Approach And Methodology Download

Objective

Ampere studies the client requirements and formulated a complete roadmap detailing out the development considerations and methodology for moving the existing solution or developing a product from the scratch. We recommend clients to use cloud based solutions for more scalable and robust solutions.

The complete Objective "Ampere studies the client requirements and formulated a complete roadmap detailing out the development considerations and methodology for moving the existing solution or developing a product from the scratch. We recommend clients to use cloud based solutions for more scalable and robust solutions. We also recommend the Agile Software Development, is a set of software development methods in which requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, continuous improvement, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. The agile development methods break the tasks into small increments with minimal planning and do not directly involve long-term planning. Iterations are short time frames (timeboxes) that typically last from one to four weeks. Each iteration involves a cross-functional team working in all functions: planning, requirements analysis, design, coding, unit testing, and acceptance testing. At the end of the iteration a working product is demonstrated to stakeholders. This minimizes overall risk and allows the project to adapt to changes quickly. An iteration might not add enough functionality to warrant a market release, but the goal is to have an available release (with minimal bugs) at the end of each iteration.

General Process Summary

• Client Agreement | Portal Setup

  For each client, an NDA and MSA is signed off. Ampere then provides a private portal to track the project. Requirements are gathered and posted on the portal.

• Domain Specific Development Manager (PM)

  A PM with relevant domain experience is selected and assigned to the project. This person leads and manages the development team. PM clarify requirements and confirm their understanding. PM also assume 100% responsibility for project.

• Technical Requirements Extrapolation

  Technical requirements are extrapolated, defined and drilled down to layers and further separated into skill set focused tasks. This process may require technical stakeholder confirmation.

• Dependency Identification and Task Estimations

  Dependencies are identified, tasks are shuffled, and task lists, tasks and subtasks are estimated.

• Stakeholder Review

  A review is performed with stakeholders, confirming dates and estimated hours. Requirements and development tasks are reconfirmed and milestones are set.

• Development Team Assignment

  A development team is hand-picked, specific to core skill sets related to the TECH stack of the project. Ampere’s resource manager performs the selection and assignment process and balances the resources during the various stages of the project life cycle.

• Development Commencement

  The PM interacts and manages the development team on a daily basis. He reviews all test case results, check-ins and QA verifications. Daily builds to staging for stakeholder review are provided. The PM also updates progress status of each task on the portal, posts comments and reviews the status with account manager each day. Depending upon project size, progress meetings with stakeholders may occur twice per week.

• Task Completed

  When a task is completed and tested by developers, a different set of people perform QA, independently verifying deliverables by providing a screencast of their verification. If QA finds an issue, the task is flagged as requiring a revision and the development/QA process is repeated.

• Stakeholder Verification

  Upon QA approval, the stakeholder is asked to confirm the deliverable. If they find an issue, the item is flagged as requiring a revision and the development/QA/stakeholder verification process is repeated. Once accepted, the task is closed.

Deliverables of an Assignment

Methodology

Ampere follows Agile SCRUM methodology for software development. It helps teams respond to unpredictability through incremental, iterative work cadences, known as sprints. Agile methodologies are an alternative to waterfall, or traditional sequential development. Scrum emphasizes empirical feedback, team self-management, and striving to build properly tested product increments within short iterations.

There are five meetings: Backlog Grooming, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum a 15-minute standup, the Sprint Review Meeting, and the Sprint Retrospective Meeting. Every iterative delivery includes the following phases:

• Discovery & Planning Phase – The purpose of the inception phase is to identify the set of functional and performance requirements for this iteration. In most of the cases, a prototype would be constructed which may be a working model of the system or visualizations. The Project Manager designated will also prepare a detailed project plan for the iteration.
• Conceptualization & Design Phase – During this phase, the Technical Lead dedicated for your project will identify any conceptual changes required for this iteration. This phase is our safeguard against providing you a solution that is expensive to maintain and change. The Technical Lead will make changes to any interfaces, protocols or frameworks to ensure that our final solution is superbly crafted. This phase will deliver a conceptual architecture diagram that will also show the patterns to be used.
• Development & Unit Testing Phase – The construction phase is where our senior developers will produce detailed blueprints for implementation. We follow a component-oriented implementation for maximum extensibility and the low level details of these components are filled in this phase. This would be in the form of class designs and activities diagram for any complicated algorithms to be used. These are mostly for internal use and are delivered on specific request.
• Certification & Testing Phase– This phase starts with the specification of the test plans. These plans are prepared as soon as the analysis phase is complete. After the completion of the development phase, the quality analyst determines if the software constructed meets the objectives. This includes the business functionality and other technical requirements for performance. Our quality team is also equipped with development expertise to develop custom tools for automated testing. The output of this phase is a test plan document, quality certification document and a staged deployment of the application.
• Production & Delivery Phase– When the product is certified by our quality analysts, we proceed to the deployment of that iteration. During this phase, we provide support for deployment of the application at your end. This phase is very valuable for us, as you can provide us the feedback on the real application. It also enables you to make decisions about new features, change priorities and review alternatives before the commencement of next phase.

