Full-Stack Speed Improvements - ΩJr. Software Consultancy

Speed is Not a Single-Discipline Topic

You may have employees who know how to speed up your database. Others may know how to speed up the servers. And you may have someone who can speed up the middleware. That is great. Who can you call when you need someone with experience in all of that, from start to finish?

Me, that is who. My name is André E. Veltstra. I have been a designer, architect, UI and Middleware developer, tester, installation engineer, database modeller and tuner, and an integration consultant for connecting back-office software. I have worked in this field since 1993.

In my Knowledge Base you can find several articles devoted to optimising web sites and offline software. Read this article that describes how I sped up my own website.

You can check my Pinterest Board on Web Site Speed Improvements for screen shots that show off what I can do: https://pinterest.com/omegajunior/speed-optimization-for-web-apps-and-websites/

User Experience Matters

Some of the speed optimisations have nothing to do with actual, measurable speed. They are influenced by perceived speed. The keyword here is predictability.

For instance: surveys that include a progress meter are completed no faster than ones that do not, but it is much more predictable to the user where they are and how much they still have to do, which gives them a sense of certainty. The same goes for webforms and e-commerce check-outs. Do your developers have tests in place to check where people leave off?

Another point of concern is how fast people can find what they are looking for, how fast they can use your product to solve their problem. This encompasses the user interface, the content strategy, the search engine, accessibility and usability, and cross-platform availability. If the user cannot find it, it does not exist.

Does your web-care team contact the customers who failed to complete the transaction? And why not? You do have a web-care team, don't you? For speed is not just software: it is also how fast your tech support responds to inquiries. This is all part of the User Experience.

View this Pinterest Board for the UX and UI design for one of my javascript-heavy web games: https://pinterest.com/omegajunior/ux-design-for-zjramble5/

Bottlenecks in Unexpected Places

Of course your developers have tested their products. However: testing has the innate problem of checking the predictable. What if something is not? Do you have an expert who looks for edge cases?

I am such a person. Read this article that details unexpected memory concerns in a web browser. And here is an article describing how the size of a user's computer screen affects the browser's memory usage. And finally, here is an article (on Facebook) describing my own predicaments while testing algorithms for speed bottlenecks.

For my previous employer, a full-service internet company named Colours, I sped up many a web application, including 2 for gouvernment organisations. One client suffered from a database implementation so poor that none of our advanced caching mechanisms could help it. Another client suffered from poorly coded desicion trees and a total lack of caching and load-balancing. Both took multiple weeks to optimise to an acceptable point.

One-off Ad Interim

Are your employees afraid to cut down their own coding? Is your profit inhibited by clashing egos? In those cases you need an interim full-stack engineer whom you can dismiss after the job is done, protecting your employees whilst figuring out who needs more education and who needs replacing. You need me.

Are your employees bogged down by their regular work? Are your managers afraid of changing existing work-flow processes? Do your support engineers get fed up by answering the same questions time and time again? Then you need someone who can come in and do all of the work independently. Someone who can investigate your processes and manage their change if needed. Someone who understands that user complaints are an added value rather than a nuisance. You need me.