Blog

by Royce Hall on July 13, 2020 | Azure,software development,technology,Tools

Benefits of the Cloud I thhink the reason the cloud has become an important thing is because managing your own infrastructure (your hardware, your network, your data center) are all very complex and difficult. It used to be that if you were a company that was big enough to need that type of stuff, you had no choice but to...

by Royce Hall on July 6, 2020 | data management,software development

When do you need Custom Software? So I think of a business person, somebody who's not in software development an is not a technical person. These are generally smart people, they're using other types of software, they see what's possible. Maybe they're trying to use vendor tools already, but the tool just doesn't fit and they realize they really want...

by Royce Hall on | culture,software development

Software Development is a Fundamentally a Discovery Process Normally, the people that were interacting with as a software consultancy shop don't know a lot about software development, so we have to start by exploring their project scope and budget. Typically our clients have a general understanding of the problem to be solved, but not see the 5-10 different ways of...

by Biz Dev on | Uncategorized

Here at Level 12, we’re committed to providing IT solutions for your business! We work with businesses of all sizes and primarily focus on midmarket and enterprise clients, but today we want to praise small businesses, especially in our home state of Indiana! Indiana is driven by small businesses! In recent years, the Small Business Administration found that small businesses...

by Royce Hall on June 22, 2020 | software development,software project requirements

MS Access Update We engage with a client a number of months ago that is a relatively large company. They had a Microsoft Access Program that was at the core of a really important business process for them. It touched a number of different departments and helped automate and guide this process to make sure that they weren't losing or...

by Royce Hall on June 18, 2020 | innovation,software development,technology

Mining Data for Miners Our client owns land used for natural resources and needs to know what sort of residual income to expect from the property. In this industry, land owners will have wells on their property and will make a deal with a oil or gas company where they get a percentage of the income from the sale of...

by Biz Dev on | Uncategorized

We are proud to announce that DesignRush recognized Level 12 as being among the Top Software Development companies in their press release earlier this week. We are grateful for the clients that have lent their feedback to help make us a top app development company in Louisville: "Level 12 is always my number one choice for Software and development solutions....

by Royce Hall on June 8, 2020 | small business

Gifting in context I have from the very beginning tried to build Level 12 on people who are just really gifted. That's the word I like to use. I think some people can do software development, who are not on the far end of the gifted spectrum, and they're able to make their way through. But at Level 12, we're...

by Royce Hall on | software development,technology

Web app versus mobile apps Let's look at the example of Gmail. Gmail has a web app that you can use on your desktop browser, in which case, it's a big application. It also has a web app you can use on your mobile browser and is tailored to the smaller screen. But then Gmail also has native mobile applications...

by Royce Hall on June 5, 2020 | Azure,data management,software development,technology,Tools

One of the coolest projects Level 12 has worked on has been utilizing autonomous drones to inspect wind turbines for damage and analyzing the pictures the drones take with machine learning. I did a brief write-up of this project here. There are all sorts of things to nerd out on: drones, Machine Learning, cloud computing, Internet of Things, and automation....

by Royce Hall on April 14, 2020 | software development,software project requirements,technology

Practicing Agile Development Principles (without being tied to one methodology)  Tim Hickle: So thank you all for joining us today. I'm really excited to have this conversation. Randy and his team at level 12 have been amazing partners for us here at Woven. And something that through the content webinars we've done in the past, I've gotten a lot...

by Royce Hall on April 7, 2020 | data management,innovation,Payment Industry,software development,software project requirements,technology

Custom Software Development or Off The Shelf? If you are undertaking a software project, you are probably asking yourself if you need to make or buy your solutions. In larger enterprises you may be thinking about implementing something as big as an ERP systems or CRM, or as small as a client intake form or web portal. You ask, is...

by Royce Hall on March 17, 2020 | culture,Louisville,software development

Thanks to reviews from our clients, GoodFirms has recognized us as a top app development company in Louisville! GoodFirms is a site that focuses on rating software companies and products based on user reviews (kinda like Google reviews, but specifically for the software industry). If you are a looking for a software product, or a partner for an upcoming project,...

