Methodology
Application Development Process
Our Application Development Process is derived from the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and follows 4 distinct phases: Inception, Elaboration, Construction and Transition.
| Inception | During this phase, our consultants work with you to research requirements, project your infrastructure needs (network, hosting and hardware), perform an overall analysis of main technical issues (security, performance, scalability, maintainability and integration), define the project functionality scope (including a preliminary risk analysis and one or several prototypes), estimate cost and schedule and identify success criteria. |
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| Elaboration | During the elaboration phase, the system is completely analysed and defined. This phase is crucial to lower the time spent on the subsequent two phases and to increase their efficiency. The key actions in the elaboration phase are: writing usage scenarios, building the application architecture, setting up the security and quality assurance plans. Finally, we lay out the complete development plan. |
| Construction | This phase consists of the actual programming and testing tasks. The elaboration phase has completely defined what must be developed and how to develop it. However, Internet applications can't be locked in a rigid software development process. The iterative nature of our methodology allows for a continuous review of conception details in order to refine the functionality when the need arise. The construction phase involves a continuous testing process, according to the security and quality assurance plans. Tests are mainly composed of usage scenarios compliance tests, integration tests, and finally, platform acceptance tests to prepare deployment. |
| Transition | During the transition phase, both the application and its target system(s) are deployed, operational data are copied to the new system, user-oriented documentation is completed and users and maintainers are trained. The objectives of the transition phase are to perform user-acceptance tests and ensure user self-supportability. At the end of the transition phase, a user satisfaction survey is typically conducted, and the success criteria defined in the inception phase are evaluated. It is our duty to make sure that your staff is able to support the system's daily use. You can also choose to hand over technical support to a maintenance company; in this case, we insure the transition to that company. |
Our RUP-derived process is well suited for medium to large development projects. However, for small projects or for very fast paced, one-shot projects, we rather use a simpler process, whose framework is close to RUP but with less formality and paperwork. This kind of project needs a deep involvement of your staff, especially in their availability and responsiveness.
Project collaboration platform
During a given project's life cycle, Synclude maintains a dedicated web site that is only accessible to you and our team. This site is the privileged way for your team and ours to collaborate. This site hosts all relevant information to the project, that is mainly: the overall project status, the project planning, documents (e.g.: tender, usage scenarios, application documentation), people contact information and a request tracking system (for new features, change requests and bugs).