Software Development Consulting

How Can Consultants Help?

A requirements team, development team, test team, these are the usual functions that need to cooperate tightly so that a software project becomes a success. However, all of these teams have their concerns, some of which may subtly become immaterial to success of the project, or even a burden, especially in stressful circumstances of evolving requirements with equally dynamically scheduled deliverables. 

Issue #1 - Coherence of Teams 

Outsourcing tasks to third parties is generally good and can yield excellent results if implemented properly. However, we have seen all types of misunderstandings pop up, from subtle hardly noticable ones, to impactful ones which actually tilt the way of thinking, or focus away or towards various aspects of the same project. The most draconian ones completely change the meaning in spite of everybody trying to minimize the obvious, as in inserting 'almost' in 'almost working'.  

Issue #2 - Communication

"As you saw, so shall you reap", said a consultant who had discovered an early phase flaw in software design, which had been hindering the project. After having exposed it and suggested effective workarounds, the path to success was open. All he needed to do is overcome some inertia as some parts needed to be completely redone. But it was soon obvious that putting extra effort to get the project back on track has been completely justified. 

Issue #3 - The Four Eye Principle

Our Approach to Consulting

Those three issues are just examples of what you can expect an external consultant to deal with, depending on a particular case. Generally, if somewhere along the path of software development things go awry, it may be the time to consider hiring an external consultant. Our approach to software consulting covers more and we strongly advocate having a consultant from the very planning phases. By itself, The Four Eye Principle provides a fresh view and a new opinion. Combined with experience and expertise, this can be paramount to your project success.

Consulting Options

Here are the consulting options we provide:

Project types / tasks:

• Product design, requirements engineering;
• Software dev teams: protocols / services / module design, documentation, UML, development, code review;
• Test teams: design of tests, procedures and practices;
• Project documentation: analysis, creation, consolidation.
• Compliance: general or custom quality and security standards

Engagement and communication:

• Ad hoc or periodical (weekly) meetings/workshops;
• Communication: remote: e-mails, conference meetings, collaboration / productivity tools.

Meetings/workshops weekly slots, 2023: closed.