Software Development
In this division we specialise in the design, development and support of custom business applications and systems. We have developed hundreds of strategic, custom solutions across all industry sectors, including financial services, healthcare, engineering, military, IT, telecommunications, resources, retail, broadcasting, sport and entertainment. We have a growing, loyal and impressive blue-chip client base. Many of the systems we have built have international reach and we are particularly well geared to handle offshore projects, especially considering the competitiveness of our rates.
When we build systems we strive for: Ease of use, robustness and maintainability, allowing for the application to evolve with our client's business. Most importantly, we provide a quality service, with quality people, bring a deep level of intellectual property and experience to our projects, and take pride in the fact that we very seldom miss a deadline.
We approach development in three primary phases:
1. Analysis and specification phase
In the primary phase we meet business owners to understand their strategy and vision. This is followed by meetings with system users to scope their requirements and, if applicable, our clients' IT department to understand any technical, systems or environmental constraints. The outcome of this phase is a document that details the functional specification of the system, a high level design and architecture, milestone based project plan and pricing. For smaller systems, this phase may just be an initial meeting with the client from which we would generate a detailed proposal. However for large systems it can take up to a month to complete. This is the single most important part of the project and, if done properly, future extensions and maintenance to the system will be easy.
2. Build phase
We allocate a team of developers to execute the project design during the build phase. Our teams typically comprise a team lead, technical lead (architect), developers with specialist environment knowledge, and testers (as required). Our teams are of the highest quality and qualification, where seniors have strong business analysis and technical skills with a proven track record of distinction. We build systems by taking an iterative approach, continuously involving business to refine features as we develop. We allow for a level of flexibility in our design and approach due to the complexity of large scale systems. Of course we make use of the best design tools and technologies to reach our goal, and instil rigorous test methodologies in the development process. Very often we re-use our pre-built code components to speed up delivery, and as a result we can sometimes deliver custom enterprise level systems at a faster rate and more competitive price than it takes to configure "pre-packaged" ERP solutions.
3. Handover and support phase
In this phase of development the system has gone live and is in use. We typically deliver supporting technical documentation so that either a client's development team can handle change requests, or we can continue to maintain the system ourselves. We also take care of any user and technical training at this point. A well designed system would be appropriately tiered and functionally ring-fenced to handle change requests.