Our standard development approach is an adaptation of both Extreme Programming and the comprehensive Rational Unified Process (RUP), and is characterized by its iterative nature.

Development Methodology

The entire project is broken down into discrete, non-overlapping work elements. Each work element is iterated through the life-cycle to achieve the project objectives. There are mandatory quality gates between each major life-cycle phase to ensure the team is ready to progress. The diagram below depicts both the non-overlapping phases and the iterative nature of the project life-cycle.

Figure 2. Iterative Development Lifecycle

It is important to note that, while work shifts back and forth, onshore team members actively participate throughout the project. In addition, we encourage active participation of client resources in every engagement, since knowledge held by a client employee becomes an asset to that client.

For each project, the project leader will tailor our standard life-cycle to suit the project needs. The extensive use of RUP and the Rational Rose software development suite throughout the project life-cycle facilitates knowledge sharing and component re-usability. We have included the following diagram to illustrate the overlapping of project activities due to the iterative nature of our development life-cycle, over different project states.

Figure 3. Stage / Process Activity Diagram