Our Approach
Today, for most organizations it is not feasible to completely document their requirements due to time or other constraints, or else the requirements change frequently due to changing market conditions, customer feedback or the business model. For that reason, Agile development is the number one approach at Orient Software. After years of experience with software development, we’ve found that agile is the best methodology for delivering anything from a minimal viable product to a full-scale enterprise system. But we know the final decision for project methodology rests with the client and the team, so we are happy to offer Scrum, RUP or Waterfall to our clients as appropriate.
See our Development Methodology
Development Stages
1. Requirements
We want to fully understand your needs before implementing your project, so our first step is to analyze and document your high-level software requirements. With you, we will have many discussions, develop user stories, and document them in our project management tool, Redmine. This process ensures a project vision mutually agreed upon by your team and ours.
2. UX Design
Once we have a clear idea of your software requirements, we then aim to design the best solution. Tools such as Balsamiq, Visio and a host of other aids help us to make sure our design parallels your goals. By project completion you will be well-versed in wireframes, functional workflows, and many other artifacts.
3. Develop and Test
The next step is to program and completely test your software application using industry standard development tools, automated testing, and an automated build process. Using the automated build processes, we can ensure product quality, ensure the quality of the software by running tests, detect coding issues, and enforce certain development rules prior to deployment. In addition, we are regularly documenting the code to making it easy to understand today or years from now.
4. Deploy
From the client perspective, the project really begins with deployment of their custom software; possibly the most important aspect of the whole process. We take the most pride in proper installation, configuration and final performance.
We can streamline your deployment process through Continuous Delivery. Although it is not for every organization, we implement it when appropriate in order to automate deployment to test or production servers.
How We Achieve Success
Open and Honest Communication Results in Successful Projects
Ask those who have failed at software outsourcing. The failure can likely be attributed to poor communication. A thorough initial evaluation of your potential partner and comprehensive project setup will help everyone achieve success in the outsourcing partnership. Past challenges have helped us create a successful system that enables us circumvent communication issues.
As a true extension of your team, Orient Software strives to facilitate clear visibility to you. To that end, Orient has designed highly effective communication processes, configuration management and issue tracking systems. Our meeting rooms are equipped with the most modern communication facilities and infrastructure that include: Cisco communications, Microsoft Lync, TeamViewer and video Skype.
"Scrum How" Training for Clients
Dynamic learning, knowledge management, and decision-making styles today differ tremendously from those of 20 years ago. The amount of data in the high tech environment is overwhelming, making the shift toward flexible, Agile methodologies absolutely necessary. Businesses and individuals look for simple and effective solutions to their needs. The goal of the hands-on "Scrum How" training is to reveal the most efficient methods in a short time.
The Scrum How training includes: active teamwork; an Agile myths-busting session; a practical walk-through of all roles, concepts, meetings, and documents used in Scrum; and typical Scrum risks and issues. Attendees learn how to conduct standup meetings, set well-defined goals, assess scope of work, work in short iterations, collect data from the team, encourage idea generation, and more.
Strong Project Management
To solve any project related issue that may arise in the process, a project manager is appointed from Day 1 to work directly with the client. Project Manager responsibilities include initial project planning, team management, early project risks definition / elimination and act as an escalation point for the client. All projects are ultimately coordinated under the Orient Software CTO.
Constant Quality Monitoring
At Orient Software our dedicated Quality Assurance professionals oversee every project from start to finish. Redmine is our preferred defect-tracking system for tracking issues. QA experts work in close contact with, but independent from, the development team. Orient Software's constant feedback loop and periodic retrospective meetings help us to constantly improve our methodology to meet and exceed customer expectations.
