Development Steps

Once we get an inquiry from a client the following steps are to follow.

Estimates and Proposals

This initial stage spans the following steps:

• system requirements analysis;
• technology selection;
• description of our vision of the project and its architecture;
• preliminary estimate (time and cost) of the project and its division into sprints

Depending on the project’s scope, the time required for this stage may vary from 1 to 5 days. Upon request we may also sign a non-disclosure agreement before receiving any project-related information. At this stage we also get in touch with our customers to clarify certain issues regarding the project that could help us specify the requirements and create a shared understanding of the problem to be solved.

To avoid overly-optimistic estimates about the amount of time needed to perform a task and trying to account for unanticipated difficulties we use an estimation technique called “Planning Poker”.  The estimates obtained through the Planning Poker process prove to be more accurate than estimates of individual persons for the same task.

Discussing Proposal

Once our customers gets proposal, we in turn wait for their feedback and are always ready to answer any questions regarding the made proposal (via e-mail, phone, skype). Based on the discussions results we may make corrections to the proposal or its individual parts.

Contract Signing and Staffing up the Project

Once agreement on all the issues is reached, a contract between both parties is signed and we are starting preparatory work for the project:

• Building up a team for the project - when assigning developers to the team for a project, we take into account many factors, including the customer’s schedule, how well-defined the project requirements are, and what the ideal team size for the project would be.
• The creation of a project management environment and a version control system – Project Management is mostly done using a web-based project management and bug-tracking tool called “Trac”. This tool is used to contain the complete history of all written communication relating to the project.
• Test server allocation and similar matters

When assigning developers to the team for a project, we take into account many factors, including the customer's schedule goals, how well-defined the project requirements are, and what the ideal team size for the project would be.

Software Delivery in Sprints

Once the project is in progress, we break the project down into a number of sprints, generally between 2 and 4 weeks in length. Each sprint is run as if it were its own little project and starts with setting objectives for the coming sprint and prioritization, user story specification and backlog creation. All user stories are added to a track system.

After that our developers start working on them. The development splits into the following parts:

• splitting user story into more detailed tasks  (maximum duration 4 hours each) – at this stage the developers plan the scope of work that needs to be done and clarify all ambiguous issues
• tasks deployment and putting user story into “for testing” status
• user story checking and closure

Upon completion of every single sprint the current system and delivered functionality is demonstrated to the customer. During this meeting further steps in system development are also usually placed on the agenda. What is more, the requirements for the next sprint are established.

End Product Deployment

At this stage the transfer of the source code or installation and performance monitoring takes place. If required we also assist our customers with program configuration and technical support.