Quality…
Having helped dozens of software companies to design, build, develop, test and maintain their products, we have created our own methodology consisting of processes, tools and controls that are specific to software-enabled businesses.
Our Processes
We have taken the best of the Agile methodology, which provides for rapid, measurable feedback and merged it with the Waterfall model, which helps ensure large software systems are well-architected before coding begins. This combination of methodologies, which we call the BRICK process, lets us bring the Agile process to each step of the Waterfall model.
BRICK enables SCAPAR to produce requirement documents, architectural diagrams, use cases, designs and code in small, two to four-week intervals. This enables us to give you quick and frequent feedback as to how we’re progressing towards meeting your needs and timelines. In addition, our Preservation process is designed to provide for quick yet thorough knowledge transfer from your staff to ours so we can take full responsibility for a software release in as little as six weeks.
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Our Tools
We use several standard industry project management tools, such as Microsoft Project Planner (MPP), but we have extended them with our own templates and additional tools that help us more quickly and uniformly build quality software code. For example, all software developers working on a given client product are given a series and interactive development environment (IDE) pre-loaded with templates for the product. These templates include containing rules for the coding standards to be used for the product (naming standards, indentation and commenting rules, etc), along with all user interface (UI) look and feel standards for dialog boxes, menus, buttons, etc. By using these templates, any software developer on the team will produce code that has the same look and feel to both the end-user and to other developers.
We also use a variety of automated software build tools to ensure code is compiled and checked each night. We can plug this into one of several automated testing tools used by our clients to perform a series of quick tests to make sure the developers did not break any of the code that day.
Our Controls
We know that building software is difficult even if your team is sitting right next to you. With most of our developers sitting across the globe, you might think it is too risky to attempt to build software with a remote team. In fact, many of our clients have tried using an offshore team before and have the ‘scars’ to prove it.
As many of the SCAPAR and its partners Leadership team come from product development companies, we have learned what is needed to deliver high-quality software products that generate revenue and win market share. At SCAPAR we have developed tight controls that minimize the effects of miles, time zones and cultures. The most important control is the many levels of communications we put in place to make sure the team members are talking to each other every day via scrum conference calls, instant messaging, e-mails, phone calls and even video links. We couple these daily communications at the individual level with weekly team management meetings, and monthly client stakeholder meetings to ensure everyone has a complete understanding of where we are, what is coming and what issues we are facing.
We have built proprietary project management templates, risk management templates and time tracking tools to enable SCAPAR to give key information about each and every project. SCAPAR has also developed our own Knowledge Management portal, which is a central repository for all product development artifacts such as requirements, designs, and test cases, uses cases, etc. The portal provides easy access to all this material for any team member or client.
Scapar AB