Software Development Process

A good plan is essential for completing any project successfully. Without planning, you take the risk of spending more time and money necessary, and the result could very likely be something that does not meet your expectations. It is our goal to help you define your goals and expectations, and then produce exceptional work that meets these goals and expectations. If you don't plan, you're most certainly going to fall into traps, reacting to situations that pop up, rather than sticking to the priorities in a controlled manner. These traps are what we strive to avoid, saving your organization money, time, and headaches.

Our development model places an emphasis on creating and maintaining documentation (such as requirements documents and design documents) as well as well structured and documented source code.

The development process described below is by no means a waterfall method and is not meant to be a sequential (step-by-step) software development model. However, just like any project, we believe that time spent early in the project, making sure that requirements and design are absolutely correct will save you much time, money, and effort later.

Controlled chaos

We believe in Chaos Theory strongly, and when we have a methodology that results in hyper productive software development following controlled chaos, who else can be more satisfied? Chaos is not only limited to software but grew as a result of applied interest in meteorological studies, stock markets, human psychology, particle physics, etc.

The main problem with traditional software development models is to assume that any of the assumptions made has non-chaotic behavior. Even small unknowns can have a big influence on the end result.

Because in practical situations the removal of these uncertainties is impossible, many of us have searched for answers beyond the defined approach of software development, to a more “adaptive approach,” which leads us into our methodology.

Methodology – SCRUM / Agile

We primarily use a SCRUM / Agile development method, in which we focus on breaking the development of various components into iterative phases. We have found our clients to be most happy with this development process, due to their close interactivity with the project throughout the iterations.

Each iteration passes through a full software development cycle: planning, requirements, design, coding, testing, and documentation. The goal is to have an available release at the end of each iteration.

A major goal to be achieved by using this process is to allow you to take you new product to market before it is completed in its entirety. We are also minimizing risk by developing highly focused components in short amounts of time.

This development process will continue throughout all phases, promoting the release of components to a beta phase in a live environment as the life cycles are completed.

Below are the major benefits or principals of the SCRUM / Agile methods:

Keeping things simple by chunking (or batching)
Customer satisfaction by rapid, continuous delivery of useful software they can get their hands on
Working software is delivered frequently (taking weeks rather than months)
Working software is the primary measure of progress
Late change or additions in requirements are welcomed and can be added to iterations with ease
Close, daily cooperation between client and developers
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
Simplicity
Regular adaptation to changing circumstances

SCRUM assumes up-front the existence of chaos in the items in the traditional approach as incorrect assumptions, but it provides for methods to resolve these problems with techniques rooted in complexity management (i.e. self-organization, management of empirical processes, knowledge creation, etc.).

In that sense, SCRUM is not only an "iterative and incremental" development method but it is also an "adaptive" software development method.

We have successfully executed many complex projects using SCRUM approach and we believe that true success comes in a mixed flavor of successes and failures.

Usability

Usability will be kept in mind (and executed) throughout the entire development process. In today's day and age, usability is a necessity for survival on the Internet. If your website is difficult to use, people will leave and go elsewhere. You want to make it as easy as possible for your customers to find the information they want as fast as possible, and with the least amount of clicks.

We define usability by five quality components:

Learn-ability -- how easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encountered the design or user interface. Can they learn how to use your website quickly and easily?
Efficiency -- once the users have learned how to use your website, how quickly do they perform tasks, such as finding your about us page, or finding your site map, or finding what exactly your business does.
Memorability -- when a user leaves your website and come back comes back at a later date, how easily is it for them to pick up where they left off?
Errors -- how many mistakes does a user make while using your website, how bad are the errors, and how do they recover?
Satisfaction -- how do users feel while navigating your website? Can they find things easily? Do they have to hunt and hunt to find basic information?

Project definition and planning

The project definition is the most crucial step in the development process. The project definition will consist of the following:

Client survey – With your help, we will identify and document the purpose of the project, the target audience, branding/perception goals, content sources, technical specifications and requirements, and communication strategy. The more requirements that are defined and documented up front, the more likely the software will be built properly.
Project plan - Using the information gathered in the client survey along with the technical standards of your organization, we will establish the time line for deliverables and tasks for each phase of the project.
Maintenance plan – We will also discuss a maintenance plan, documenting how the software application will be updated and reviewed regularly by your internal staff.

Use Case Diagrams

The software must do certain things to support the business objectives. A use case is a description of how users will perform tasks on your software application. A use case describes a sequence of interactions between a user and a Web site, without specifying the user interface. Use cases are created for all complex scenarios within your project.

Website structure / Information Architecture

Information architecture is the organization of information so that users of your software application can logically find and identify the information they are looking for. The goal with this phase is to spend as much time with your content, labeling it, categorizing it, and creating an information hierarchy. This doesn't require fancy software, your information and content will naturally have some type of hierarchy...and we will help you find that.

Wireframes

A wireframe is simply a basic visual guide to suggest the layout of the fundamental elements for the user interface. Wireframes will be created for all significant pages of the website or screens of the software application. We use Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Visio, Axure, and other modeling tools to create wireframes, which then later serve as the foundation designs in which we build the actual graphical user interfaces.

Visual design

We believe in: "Less is more" and "Form follows function."

We design in the best interest of the users of your website. The visual design phase is where our designers get down and dirty into the creative process. We review the project plan, wireframes, branding guidelines as well as the technical requirements for screen resolution, browser compatibility, download time, web standards and accessibility with our designer(s), and then give them free reign to brainstorm solutions and develop the creative deliverables (visual designs, names, logos, brand image, etc.) that are required for your project.

At this point, our designers will have a clear idea of the purpose of the designs they will create, the content that will comprise the project, the architecture, and the elements that need to be on each page or screen. Drawing on their knowledge of design principles and user centered design, they will develop design options that meet the project goals.