Phase I: Needs Assessment and Research Investigation

Changing organizational process will only create value if it contributes to the strategic goals. Needs Assessment serves to clarify specific business issues, objectives and process requirements that can be addressed through improved project management performance. Through a series of structured interviews, we document the organization's current policies, practices and supporting environment for project management. Information is collected and then assessed against acknowledged industry standards. The analysis generates a comprehensive summary of project management related issues and aspirations of the organization, and identifies any symptoms of inefficient project practice. The design portion includes product introduction that explores software functionality in the context of the organization's requirements. It also defines the different user roles, processes, data elements, configuration, and architecture. Our highly skilled, industry experienced project management consultants present concepts, procedures and share "best practice" experience. The Needs Assessment is an effective first step towards successful project management deployment.

Successful Projects require careful planning. The implementation of enterprise project management involves the roll out of an overall business process along with supporting policies, methods and tools. We bring together the key participants to agree upon and formalize the activities, responsibilities, and schedules to address each component of a proposed solution. Our unique approach to implementation addresses the hurdles of organizational culture, process, and change. The cornerstone of our efforts relies on education to build management awareness, to clarify roles and responsibilities, to explain how new processes work and to show people how to use new systems and methods. We offer a range of project and portfolio management training courses through custom and regularly scheduled programs.


Phase II: Conceptual Design

The design phase begins the extremely technical portion of development methodology. At this point in the process, the project's architect and senior engineers utilize the requirements collected during the Assessment Phase to produce the Technical Design document for the system. This is comparable to a blueprint. The Technical Design contains the component, package, and object layout of the system and how they all interact. It also contains scalability parameters, detailed hardware requirements, and test plans.

Two sets of documents will be generated from the design phase. One is the architectural design, a description in terms of modules of the design as a whole. The second one is the detail design, a description of each module. Development team is given both the design document for the implementation. With this document, we have everything necessary to build the system.


Phase III: Configuration/Development

From the Assessment and Conceptual Design phases, site architects and senior engineers, the project team is expanded to include software engineers and specialists in production, documentation, and quality assurance.

• The consultant/project manager is your contact throughout the project, working hand-in-hand with the lead engineer to keep you constantly informed.
  
  
• The engineering team uses a top-down method to divide the project into units, develop and test the units, and integrate them into the final solution.
  
  
• Production and quality assurance members integrate the components and ensure that all the parts work correctly.
  
  
• Dedicated QA testers work closely with the rest of the development team to build and execute a solid, comprehensive test plan that includes feature verification and load testing.
  
  
• Documentation and knowledge transfer specialists provide appropriate information to ensure that our client receives a total, comprehensible solution.
  

Various component modules of the system are developed, tested, and combined to form a prototype of the system. We will then determine whether the product as a whole functions correctly. The way in which the modules are integrated (all at once or one at a time), and the specific order (from top to bottom or bottom to top) can have a critical influence on the quality of the resulting product. We should layout the integration approach carefully to address the overall picture and concerns.

Rigid testing must be carried at the end of this phase. There are three types of testing within this phase.

• Integration testing
  The purpose of integration testing is to check that the modules combine together correctly to achieve a product that satisfies its specifications. During integration testing, particular care must be paid to testing the module interfaces. It is important that the number, order, and types of formal parameters match the number, order and types of actual parameters. The quality assurance group will perform the test since most complier and linker cannot perform with the same accuracy.
  
  
• Product testing
  When the integration testing has been completed, product testing is performed by the QA group. The functionality of the product as a whole is checked against the specifications. In particular, the constraints listed in the specification document must be tested. A typical example is whether the response time is fast enough. Not only must the correctness of the product be tested, but also its robustness: intentionally erroneous input data are submitted to determine whether the product will crash, or whether its error-handling capabilities are adequate for dealing with the bad data.
  
  
• Acceptance testing
  The final aspect of integration testing is acceptance testing. Here the client reenters the picture. The software is delivered to the client, who tests the software on the actual hardware on which it is to run, using actual data, as opposed to test data. No matter how careful the development team or the QA group might be, there is a significant difference between test cases, which by their very nature are artificial, and actual data. It is our belief that a software system cannot be considered to satisfy its specifications until the system has passed its acceptance tests.
  

Phase IV: Training

Although clients have been involved throughout the development cycle, end users from clients may not be doing so. We will arrange several training session for end users and administrators depending on their schedule. User manual will also be distributed through training sessions.


Phase V: Roll Out/Documentation

Whether deploying a Web project or a custom software application, our deployment services consist of defining requirements and setting up, configuring and installing hardware and software. Our consultants and deployment engineers work with our clients to determine anticipated utilization, stability, extensibility and scalability requirements.

After the appropriate technologies are chosen, we configure the systems and prepare the hardware to support all client applications. We also offer a variety of post-deployment services, such as routine site maintenance and enhancements and co-development hosting.

After the delivery of the project, we conduct a formal review. We ascertain that the necessary deliverables and milestones have been met and that our client has the resources needed to support the system we have built. In addition, we complete the feedback loop by requesting from our clients a formal assessment of the project. Because our teams are evaluated by client satisfaction and their ability to deliver on time and on budget, this feedback helps us shape our development process.

We will be creating professionally written help manuals. Users sometimes will find themselves lost, or are not sure how to perform a certain task. This is where the help manual comes into place.

We will provide professionally written documentation that covers every aspect of the system. Users will be able to find answers within a few clicks. We will be creating an interactive help system, which provides searching for keywords and browsing through subjects in the help manual.

Once the product is accepted, changes of any nature constitute maintenance. We believe maintenance is not an activity that is grudgingly carried out after the product has gone into operations mode. On the contrary, it is an integral part of the software process that must be planned for from the beginning. With such mind set, the design should take future enhancements into account; and coding must be performed with a constant eye kept on the implications of future maintenance. By saying so documentation during Design and Development phases is especially vital for the maintenance team. We will assist client for any future support and maintenance purpose if necessary.