managing the details of each project and the impact that every detail could have on the overall success of the task. Details could make or break it, and an effective PM recognizes that.

7. Possesses necessary technical skills. To become a good PM, one must possess robust knowledge of the software, platforms and programs that the company works with regularly. This is true even if the job is actually non-technical. Furthermore, a great leader must have ample technical knowledge regarding areas of the project to be able to assign themselves to some of them.