Want to use Studio MX to create cool new iPhone apps, but you’re not sure where to start? iRise can help you with two hours of free services. This generous offer is available on a first-come, first-served basis for the first 50 qualified customers for services between now and March 31, 2012.

To take us up on this offer, send an e-mail to info@irise.com with the subject line “Sign Me Up!” iRise will promptly respond to discuss the details of your project and schedule the two-hour session. Act now to secure your spot!

Lotus F1 Team and iRise are teaming up to accelerate the racing team’s application development efforts, in an industry that increasingly relies on software for competitive advantage.

Through this new partnership, the former world-champions will leverage iRise software visualization to accelerate time-to-market for their critical software development initiatives. “Our goal is to improve on-time delivery of our racing-related software which will be intuitive and of immediate benefit to its users, and iRise is a mission-critical element of our strategy to achieve that," says Patrick Louis, CEO of the Lotus F1 Team.

“We have been leveraging computer-aided design tools for years to simulate the design of our race cars and accelerate their manufacture,” explains Eric Boullier, a Team Principal at Lotus F1 Team. “It makes perfect sense that iRise would empower our IT organization to do the same for software design and delivery, and we are very pleased to form a technical partnership with iRise.”

By leveraging iRise software visualization early in the software design process, Lotus F1 Team intends to converge on the desired requirements faster and accelerate time to delivery on these mission-critical software development projects.

"The biggest problem we have with software development projects is ensuring the requirements identified up front match the requirements at the point of delivery,” says Louis. “Traditional functional requirements documents and static screen shots do not provide either the consumers or the developers with sufficient granularity, which bogs down the requirements process and often leads to unexpected late-stage rework. We first learned about the ability to accelerate software development projects with iRise in 2011 and have already leveraged visualization to accelerate critical development projects in our Agile development lifecycle.”

Can you really go from concept to code in 30 minutes?
Last month, hundreds watched as iRise modelers met that challenge, in a free live webinar that demonstrated how easy it is to make new ideas real with the iRise platform. The intrepid experts took suggestions from the attendees at the beginning of the meeting and rapidly created a working visualization using iRise 8.9.

If you missed it, you still have a chance to see how they did it. Click here to watch video

Join us to see how the latest features in CodeGen can be used to create a close alignment between iRise visualizations and your development standards, enabling you to get from concept to code in record time.

This Webinar will explain:

• New facilities in version 2.0 for template-driven code generation
• Mapping iRise asset libraries to different code bases
• New and improved CodeGen features that make it easier than ever to go from idea to prototype to code in a fraction of the time that “traditional” methods take
  

For more info and to register: Click Here

Unlocking Special Talent With iRise Visualization
The iRise platform has long been known for helping more than half of the Fortune 1000 companies to accelerate business innovation, reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction with user interfaces.

But helping people with Asperger’s syndrome and autism to find fulfilling jobs in software testing? That was certainly not in the original business plan, but if a new pilot program continues to enjoy success, it will become an interesting and important benefit.

The idea first dawned on Chad Hahn, principal and technologist at consulting firm Square One solutions in Santa Monica, in conversations with his wife, Shannon, who works at Creative Support Systems in nearby Culver City.

She expressed dismay at how difficult the current labor market has made it to find jobs for people who have extraordinary focus but have trouble with social interaction. Hahn started to wonder if there was a way to train high-functioning individuals for jobs in software testing.

It was then that Hahn got to thinking: The best software testers are often very detail-oriented and fixate on problems that others overlook. And the same is true for people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, who even in good times suffer from unemployment rates many times the overall average.

What if there were a way to harness the intense, detail-oriented focus of these individuals to spot deficiencies in software, and parley it into careers?

He talked to some Square One clients, who liked the idea, and came up with a business case. Due to inefficiencies in outsourcing—including errors attributable to time zone differences, cultural and linguistic barriers, and the typical limited scope of what can be specified in a testing contract—Hahn believes that the typical real effective cost of globally outsourced testing is probably 50% higher than the standard rates of $20-$25 per hour. For that amount, he says, he can employ local people with mental handicaps at something they like and are good at, at much higher rates than they earn at the usually low-skill positions that are often the only jobs they can get.

The first three candidates are undergoing a 60-90 day training program, working ten hours per week at Square One offices. There was just one problem, says Hahn.

“My training materials were pretty text-based, and it’s hard for three trainees to interpret text requirements well,” he says. “Since we’re iRise users, we decided to create visualizations that had bugs and deficiencies, so we could show them how to spot new problems,” he says.

That did the trick, says Hahn. “iRise visualization helps people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome for the same reason that it helps business users understand software requirements: Everyone understands a picture,” says Hahn.

The results so far have been very promising. “We are seeing very encouraging results from the pilot, with all of the three candidates demonstrating the required proficiency needed to test software in a commercial setting,” comments Hahn. “We think we can use their strengths, now that we’ve figured out how to train them.”

Discounts available. You’ll receive your iRise Basic Training Certificate upon completion. To learn more about iRise training classes: Click Here