How we work winter 2014

COURAGE, EXCELLENCE, IMPACT.

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!Fixed vs. Agile projects!

!Once a deal is closed, we start the development process on your project. Regardless of the fact that your project has a fixed set of requirements that won’t change during the project (“fixed project”), or only a set of goals with vision of direction (“agile project”), we treat those projects in the same way.!!!!Phase 1: Understanding the Big Picture!!Each project starts by agreeing on the big picture. We try to conceive as much information as possible about the nature of the project in this phase. Typical questions we aim to answer are these:!!

• What is the industry we develop the software for?!

• Is there domain/process-specific knowledge required for the team?!

• What are the business goals of the project? !

• Are there technological or organizational constraints to be considered? !

• Who is the typical user/customer; what are his usage patterns, responsibilities and what activity will the software facilitate him? !

• Are there deadlines and dependencies?!

• Is this a business critical application?!

• What level of quality assurance is optimal for the project?!!

COURAGE, EXCELLENCE, IMPACT.

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Phase 2: Setting up the communication process!!We ask the client about the time he is willing to devote to consulting the team during the development. Generally, the more time the stakeholder can devote to cooperation and feedback, the better the result is. However, we are perfectly fine with remote communication as well, if it is on a regular basis and it is constructive. !!Once we agree on the communication and feedback process, we go on and create a preliminary roadmap for the project.!!Phase 3: Team presentation and roadmap!!Great, now we have a fond basis for a successful cooperation. We introduce you to the team dedicated to your project, with emphasis on their strengths and previous experiences. Then we proceed with you to agree on a preliminary roadmap for the project by selecting and prioritizing features and assigning estimated delivery dates to them. !!We also agree on a length of iterations (1-3 week long periods of time when we work on a fixed scope of requirements, concluded by user acceptance testing on a working product).!!!Phase 4 - ∞: Iterative development!!We work on the project in small chunks by addressing small sets of requirements (they typically fit into 1-3 weeks of work, or a single iteration). The typical process of an iteration is the following:!!

• Analyze. We thoroughly analyze the requirements (with you) for the following week(s). Here we drill down into the smallest details and consider every aspect of the analyzed features. These discussions result in User stories that exactly define the users’ actions and intended behaviors within the system.

COURAGE, EXCELLENCE, IMPACT.

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• Estimate and Select. We give precise estimates for each User Story and with respect to the roadmap (and your preferences), we together select what features will be included in the deliverable on the end of the iteration. The User Stories serve as a specification for the current iteration.!

• Develop and Test. Now we to design, develop and test the agreed scope for the iteration. You are welcome to join us on one of our daily standups, where we communicate our daily progress and make plans for the next day.!

• User Acceptance testing (UAT). Once the work is done, and the new features are deployed to the agreed environment, we ask you to test it. The aim is to see if the additions meet the specifications created in the “Estimate and Select” phase. !

• Acceptation. Once you are satisfied, we send you an invoice and proceed to work on the following iteration (although these phases may overlap in practice).!!

What business benefits do I get from my project being Agile?!!The process presented here is called Agile. This means, that even for larger, fixed-scope projects we may commit to certain deadlines, but the actual work is organised into iterations. There are multiple benefits:!!

We can react to scope changes. You don’t have to commit to a precise scope with every feature and every interaction written down in detail beforehand. More so, for a larger project, we believe that this is almost impossible (or at least very demanding) to do. As we work on the project, you may come up with new ideas that may add, improve or even descope previous requirements. We offer you the luxury of making scope commitments as late in development as possible. !Working system from first weeks. The goal of each iteration is to have a fully-tested working running system you can work with. Depending on the nature of your project, this can even mean, that you can start to use the system in your business long before it is completely done.!

COURAGE, EXCELLENCE, IMPACT.

Matej Ftáčnik!Sales Director!!

ftacnik@vacuumlabs.com!+421 (911) 278 426 (EU)!+1 (650) 630-9216 (USA)

COURAGE, EXCELLENCE, IMPACT.

Early discovery of flaws. We’ve seen way too many projects being redeveloped from the ground up, or even discontinued because the designed solution did not work for the target audience (or business) as well as expected. Guess what? No one is perfect, and things like this happen all there time. And we bet you do not want to wait 6 months to discover such things, although traditional waterfall methods of development encourage you to so. With the agile process, you may start validating your product as soon as 2-3 weeks into development and make better business decisions.!!!!

Let us take the journey together…

Adam Okruhlica!Project Analyst!!

okruhlica@vacuumlabs.com!+421 (914) 117 272 (EU)!