Upon receiving your request for a new web site, application or portal, we will setup an initial meeting to discuss business needs, preliminary requirements to develop a scope framework and preliminary design. We will submit a proposal for your review and approval with approximate timelines and costs. Depending on the size of the project (multi-year implementation and support), we accept the funding in terms of Full Time Equivalent (FTE) resources or fixed cost for estimated number of hours. Any subsequent support to the product will be charged on hourly basis. Our hourly rate is very competitive compared to external contractors when all factors are considered . Upon approval of the proposal, we will move into Elaboration of the product.

The scope is further refined iteratively by creating detailed requirements and design in form of information architecture, UML models as applicable. After design reviews and thorough documentation and sign-offs, we will enter into Construction phase. Before construction, we will setup the environment (various environments such as development, test, staging and production depending on complexity), configuration management tools (CVS is our standard) and setup a detailed project and plan in Project Management tool (CA’s Clarity for complex projects and MS Project Plan for simple projects are our standards). Our project management methodologies are based on PMI (Project Management Institute) best practices.

We involve users and conduct iterative constructions (prototypes, small releases) moving between transition and construction phases. We also allow some flexibility (as long as there is no impact to the overall timeline) to change the scope and design during construction. After unit and integration tests, we will move into transition phase.

We will move the product into test/staging environment where user tests are conducted. Upon successful tests and approvals, we will move the product into production system. Post production deployment is supported through our support structure consisting of a Remedy Help Desk, Share Point Intranet, or Clarity based on the flow and size of support requests. We follow ITIL processes to provide support (managing incidents, availability, problems, SLA etc.). We support the implemented product based on an hourly fee, not through a yearly maintenance cost.