Approach to the Assignment

• All requirements are standardized into use cases with basic/alternate flows, exceptions, pre-condition and post-conditions. Some user stories are written to ensure that the key usage scenarios have been considered.
• Verification would be done to ensure that the non-functional requirements like scalability, concurrent users, expected response times, internationalization, and cross-browser portability (for web app)/multi-device compatibility for all android/iOS/windows platforms (for mobile app), have been captured.
• If required, prototypes/mock-up will be created for various features to bring more clarity to the requirements.
• In collaboration with Client, requirements will be prioritized from a business perspective for targeted development and testing efforts.

One or more of following is a deliverable from requirements evaluation-

• Updated use case document
• Implementation notes
• Scope of work/Understanding Document

Design Phase

In conjunction with the requirements review, our resources will design the architecture. A modular approach to the detailed design will be taken in the design process to allow development tasks for those approved components to commence while design on the remaining components is completed. Besides architecture, solution design also includes creation and sharing of visual design prototypes for both web, windows and mobile app.

The key activities performed during this phase are:

• Use case (functional requirements and non-functional requirements) implementations showing how the architecture supports important use cases are documented. Final architecture document is reviewed to ensure its completeness for the implementation.
• Possibility of using open source components and any third party libraries is examined with a cost benefit analysis.
• Architecture is examined from a modularity, portability and extensibility point of view by designing scenarios of change and analyzing their effect. Analysis of potential vulnerabilities of the architecture and potential bottlenecks for performance is done.
• Detailed architecture consisting of services, components and the interfaces between them is created. The database model is mapped to these components and services. Exception handling and logging strategies are documented for each component.

The resulting deliverables from the requirements evaluation are:

• Completed high-level architectural design.
• Completed detail design for all system components.

Development phase

Our resources working on the application will be experience on our best practices in Coding, Version Control, Unit testing and bug fixes. Some of the salient features of our approach are mentioned below and actual artefacts are available if needed for reference.

Coding practice

• Design documents before any code is written
• Coding guidelines for manual inspection of the code
• Checklists for all parts of the code and database design

Version Control

• All source code and design documents part of version control from day-one
• Best practices for branch and tag creation
• Experience with multiple source control systems like SVN, TFS, Visual Studio Online and VSS.

Bug Reporting and Resolution

• No bug reporting through emails
• All bugs, enhancements and change requests tracked with Issue Management systems like Bugzilla/Mantis/Trac/ Test Link or any other depending on Client preference
• Steps for replication of issues

Security Model

• We recommend deploying website on SSL and after login entire application will be running on SSL.
• Log Verification to check that sensitive data is not present in the log files

Backup

• Backups are part of integrated System administration services.
• Nightly backups of source code repository.
• High End Data Storage Solution on Microsoft Azure Cloud or Amazon Cloud.

QA phase

This phase starts with the specification of the test plans. These plans are prepared as soon as the analysis phase is complete. After the completion of the development phase, the quality analyst determines if the software constructed meets the objectives.

This includes the business functionality, cross browser/platform testing and other technical requirements for performance. Our quality team is also equipped with development expertise to develop custom tools for automated testing. The output of this phase is a test plan document, executed test cases, quality certification document and a staged deployment of the application.

The following are the people involved in this process and their roles:

QA Manager	QA Lead	QA Engineer
Looks the overall process Involved in release management Involved in delivery process	Understanding the requirements Define the scope Creates the goals Identify the Risks Identify the test environment Prepare the test plan Archive test cases Archive test artefacts	Maintains the RTM Creates manual test cases Collects test data Review & Execute test cases Analyze results Log defects & Verify fixes Update test cases Prepare testing artefacts

Training

Depending on the project requirement, Ampere does provide a training program to the client. Ampere recommends the following methods to make the training program effective:

• Training could have multiple sessions/stages as per the need and requirement of the project/application.
• Training methodology will be an interactive workshop.
• The requisite training infrastructure like computers, projector with screen shall be provided by the Client.
• Ampere will provide a PowerPoint presentation
• Ampere will ensure that all the training documentation in Hard copy and Softcopy is in place (user training, operation procedures, visual help-kit etc.).
• The Training programs will cover all the information and instruction necessary to permit System Administrators, System Users and Management Users, to perform designated operational and maintenance activities safely and efficiently over the course of the contract.