BetterMinds Consulting provides end-to-end software applications design & development services using proven Project Management techniques and software development methodologies.
Our end-to end solution, “kick-off to sign-off”, also called SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) has the following steps.                                               Traditionally, the waterfall methodology offers a cascade structure for software development. However, modern day projects demand reduced time-to-market where RAD (Rapid Application Development) is critical. The spiral technique and agile methodologies are adopted for software projects which reflect the relationship of tasks with rapid prototyping, increased parallelism, and concurrency in design and build activities. The processes can be broadly classified under” Discover – Design – Deliver” phase as below.
Discover Phase

• Business Analysis:  As a first step, we kick off any project with the business analysis phase to gather business requirements, improvements / enhancements, and strategic planning.  This phase is vital to translate the business objectives into clear requirements for the new application being built.  Tasks include comprehensive assessment of various business processes, needs analysis, modeling improved business processes using RUP, UML, development of use cases, etc.,
• Prototyping:   Prototyping is part of the Proof of Concept model or sample phase. It allows for a rapid and cost-effective development and evaluation of design ideas. A prototype enables testing of the business logic and functionality and demonstrates the features to key stakeholders before the actual software is developed 

Design Phase

• Technical Architecture /Design:  The software architecture is an abstract representation of the system being developed. Architecture is to meet the current business requirements as well as to accommodate future needs. The architecture phase also addresses interfaces between the software systems and the underlying hardware and the operating system.
• Software Coding:  Programmers convert the design to code also called software program.
• Testing:  Testing of software, interface programs are critical to the success of any project. Modern day processes include XP (Extreme Programming) techniques which are based on Pair programming and Test Driven Development (TDD). This ensures that the production code is consistently tested during development and end user/customer is fully involved during the development cycle to avoid bugs and improve the quality of the product developed. 

Deliver Phase  

• Implementation:  After the software is fully tested and approved, it is moved into production and users can start working with the application. However, to educate the users on the functionality and full features and capabilities of the code, End User Training is imparted as part of Knowledge Transfer.
• Post Rollout Support:  New applications have to be well supported after the post rollout phase due to user generated issues, bugs in the code which pop up due to performance reasons and other factors. Software patches and upgrades also will be provided during this phase to warranty user satisfaction.