We design software development processes for software houses and the enterprise.

Has this ever happened to you?

• Scenario 1: a Project Manager asks the Team Leader an estimate for a feature implementation. The Team Leader discusses with developers and reports a two months effort. Then the Project Manager replies “Is it possible to have it in one month?”
• Scenario 2: a Project Team Member leaves and nobody has information on that part of the project: project schedule has serious delay.
• Scenario 3: your Product has been distributed to 20 customers, and you have 20 different versions of the source code.

If you have any experience in software management these scenarios probably sounds familiar to you. Many software projects have time and/or budget overrun, even when the project scope is reduced.

Is it possible to avoid these problems?

A well-structured software development process helps you to improve control, confidence and quality. CommonSense can help you out designing all the processes related to software development, whether it’s commercial software or in-house enterprise development.

Collaboration between people, technological progress and the economy slowdown are changing the way customers do their business: individuals increasingly take cues from one another rather than from institutional sources. Companies should abandon top-down management and communication tactics and weave communities into their products and services.

Rise of Social Computing

In 2006 Forrester Research “Social Computing” report highlighted how individuals started new ways of collaboration using Internet, cheap devices, and modular content. As a result, people became more and more informed and their voice was suddenly louder.

The report also explained the impact of these activities on enterprises core business.
While Internet-mediated communication has been in place for years with blogs, forums and other tools, the trend was rapidly accelerating due to three main reasons:

• People: whatever their background and geographic location, people have a natural tendency to cooperate;
• Technology: availability of Social Networks and publishing systems and the increasing use of Internet as platform (the Software as a Service model) reduced the barriers for active consumers, together with availability of  low-cost easy-to-use hardware;
• Economic scenario: the surge of a world-wide economic crisis had a strong impact on consumer habits.

All the above changed, maybe forever, the way consumers interact with companies. Everybody can create a web-site and use it to build consensus for their idea or goal. In some markets intermediation roles are disappearing, replaced by highly-effective self-organizing networks.
Some companies struggled against these initiatives. Some others realized they could leverage active customers collaboration.

Social Computing: a strategic approach

This white-paper outlines CommonSense approach to Social Computing (Italian only): “Approccio Strategico al Social Computing“.

CommonSense can help you deliver your software projects, from functional analysis to full-featured turn-key solutions.

CommonSense Design

CommonSense team has a strong experience in PDM implementation projects and related services (training, configuration, customization, system integration). We deliver customizations for Autodesk Inventor CAD, Autodesk PDMS Productstream Professional and Vault.

CommonSense SC

Using Internet as a platform we deliver

• Collaboration tools;
• Vertical Social Networks;
• Integration between Social Networks and enterprise systems (CRM, customer support, sales automation).

CommonSense Touch

Social Computing platforms can be extended with our custom-developed iPhoneOS (iPod, iPhone, iPad) applications.

CommonSense .NET

Our experts know .NET Framework since Beta 1: we have a strong background in ASP.NET web applications and in system integration of Microsoft servers with third-party software and systems.