Development Approach

Over many years of developing a wide veriety of websites, e-learning and software, we have developed an in-house Project Management Process built around the Prince2 Project management Model.

This allows us to map all aspects of the project lifecycle to specific activities and gives our customers the ability to know when their involvement in the project is required.

This image shows the Digits development process diagram

Project Brief

A concise and well thought out project brief is essential to the successful commencement of any project. We offer a free consultation to discuss your requirements, understand your business and clarify possible solutions.

Following this, we will provide a proposal document, outlining the project requirements, the development stages of a project, including any further analysis and specification that might be required, and an estimate of project schedules and costs, prior to any commitment from our client.

Analysis and Specification

We place particular emphasis on the Analysis and Specification stage of all projects at Digits. It is the first and in many ways the most crucial stage of our development process.

For smaller projects, wthis may simply be a consultation meeting to fully understand the clients requirements and any parameters that might affect the project.

Larger projects may require significant definition, with a full understanding of the need, objectives, user base, environment and delivery platform, regardless of the type of project.

For technical developments, we base are process around SSADM (Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method) and produce a document detailing the following information:

  • Analysis and Specification of Requirements
  • Project Assumptions
  • Initial Design (containing the Use Case, Class Diagram, Activity Diagram using Unified Modeling Language™ (UML®))
  • Infrastructure design and Product Map
  • Related Costs & Timeplan
By performing quantative analysis of all aspects of a project,  we can then create a detailed specification which will give an accurate picture of the final delivery. This also allows us to create a detailed project plan with definite milestones and resource requirements. We suggest that all larger projects start with this stage of development.

 

Monitoring Progress

We ensure that a strict review process is built into the development stages. This provides an opportunity to discuss any issues that may arise and ensure that schedules are maintained.

We also ensure that milestones are agreed prior to starting the project, by which its quality and progress can be measured and approved. This can be facilitated by the use of our secure extranet as a testing and approval platform.

We have also developed an online time management system that allows us to record the time spent on projects and keep up to the minute records of the projects progress, highlighting any areas that may be of concern. This permits us to measure individual productivity as part of our incentive programme.

Testing and Evaluation

We develop a set of quality and testing procedures as part of our production process, in-line with the specifications in the project definition documents. This includes both technical and user evaluation testing incrementally throughout the project lifecycle.

This allows us to evaluate projects against project objectives, usability and specified delivery platforms.

Testing procedures are undertaken across a range of hardware platforms, operating systems and connectivity bandwidths and includes load testing on data driven applications.