“What is a client worth at the end of the day?”

Well put by Gerard of Qsic (CTO).

Bug tracking, error logging, alerting and app stability tools…

They cost significant upfront dollars and it also slows your team down initially.

However, once you’re live with your app and issues start arising, the ability to debug quickly and resort to a solution because you’ve got visibility, makes it worth every penny. Like Geard said “What is a client worth at the end of the day?”

5 Days vs 5 Hours

5 Hours vs 5 Minutes

In addition to this, visibility also means that you’re able to identify bottlenecks and prevent future outages, reduce performance issues etc. In layman terms, I call this good customer service. :)

Tools mentioned in this are Sentry, New Relic, Inc. and Elastic Search.

I’d like to also add Smartlook, this has been amazing for recording keystrokes within the app, so it’s quick to replicate the issues users are facing. We’ve recently managed to reduce our beta test cycle from 4 weeks to 10 days, courtesy of SmartLook.

I had an absolute ball speaking to Gerard about what a CTO role really is and his journey from Software Engineer to that leadership role. Full podcast interview in the comments below.