Application Development - Application Outsourcing - Our Approach
Over the past 16 years Advanced 365 has gained substantial knowledge and experience designing, deploying and operating application development solutions. With this comes a tried and tested application outsourcing approach which is based not only on theory, but more importantly the practical hands-on experience gained through the successful delivery of a variety of application development projects, ranging from business case scoping and prototyping, through user profiling and process specification, User Interface design, to full enterprise development, hosting and management.
Overview of Advanced 365 application outsourcing
With its ISO9001 accreditation, combined with a track record of delivering on time and to budget, Advanced 365 is committed to managing projects via the highest quality standards in order to minimise risks and ensure delivery on time.
The Advanced 365 Integrated Development Framework (shown and described below) is the proven approach typically taken to design and deploy application solutions and is derived largely from Rational Unified Process (RUP) principles. Aside from detailing key activities and deliverables over a number of key phases, it also details the relationships and dialogue points between the delivery disciplines that comprise Advanced 365 application development and integration:
Business Analysis - analyses the problem domain and business requirements and provides business and software solution specifications for you.
User Experience - ensures that the solutions that we provide to you is user centred. Applies User Centred Design (UCD) techniques - user targeting, profiling, task modelling, user process design and user validation.
Graphic Design - defines and develops all visual assets for solutions, including branding, look & feel, interface and animation components.
Technology Development - analyses and defines technical requirements and provides specific technical inputs into specification. Responsible for development, deployment, testing and support of the technical solution.
Project Management - responsible for overall management and delivery of activities, change control and associated project controls.
Advanced 365 tailor its standard framework to your project requirements to ensure fit-for-purpose and maximum value for time.
Initiate
The output of this kick-off activity is a Project Definition Document (PDD) which defines mission, scope, approach, risk, communication, roles & responsibilities, schedule, costs and terms & conditions. The PDD is created by Advanced 365's Prince II certified project management team who are responsible for the following aspects during the life of the project:
Project definition - ensuring projects start in the best way.
Project control - keeping the project under control and ensuring that expectations are managed.
Project closure - bringing the project to a definitive close.
Analysis and Design
The approach leads with a short high-level analysis phase. Advanced 365 call these activities Discovery.
The first stage focuses on a rapid validation of your existing requirements documentation, followed by a series of activities designed to enhance those requirements. In particular, Advanced 365 will concentrate on profiling end users to define a high-level set of task models and scenarios. This will help Advanced 365 when it comes to develop the end processes for development. Concurrently, we will also map the technical environment that the application will require.
The second stage begins mapping the end solution from a functional perspective. The activities focus on building structure i.e. defining the range of potential solutions appropriate to the functional requirements specified. Advanced 365 can then select the best-fit solution and define it at a high-level.
The whole phase is geared to providing enough structured information and implementation planning definition for the following detailed analysis phase - Shape.
Technical Design
This phase provides the layers of detail required to build a "bible for development". The deliverables of these activities not only thoroughly prepare and support the development teams, but are the basis of all subsequent iteration, change, support and scaling.
Like Discovery, the activities are a combination of workshops and collaboration, together with desk-based preparation and documentation. The outputs are geared to be comprehensive for the application requirements, but are as "Agile" as possible, i.e. Advanced 365 stress only documenting those things which are absolutely necessary to deliver efficient and working software. In other words we value the interaction of the Advanced 365 Solutions and Client teams over documentation for its own sake. Primary activities are detailed analysis of each identified functional area, production of detailed Use Cases and reviewing and signing off that documentation with technical teams and Client stakeholders. Advanced 365 will also define user interface standards and guidelines, information architecture and schematics and produce the main UI graphical assets.
Build and Test
This phase essentially covers the development, test and deployment of all the required application components, moving from beta versions to full launch into the hosting environment. This phase involves full technical design and implementation and system and integration testing prior to launch.
Evaluate and Support
During this period Advanced 365 Application Outsourcing Solutions will affect a handover of all intellectual property, both technical and conceptual, agreed at the project initiation phase. The project manager will also evaluate adherence to the identified project success criteria and objectives. If applicable, we will also host, support and manage the application to a defined Service Level Agreement (SLA).
