The Project Management Process

There are 5 steps in a successful project management process. Our internal product life cycle procedures are developed around the generally accepted practices for successfully delivering software applications. Having ongoing relationships with customers that go back twelve years, to the beginning of our business, validates the effectiveness of this processes.

Several of our clients, after watching how we work, have incorporated our practices into their own development process.

1) Requirements Specification

2) Itemizing and Estimating

3) Building the System

4) Testing the System

5) Delivery

Step 1: Requirements Specification

In this phase, we will meet with your in-house experts. We conduct interviews in person, by phone, and by email. We read the documentation on your current systems.

The result of this process is a document that describes the requirements of your system. This document will guide the remainder of the product development. It describes the purpose of your software system, what it does, and what it does not do (where appropriate). In many cases, this includes a preliminary database schema design, user interface design, and user task analysis.

Task analysis is a key activity of writing the requirements specification. The designer of the application must know the activities that make up the user's work. They must know what the user is trying to accomplish. They must have a feel for what will make the user successful.

During this process, we identify the repeating elements of the application and create an interface design that can be turned into a Style. Most applications have 5-8 different 'types' of interfaces. The Style helps insure consistency and simultaneously speeds the development process. Because PowerVista is such an effective tool for prototyping, and because it has the capabilities to deliver full featured, final applications, the final application is always an evolution of the prototype.

Wherever possible, we use COM and ActiveX technology to leverage our developer's time and your dollars. PowerVista's close integration with COM and ActiveX technology makes this easy.

There are several goals that must be met in project management:

• Make sure that nothing falls through a crack. If something is important for a deadline, then it must not be forgotten.

• Prioritization: Make sure that all work gets performed in the proper order, per the customer.

• Present a professional assessment of the project on demand. We can print a report from our project management system (written using PowerVista) that shows the status of the project to date. This report shows all complete and incomplete action items, total hours on completed items, and hours spent to date on incomplete items. We make this report available to the customer from a protected area of our web site.

• Track billings.

Estimates are much more accurate on smaller items. We break it down so that no item is more than 20 hours of work, less if possible.

During this process, we also do any detailed design necessary. The results of a detailed design are a detailed design document. The last part of this step is also a completed Style, customized for the application. This Style is part of the deliverables for the project, and becomes the property of the client. It is completely reusable on any future project.

At the end of Step 2, you will have a very good idea of the total cost of the system.

Because developer time is expensive and computers are cheap, we aggressively use the developed Style. The fastest way to develop an application is to standardize as much of the functionality as possible. We generate the windows, and use the design specifications to make any small customizations.  

Although we do not develop software for Macintosh, UNIX, mainframe, or other non-Windows computer systems, we often develop facilities to import/export data from these systems. PowerVista has extensive import/export capabilities.

We have in-house testing personnel at PowerVista. As any experienced DP manager will tell you, it is important to use different people than the developers for testing. The testing personnel develop testing procedures that they will use from version to version.

We test on all targeted platforms and database engines. We have in-house facilities to test on a wide variety of databases and network environments.

If part of the project has been to extend PowerVista using C++, then we run all test procedures using an executable compiled in debug mode and in release mode. There are certain problems that can be found only when testing when compiled in debug mode, and there are certain problems that can be found only when testing when compiled in release mode.

We deliver versions of your application to you using Application Server. The same technology you use to update your customers and/or serve your application across the Internet is also used for updating for internal staff. If there are changes to executable code OR application script, the changes are posted on Application Server. The next time your in-house staff accesses the application, the new changes will be applied. 

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Last Modified: 02/22/04