Our Services
Project Management
We can help you manage your project either using the industry standard methodology of the Project Management Institute or PRINCE2 methodology. The extent to which we adhere to each of these methodologies is usually determined by size of the project and its regulatory requirements. When undertaking smaller projects we modify management methodologies to minimise overheads while providing maximum benefit to the project. With larger or regulatory driven projects we adhere to these methodologies more strictly.
Requirement Analysis and Development Model
During the requirement analysis phase, together with you, we determine the most suitable development model, specifically looking at which business drivers will influence the proposed software and its lifecycle. The drivers include your business needs, functions and features you require, and organizational factors that impact on the design, as well as technical factors. We help you to align your project with your IT strategy for your business. We use the COBIT framework to evaluate the match between your business and its IT resources, including applications, information, infrastructure and people. The outcome of this process will drive the remaining activities. We can use a range of development models varying from Waterfall to Extreme Agile depending on factors such as your requirements, known and unknown, your ability to accept risk, available time to delivery, and the time that you are willing to commit to the project.
| Waterfall | Rational Unified Process/Agile | Extreme/Agile | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Philosophy: | Client gets exactly what is specified at the very beginning. | Iterative process designed to allow controlled change process and minimise development risks. | Delivery within very short time cycles giving user full control over development. |
| Requirements: | Software Requirements Document must be fully complete before development starts. | Use Cases developed ahead of each iteration. | User Stories developed daily. |
| Risks: | Difficult to adapt to changes.
Possibly significant time before the system is available. Potential for difficulties at the end of project due to long lapses in client involvement. |
Process driven by risk minimisation. | Unexpected requirements late in the process may lead to large re-writes. |
| User involvement: | User’s input is required during the initial specification and during final acceptanceand testing phases. | Moderate but continuous user involvement throughout the whole project. | Continuous direct preferably daily involvement. |
| Typical fee structure: | Fixed quote for the whole project. Often split into milestone payments on larger projects. | Iteration quotes and payments. | Time and material payments. |
Architecture Development and Prototyping
We develop solution architecture by analysing the set of requirements you have given us and optimising these into a workable balance together with functional features, quality of service, organizational and technical factors.
Well-developed architecture gives our solution increased longevity, and simplifies implementation and maintenance of the solution in the long term, thereby decreasing both the direct and indirect costs. At the same time, though, architecture development does tend to increase the initial cost of the application.
Our preferred approach to prototyping follows the Unified Process and is primarily a risk minimization strategy. We prototype the fragments which are most important and which also pose the most risk. The risk, which may originate from a range of factors, can be identified and dealt with, or at least mitigated, by exploring prototypes, a cost-saving activity anticipating potential problems.
Development and Testing
Our primary development tools are based on Microsoft IDE (Integrated Development Environment). Our decision to develop within this framework was influenced by:
- Microsoft Office Suite being familiar to most clients,
- The ease with which Microsoft Office integrates with Microsoft produced server components such as SQL Server and IIS, and
- The level of productivity offered by Microsoft IDE.
We will also develop the software applications within the ORACLE product suite using the ORACLE/Java environment if this is one of your organizational requirements.
Deployment
Our models of deployment depend on your organizational arrangements. Where we can obtain access to your productions servers we will deploy solutions for you. Where your servers are not accessible to us, we provide deployment packages for your IT support to install and administer the application.
We can enable and support hosting of your applications in Cloud through our partnership with Microsoft utilizing one of the Microsoft Azure Centres.
Maintenance and Support
We also offer ongoing maintenance after the warranty period if required. The maintenance can vary from maintaining upgrades to specific applications, to providing the latest versions of the operating system and servers, to extending the software in response to your changing needs.
We offer comprehensive services related to installation and configuration of security systems attached to your software applications. We can configure or recommend configuration specifics for your firewalls, load balancers, switches and routers. We can perform in depth analysis of your web based application performance problems and recommend improvements.
We also offer ongoing maintenance after the warranty period if required. The maintenance can vary from maintaining upgrades to specific applications, to providing the latest versions of the operating system and servers, to extending the software in response to your changing needs.
The deployment process for maintenance is similar to that of the development process discussed above.