One of our partners approached us recently about re-creating a client's site in Joomla. The original site was working fine, but they wanted to make it responsive. The problem was that the marketing agency who originally created the site wanted an arm and leg to make it responsive. On top of this, they were busy for several months and it could be a year before the work was completed. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot the client could do. They had already paid an arm and leg to have the site developed and the platform that it was developed on was proprietary to the marketing agency. This is a form of vendor lock-in. In this post, we'll discuss why lock-in is terrible for your business and 3 common techniques that I've seen used to create it in web development.

We were recently approached by a marketing firm that was looking for a partner to skin and build Joomla sites for them. One of the questions they asked of us was what sort of quality assurance we performed on our work. This is a great question, because if you talk to developers they will tell you that all software has bugs. Writing zero error software is extremely difficult. This was also a great question for us particularly, because our dedication to quality is one of our selling points. I won't bore you with our response to the firm, instead I want you to consider how we might reliably generate solid work when software is so fraught with challenges? The answer is not that we are god-like Joomla developers (though I won't deny we're good.) I'll give you a hint, the answer is something that any business and any individual can employ. Give up? The answer is systems. You may think that you already know the what and how of systems, but I promise in this post I will provide a unique perspective into their benefit you won't find elsewhere. So keep reading!

Last year, I wrote a blog post about the importance of professionalism in working with developers. Reflecting on that post recently got me thinking about the movie "The Professional," about a freelance assassin. I realized that there are likely a lot of similarities between hiring a hitman and hiring Joomla developers. In both cases, you're looking to work with a gun for hire that you don't have any previous experience with. Because of this, it makes the screening process critical.