Guides
How-tos, explainers, and deep dives.
How Agile Helps You Manage a Distributed Development Team
Rapid and constant advances in technology have made communicating with people located in other parts of the country — or even on the other side of the world — easier than ever before. The combination of globalized…
How to Avoid Project Failure With a Premortem
Only 39% of all IT projects succeeded in 2012. If that number seems alarming, consider this: 68% of IT professionals believed their project would fail right from the beginning. Of those people, how many actually voiced…
How Real-Time Bidding (RTB) Works
Imagine opening a web browser and navigating to a website. The page loads, and you notice a display ad on the right-hand side promoting a hotel you recently researched for an upcoming trip. How did that website know…
How Real-Time Bidding (RTB) Works
Imagine opening a web browser and navigating to a travel site. The page loads, and there on the right-hand side is a display ad for the exact hotel you were researching last week for an upcoming trip. How did that…
How Real-Time Bidding (RTB) Changed Online Display Advertising
There was a time, believe it or not, when commercial advertising was outright banned on the Internet. It can be difficult to imagine an online world without banner ads, pop-ups, or sponsored content — but whether you…
SaaS vs. On-Premises Software: Key Differences, Advantages, and Trade-offs
The way software is delivered to users and organizations has shifted considerably over the past two decades. The traditional model — known as on-premises software — involves downloading or installing an application…
3 Root Causes of Software Development Project Failure
IT has long been recognized as one of the fastest-growing industries in the global economy, which makes optimized project execution all the more critical. Yet failure remains common. Across the broad spectrum of IT…
Why Branding, UX, and UI Are Critical Elements in Software Development
What does it take to build a successful application? Most conversations in software development gravitate toward the technical: thorough planning, a quality codebase, ongoing maintenance. Those things matter, but they…
Agile vs. Waterfall: Comparing Methodology Success Rates and Trade-offs
Whether you're manufacturing a car, engineering a spacecraft, or building a house, project-management methodologies are the backbone of any plan. Software development is no different — it demands a solid, deliberate…
Composer Installer Plugins: Customizing Package Paths and Managing Dependencies
A default Composer setup installs everything into the same directory — which quickly becomes unreadable and impractical. The goal here is to keep the main application in its own location and vendor packages in a…
Managing Application Setup with Composer
Composer is a dependency management tool for PHP-based projects. It allows developers to declare, install, and manage all project dependencies from a single configuration file. Most people stop there — using Composer…
Online-to-Offline and Offline-to-Online Attribution: A Practical Guide for Marketers
Multi-channel attribution models have become a core tool for digital marketers over the past decade. They help explain the impact each online channel — social, display, paid search — has on online sales, how campaigns…
Taming a Symfony Project: Structure, Conventions, and Practical Guidelines
When managing projects built on Symfony2, establishing a consistent set of rules early on pays dividends for every developer who touches the codebase afterward. The goal is straightforward: no matter how many…
Alternatives to Cookie Tracking in Digital Advertising
Cookies remain a foundational mechanism in digital advertising — powering ad personalization, behavioural targeting, retargeting, frequency capping, and more. Despite years of discussion about replacements, a large…
Ad Serving Explained: Ad Invocation Codes and Placement Tags
Ad invocation codes — also called placement tags or ad codes — serve a different purpose than standard web trackers. Their primary job is to load a creative (an ad) into a designated placement on a website or in an app.…
How Web Trackers Work: Pixels, Beacons, Tags, and What Happens Under the Hood
Web trackers — also called web bugs, beacons, pixels, or tracking tags — are the core mechanism behind measuring visitor behaviour and activity on websites. This guide walks through the typical workflow of a web…