For the last ten months or so, I’ve been involved in the production of a new kind of contact and project management tool, called “Glasnost”. It’s a product of the Estates Today team, who I’ve been working with regularly for coming up to ten years. There are several things that mark the project as special from our point of view.

 

First, it’s created using Adobe Flex, rather than traditional XHTML/CSS/Javascript. We wanted a really rich interface and interaction with the user, and the decisions were between an AJAX-powered interface and Flex. In the end, we went with Flex because of our traditional reliance on Cold Fusion at the back end. Because Adobe now own Macromedia and in turn inherited Cold Fusion as part of that process, it made some sense to stick with Flex as the front end.

 

Second, because the software is so involved,  interface decisions are more involved than is usual when building a website. The resulting software is essentially an app in its own right, and time will tell if we’ve made the correct decisions. We’ve tried to keep it simple where possible, and to keep navigation and labels as “plain English”.

 

Lastly, we didn’t build any of it. This is the first time we’ve been involved in outsourcing the actual build of a product to someone else. Further, it’s also the first time we’ve offshored the build of a product, in this case to India. It’s been a very interesting experience, and I have to say that it’s been very rewarding, allowing us to concentrate on the processes and design of the product, and freeing us from the nitty-gritty of the code itself. I’m hoping to get Antony, who runs the show, to write an article about the process for the ELATED website, since I suspect it’s an experience that will have resonance to many developers and entrepreneurial types.

 

We think the product’s great, and now its time to show it to everyone else, which is both scary and exciting. So without further ado,  go take a look at Glasnost.

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