When I wake up in the morning and look at my phone or log onto my computer to deal with the myriad of things I do, I am dealing with software that has been created to serve those purposes. The software that I use to check email, utilize social media, open a weather app, read the news, write an article, or work on writing and recording music is primarily done on commercial, general-use applications. Whether this be done via mobile apps on my phone, desktop apps on a computer, or web apps in a browser, this is what most everyday people work with and deal with.
By contrast, Custom Software Development is done when there is a need or a place where what is available “off the shelf” will not fit my needs. This is more common inside of organizations: The customers are not a distant set of people looking to buy a software product that we create; instead, they are our co-workers, trying to accomplish the tasks they need to do each day. Or, we might notice that there is a need in the market for an existing product to do something differently, or to act or perform in a way that the core product cannot do.
At present, I work in a group where that is our specialty. We create custom software for organizations to take data and transform it to be used by other applications. Put simply, this is not something any off-the-shelf product can do for us or for our customers. We have to “reinvent the wheel” frequently. It’s a fun challenge but make no mistake, it has its challenges.
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Michael is a Black Belt in the Miagi-Do School of Software Testing, helped start and facilitate the Americas chapter of Weekend Testing, is a former Chair of the Education Special Interest Group with the Association for Software Testing (AST), a lead instructor of the Black Box Software Testing courses through AST, and former Board Member and President of AST. Michael writes the TESTHEAD blog and can be found on Twitter at @mkltesthead. A list of books, articles, papers, and presentations can be seen at http://www.linkedin.com/in/mkltesthead.