by Royce Hall on March 9, 2020 | Louisville,software development,technology

Do you know the difference between automation, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence? Someone recently asked: "My interest in outsourcing is in the areas of cloud and AI and industrial automation space. Is that an area you have prior exposure to?" My response: "We have a lot of experience with cloud applications, management, and automation. We've also explored various industrial automaton...

by Royce Hall on January 17, 2020 | Louisville,Python,software development,software project requirements,technology

Have you been burnt by bad automated testing? When we go to software engineering conferences we often talk about the benefits of automated testing. As we've had private conversations with a lot of the people we often find that they have had really bad experiences with applications that have just had tests that were not a benefit. They honestly made...

by Royce Hall on October 4, 2019 | Louisville,Payment Industry,software development,technology

Productivity and Efficiency have Different Goals: Productivity is highly tied to value, efficiency is tied to waste. To be productive means that you're doing the right thing with as little waste as possible. Sometimes you might actually be productive with waste. And this might be common in more creative fields where people need to get away, they need time, they...

by Royce Hall on September 10, 2019 | Louisville,software development,technology

SaaS Application Project Testimonial: At the time that we met the level 12 guys, we were, we had decided to rebuild and re-architect our platform, so that it would be more extensible and more scalable and essentially more bulletproof for the types of customers, we were attracting. We had a lot of exposure, a lot of potential risk if we...

by Dale Gibbons on October 3, 2018 | Louisville,software development,software project requirements

Leadership is a gold-plated word, isn’t it? It’s so valuable to companies, they pay big, big money for it. It’s so impactful to families, children beg for it. Cling to it. It’s so valuable to teams, they’ll jump out of airplanes after it. The third item on our “12 Reasons Software Projects Fail” is lack of executive leadership. A foggy...

by Randy Syring on September 27, 2018 | Uncategorized

Dear Tech Recruiter, Thanks for reaching out to me regarding the development positions we have open.  I hope you did at least a little homework about me and Level 12 before you emailed me.  If not, and your email looks completely like a form letter, I may not respond at all. If there are positions open on our careers page,...

by Dale Gibbons on August 8, 2018 | Louisville,software development

As kids, most of us experienced a pick-up game where two captains were selected (or self-designated) and took turns choosing from an eager and anxious collection of candidates. Some of the kids were cool and confident, knowing they’d be chosen in the first few rounds. Others were awkward and unsure, happy to be selected before they ended up being the...

by Dale Gibbons on July 10, 2018 | Louisville,software development

For some, there is no clear line between religion and managing software projects. Our recent post and ranking poll on the 12 reasons software projects fail yielded some spirited input and results. The winner—the top-ranked, number one, most challenging bugaboo of them all: Defining Software Requirements. What it is… Defining software requirements is the art, science, and skill of discovering...

by Dale Gibbons on June 7, 2018 | Louisville,software development

First, the bad news: Software projects fail at a high rate. One 2008 study concluded the failure rate was nearly 60%, and a 2016 study suggested the failure rate was as high as 68%. Now, the good news: Project success seems to be improving overall. A 2017 Pulse of the Profession report from the Project Management Institute (PMI) shows that...

by Randy Syring on May 26, 2018 | Louisville,software development

This week I had at least four conversations with people who were young and aspiring developers. I've written some personal emails over the last year to others in the same situation and saved their content with the intention of turning them into a more polished blog post. Well, the reality is, the time to polish may never come so maybe...

by Biz Dev on February 15, 2018 | software project requirements

Use Cases Our previous blog posts made a case for gathering project requirements, identified three core requirements types, focused on busienss objectives, and strategies for eliciting user input. Our focus is going to shift towards determining and defining specific things an application must do to provide value to users. A use case is a description of how an external actor...

by Biz Dev on February 7, 2018 | software project requirements

Asking the right questions is the key to gathering quality requirements for your software project, but before you can begin asking questions, you need to know who to ask. Identify User Groups In most cases, multiple groups, or classes, of users will interact with the software you want to build. For example, a manufacturing workflow tracking application may have the...