Developing Software to Fit like a Glove

"Understand the software development process to enhance your chances of great ROI"

Download the PDF version of this page for easy printing

The software development process can be thought of continually reducing your vision of what want your software to do into a series of smaller and smaller pieces.

You can probably describe the vision of what you want your software to do in one or two sentences. The job at hand is to “decompose” that vision from that single unit of thought into hundreds of thousands of lines of computer software source code.

(Click on the image to view a larger version)
Software development projects will only succeed is there is some level of control over the how this process of “decomposition” takes place.

The best way to do this is to create “control points” as you go so that when you get to a certain level of decomposition you can control how you get to the next.

Your Vision

Your vision states in broad terms what it is that you are trying to achieve.

For example:

“Our best customer has asked us to let them view their open orders online,” o
“Our competitors don’t do XYZ very well. If we had an IT system to help us, we could do XYZ extremely well.”

You will know what your vision is before we meet. In our first meeting together, we will be looking to learn more about your business, the history and your culture.

This helps us understand the business case that will drive your vision to reality.

Your Scoping Study

(Click on the image to view a larger version)
Customers often say to us that they are unsure how to understand how much implementing their vision will cost or how to understand what’s involved.

The purpose of a scoping study is to set out your requirements more formally. It is the first stage of “decomposition” and is the first control point.

The process takes between two and four days depending on the size of the project and is usually done at your offices. It is a process all about facilitation.

At the end of a scoping study you will have a formal set of requirements that accurately describe the scope of your vision. You will also receive a price, which is the fixed-price that is the exact amount that you will pay if you ask us to do the project.

Customers often like to have the flexibility to go out to the market to get more prices. The scoping study lets you do that because you can give other vendors the same formal set of requirements and ask them to quote.

You can read our whitepaper Scope your Software Project for 100% Success for more information.

The Contract

At this stage, you will look to secure a software partner to develop the software. The contract that you draw up will formalise what you’ve agreed in terms of deliverables, payment and intellectual property rights.

Our policy at MBRIT is that you own the complete intellectual property rights for your software on final receipt of final payment. Not all software companies work like this.

You can review our standard Software Development Agreement for more information.

Project Iterations and Your Feedback

(Click on the image to view a larger version)
Once you’re ready to go with your project, the process of decomposing the project from the formal set of requirements into deliverable software begins.

Because customers tell us that they like to have regular updates as to how the project is running, we divide the project up into small iterations.

This allows us to regularly deliver to you “builds” of the software that lets you see how the project is progressing.
When you receive a build, you can look at it, see where the project is, get a feel for what you think of it and send us feedback to incorporate into later builds.

Working collaboratively in this way greatly increases the chances of you getting the software that you want and that fits your business like a glove.

Your Project

At the end of the project, you will have delivered to you a piece of software that realises your original vision.

We would always look to make sure that you are delighted with what you have – click through here to see some of what of our customers have to say about us.

Hosting

Some of our customers have an in-house IT staff that can look after the servers that will run your software. Some do not.

If you do not, click through to read about our managed hosting solution.

If you do, we are always more than happy to work with your IT team on provisioning your software for your users.

(Most of these details would be worked out during the scoping study.)

Ongoing Support and Enhancements

(Click on the image to view a larger version)
All of our customers like to have the security that their application will continue to run as well five years after it goes live as it did on day one. They also like any software development to be a partnership that lasts for many years because they want their software to last for many years too.

We have a policy of offering a standard warranty to fix all bugs discovered in the first 12 months of operation of the software. We can offer this because we’re confident that after “signoff”, you won’t find any!

The other thing that customers like to have is the option to enhance their software as new opportunities arise or as things change. We always build a strong degree of flexibility into our applications to satisfy just this and are always happy to discover with customers new ways that we can help them do business.

Download the PDF version of this page for easy printing