Web / software development methodology

There are many software development methodologies around. All of them will flash you with fancy words and technical jargon. Since you are potential customer for us here is a breakdown procedures that we usually follow in order to achieve understanding for both parties. A proven software development methodologies together with responsible project management have helped developers meet budgets, schedules and expectations of clients.

For medium and large enterprises: we use PMI approach to project management. For small companies that may not have a personnel trained for project management we put the whole process in the following simple terms:

FIRST STEP

To understand what is it you are trying to achieve, what is the final goal; why do you need the software; what is it going to resolve; what benefits do you expect from running it; give us a bit of historical background why have you come up with such idea....

SECOND STEP

To split the task into 3 phases: INPUT, PROCESSING, OUTPUT:

• INPUT
  What data/information input, actions will be available to a user.
• PROCESSING
  What the proposed software should do / how should interpret the input to create the required output.
• OUTPUT
  What that software should produce / display.

THIRD STEP

• You need to write a brief spec describing your idea, specifying input/processing/output procedures.
  Also you need to specify how/where do you wish your software to run: is it a web-based software, or client(desktop)-based software.
• You need to specify compatibility (e.g. "it should be installed and run on Windows 98SE and above, Linux, Mac v9 and above"; or "browser compatibility IE5.0+, etc").
• You also need to specify if your software will be interacting with other applications or services.
• You also need to specify any other special conditions (e.g.: "My hosting only allows PHP4/MySQL and I have 50Mb of free space, so I want my software to run from my web-server").

We will then:

• Review your requirements;
• Confirm all aspects of the proposed logic (it is very much likely that there will be more than originally specified. Very often in the middle of development clients come up with some other suggestions like "oh! I've forgotten - if condition A is not met and the value B is over X, then we need to do Z");
• Work out scope, time and costs of development;
• If the quotation is acceptable then ...
• ... we will write the full specification which we shall agree and follow to the last letter.

We hope that the above gives you an idea on what first steps will have to be done in order to progress.

If you do not have human or time resources to complete all the above please consider using our Project Management services, where all necessary paperwork and procedures (planning, execution, monitoring and control, closing) will be undertaken by ourselves.