Application Development Process & Philosophy
We follow precise industry standards for all our projects. It works. That’s why, over the years, the process hasn’t changed much.
Our philosophy is to ensure we use our expertise to research and present additional project features and solutions that can achieve the goal of the development. Our feasibility exercise looks for enhancements that are better and faster, or go well beyond your desired results while staying in-scope and on budget. Our collective experience developing for the web, for Windows, and mobile platforms will help you evaluate and select the most appropriate foundation and platform for your application.
Process Development Stages
Every web development project coordinated and delivered at Caorda follows industry best practices and a series of high-level stages, as follows:
Phase 1: Define the Project Requirements
Phase 2: Design Prototypes and Review
Phase 3: Architectural Design
Phase 4: Software Development
Phase 5: Structured Testing & Application Launch
Our clients come to us with a concept and we work through these stages with our client’s direct involvement to ensure that the delivered product is exactly what’s needed. This is an iterative process where we start with general concepts and refine them as we work through the development stages. We make sure our clients are directly involved so there are no surprises when the application is delivered and to ensure the right product is delivered on budget.
Quality Assurance
Quality assurance is an important part of the web application and software development philosophy at Caorda. To ensure every project is delivered with outstanding quality, Caorda assigns dedicated quality assurance professionals who participate in every stage of the development process.
We recognize that each business case has its own complexities and that it’s important to understand your business environment before starting any development project. Likewise, once your project is underway, Caorda maintains an interactive development approach, presenting work in progress, getting feedback, and including any additional requirements to ensure the impact of updates and variable costs are managed smoothly and within your budget.
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Caorda uses standards-based industry best practices in all aspects of business analysis as well as the design, development, and testing phases for your project. Our business analysis team employs Universal Modeling Language (UML) and object-oriented analysis as the formal structure that guides the hands-on user interview process. These can include descriptive scenarios, use cases, activity diagrams, class diagrams and sequence diagrams.
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Developer resources at Caorda have significant experience in many facets of the IT industry with specific core competencies in Windows and web technologies development. Our web developers have consistently proven their abilities to deliver successful business solutions throughout their collective careers in the high tech industry. Each developer holds two or more of the following industry designations:
- Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD)
- Microsoft Certified System Engineer (MCSE)
- Microsoft Certified Database Administrator (MCDBA)
- Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT)
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Caorda develops for various platforms and technologies: Windows client and server, IIS and PHP web servers, SQL Server and MySQL databases, and iOS, Android and Blackberry mobile platforms. Caorda developers have implemented many custom database-driven, web-based and Win32 applications for clients that effectively automate complex business processes and store large volumes of data. We also have extensive experience in migrating applications from obsolete technologies into modern environments to leverage your existing investment. In many cases, we can take old applications that are no longer supported into the modern age by analyzing their structure and source code, creating documentation for them, and migrating them to a current supportable platform. Many of our clients have been able to correct serious performance problems in existing applications or fix and extend old applications after our analysis and migration.
Quality Assurance Specifics
Caorda follows an efficient and effective professional project flow. From development through to quality assurance and user acceptance testing, we ensure that all aspects of the projects follow these quality standards. For Caorda, quality assurance isn’t an afterthought – we employ dedicated quality assurance professionals and assign them responsibilities for specific projects. Moreover, Caorda provides specific warranty periods for any and all components developed by our team during which time any defect will be prioritized based on the severity of the defect and fixed free of charge.
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The business analysis phase of any software development project serves to identify and document the needs of the users and the business. Proper business analysis is critical to the success of all software development projects as it clearly outlines the requirements for the development teams and helps to set the expectations of users.
The work done during this phase, sometimes called requirements gathering, ensures that functionality is divided into critical components and optional “nice to have” features. As business requirements are established they help identify milestones in the project and thereby enable effective planning and accountability.
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During the Business Analysis phase of larger projects, Caorda will work jointly with clients to develop application prototypes, which are screen mockups with limited functionality. The prototypes help to ensure a consistent look and feel for the application and elicit responses from the users for nomenclature, program flow, and user interface design. In addition, prototypes can be used to help solicit feedback and impressions from staff and external stakeholders.
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Caorda employs an active-risk-management strategy for all significant development projects. This process seeks to identify and mitigate issues in an ongoing fashion.
Meetings are conducted on a scheduled basis where any potential issues are identified and ranked into probability and severity followed by mitigation and contingency strategies. Similarly, change management follows a controlled technical review and assessment process. By implementing a dedicated change control process, Caorda ensures your project progresses smoothly without project updates and changes having unexpected side effects. If a change is required, the impact of the change will be assessed, discussed and rolled into the overall project plan.
Go Beyond Meeting Your Needs
An important aspect of the business analysis phase is when Caorda assists clients in identifying opportunities to introduce new or improved processes that may not have been previously considered. This kind of value-added expertise takes our clients beyond finding solutions to their specific needs to finding solutions for doing business in a better, more profitable fashion.