What We Do
Our Development Process
| Our Development Philosophy & Process |
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Our Development Philosophy We believe that the best websites are ones that work and provide valuable resources and information to visitors. This seems obvious to us. Unfortunately, sense is not a common commodity. We rely on open source solutions as a foundation for many of our projects. Open source software can be modified to fit a user's particular needs with the modifications and any unique adaptations in turn made available for others to use or learn from in the future. It is for this very reason that open source software is successful, and why it works. By using open source software, our clients get well tested and full featured web sites faster, and with less expense. Our Development Process After building websites for more than a decade and being involved with projects that are small and simple (and thus hard to keep simple!), as well as large and complex, we've seen what works in terms of a process. There have been many hard lessons learned along the way. While we once were extremely strong advocates of a linear, traditional Definition-Development-Test-Launch process, we have come to imbrace Agile Development . More specifically, the Scrum Development model. While a linear based development plan makes a great deal of sense for many projects, with our current work and customer base, it no longer seems practical. Our projects today tend to be updates, upgrades and extensions to existing websites, or providing a new web presense for someone who has none at all. Some guiding princples of the Scrum Development process include: Practice Iterative Development Get feedback on the work with the customer early and where possible, launch the development in phases being comfortable and excited about changes that come about from learning new things in the process. Remember, Change is Your Friend As stated above, don't look upon change as an enemy. Avoid Death by Documentation Keep the documentation simple, focused and meaningful. Time box your meetings and keep the work flowing. Define Goals Clearly at the Outset Once defined, lock these goals down. The solution to the goals might change, but not the goal themselves. If so, you have bigger issues. This is true of design, too; form follows function, define the function first. |
