At Betria Systems we believe in flexible and repeatable development process.
We believe that the corner stones of any successful software project are:

• Good understanding of the business problem being solved
• Well documented requirements
• Design that works
• Frequent checkpoints with the client
• Complete transparency of information

Here are a few things we do to get great software developed on time and within budget:

Solution Inception

This phase has two major goals.
1) Develop a high level understanding of the business problem being solved and agree on the scope and the boundaries of the solution.
2) Come up with a high-level solution design and agree on technology.

Requirements gathering

We will then proceed with documenting the client’s requirements. At Betria, we prefer requirements written in Use Case format, but if the client has a different preference we’ll work out a mutually acceptable format.

Project Planning

Now we will estimate each of the previously documented features and create an implementation plan for the next software release. This plan will have the projected milestones and checkpoints and will list all dependencies. The project plan will be validated with the client.

Typically our implementation plan assumes 3- or 4- week iterations, where each iteration ends with a demonstrable product or certain part of product functionality.

The sequence in which the product features are addressed in not cast in stone. In fact, the short frequent iterations provide us with a way to deal with changes in business priorities that the client may have during the project’s lifecycle. Upon the completion of each iteration, the remaining features will be reviewed and re-prioritized based on the most recent information available.

The plan is used throughout the entire project lifecycle as the main tracking document and our Project Manager meets with the client at least on the weekly basis to review the status of the project.

Iterative Development

Tasks within each iteration are typically small units of work spanning design, development, testing and documentation activities that take from several hours to several days to complete. We track the progress of each iteration through the Burn-down Chart technique. To improve the quality of the product we have continuous integration and automated regression testing. All found defects are tracked via a bug tracking tool and are visible to all project participants.

Release

Our Project Manager and the client representative decide on the release criteria and the release date. This happens at the planning phase of the project. Typically it is being defined as a set of functional requirements that has to be fulfilled and the absence of known severity 1 and 2 defects in the product.

Risk Management

We perform risk identification and resolution at each iteration. We feel that the bigger the risk the sooner in the life cycle of the product it needs to be resolved. Our Project Manager maintains a list of open items that he reviews with the customer on a regular basis.