Typical software implementation projects take a long time, cost a lot of money, and leave clients with unfulfilled expectations.
Even if the implementation succeeds, business needs change and customer expectations shift, requiring business systems to be continually updated, enhanced and optimized.
Strategy / Vision
Rapid Development
Delivered Monthly
Rapid Development
Delivered Monthly
Our process is centered on time-tested, rapid software development practices married to a continual improvement mindset.
A paradigm of gradual, never-ending (“small”) changes will:
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Allow management to control speed and direction of progres​
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Reduce risk related to uncontrolled scope creep​
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Allow your end users to be engaged and help steer​
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Be easier to implement and gain user adoption​
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​Reduce or eliminate time consuming and costly re-work​
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Require smaller monthly investment instead of large capital investment​
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Help improve teamwork and motivation
Startup Process
The startup process is well scripted and takes approximately 2 weeks. We start by understanding your business through structured interviews that are compiled and condensed into a living technology roadmap and engagement charter:
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The technology roadmap lists existing systems, business processes, integration points, and outlines potential technology investments for the next 12-18 months.
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The engagement charter documents goals, objectives and creates a shared understanding on how the engagement will run.
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Both the technology roadmap and engagement charter are updated on a quarterly basis to fold in new enhancements/optimizations and update high level business priorities.
A key component of the engagement charter is a listing of measurable metrics (Key Performance Indicators or KPIs). We include metrics to understand current business performance and establish a baseline to measure future progress. Our job, through system and process optimization, is to help you drive those metrics forward. We strive to make measurable improvements and do it on time and at a reasonable price.
Rapid Development Process
Here is a simplified view of our development process.
A backlog is a list of Epics, Features, and User Stories that may be considered for future feature enhancements or optimizations
The backlog is initially populated as a result of the stakeholder interviews and technology roadmap, and is then maintained by input from end users, managers, and other stakeholders.
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Each backlog item is categorized (as Epics, Features, User Stories), prioritized, and evaluated for dependencies. A ballpark estimate is provided for each User Story.
Prioritized Backlog
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Selected Items
Team members meet monthly to plan the next iteration. Priorities are reviewed and discussed, detailed requirements and acceptance criteria are documented, and backlog items (“User Stories”) are estimated and selected for the upcoming iteration. To be selected, a User Story must contain:
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Clear requirements
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Time estimate
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Mapping to its parent Feature/Epic
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Mapping to business KPI
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Acceptance criteria
A typical User Story is a small unit of functionality that can be completed in 4-8 hours of work.
Some larger User Stories may be larger but should not exceed 16 hours to complete.
Each month, your Technical Team proceeds with the work required to build, test, and deploy the new features and enhancements into a Staging (“sandbox”) Environment.
The Technical Team meets daily and uses modern development practices, automated testing methods, and Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) processes to ensure new features and enhancements are working properly and deployed seamlessly.
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User Stories are complete once they meet their acceptance criteria and after end users have been trained on the new enhancements. Upon completion, each story can be individually (or batch) deployed to the Production Environment.
Monthly Iteration
Review Meeting
An Iteration Review Meeting will be held after each Monthly Iteration to review and approve the completed User Stories. The Iteration Review Meeting is typically 60-90 minutes and is attended by the Technical Team, business end users and stakeholders.
In keeping with our principles of continuous optimization and improvement, feedback on the iteration is discussed to determine what went well and what needs further adjustments. This feedback and process improvement is used for the next cycle of planning, development, testing and deployment.
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