Software Design Services
Springsmith‘s key motivations are enjoyment in making things work and helping the clients beat the competition. The clients’ competition, are defeated with new more efficient methods and innovative products brought to market in a timely manner.
Nothing beats the satisfaction of seeing a successful and reliable product in the market.
Springsmith’s Core Principles.
Holding to the tenets of sound development practice through Application Lifecycle Management.
Using tools which make it quick and easy to do the right thing.
Attaining and applying an understanding the application domain.
Informing the client of their technology choices, and then seeing their decisions through.
and above all taking pride in the work.
How do we assist our clients’ to do this?
Springsmith aims to bring assist its clients in evaluating software solutions and working to develop them for market. It aims to do this by bringing technology and software methods to bear on the clients’ project.
A belief in collaboration, communication and quality, enable the right products to emerge from the process in a competitor beating form and time-scale.
Prototypes and Proof of Concept
The cost of a prototype is less than the cost of guessing what you want.
A prototype is about whether the idea is what you want. The technology may or may not be similar to what you end up using. A web page which looks like your new app might be an example; or a £500 PC mad to look like your new £50 tablet.
A proof of concept is by contrast about how you might achieve the new product. Can the hardware go fast enough?…can it be made to fit in the box? Obviously, this answers more questions but takes more resources.
Companies are reticent about taking on permanent staff until they are out of the feasibility phase, and often such a phase requires skills not present in the company. Springsmith can help resolve that anomaly, by providing the the skills without long term obligation, and assisting with training or staff selection when the project goes ahead.
Implementation
The reality is that implementation seldom begins and ends cleanly. Even with a reasonable prototype requirements do change. Managing and fulfilling such change is part of what successful development is all about.
Springsmith is happy to work on a fixed price, negotiable contract variation or a T&M basis.
Ongoing Projects
Large projects almost always enter a phase where Business As Usual releases and major enhancements are carried out in parallel. Projects is such a phase often have fluctuating demands in terms of skills and volume of manpower. Slotting in to existing project teams on a short to medium term basis is something Springsmith is pleased to do. It is always good to feel the satisfaction of a job well done, with the potential to be asked back.
Testing
Testing is not really a phase in itself for although it benefits from specialists in the role it should run concurrently with all the other phases from proof of concept (where requirements capture feeds into the eventual system test) through to deployment (where alpha and beta test skills come into play).
Test automation can make a major difference to the effectiveness of testing but requires specialist skills, more akin to development but with a focus on the validation and verification of the product.
Maintenance
Eventually all projects great and small enter a maintenance phase. Leaving the project in good order and a known state is part of what Application Lifecycle Management achieves. Every assistance should be left for those who might have to pick up the threads in the future when they come to enhance the product for new requirements or to handle the unforeseen.
As the project moves into a maintenance phase Springsmith would like to provide you with the sort fo support you require within a suitable budget.
Summary
I hope you can see from this introduction that Springsmith aims to support your business, your team and your projects, and I would be happy to discuss your Software Design Service requirements further.
David Alexander (director)