Enterprise Software Development

Futuretone believes that software development should not be restricted to code creation and project delivery. It is inclusive of an accurate comprehension of the client’s requirements and business goals and, on the basis of this comprehension, recommendations of a cost-effective solution with a fine blend of technology are provided. Futuretone’s highly effective solution recommendations and technology proficiency have made its software development methodology stand apart from its peers.

Futuretone has supported numerous clients in various product life cycle phases to accomplish their product goals. We, at Futuretone, have the expertise to begin the project from any of the following stages of product life cycle management:

• Business Requirement Analysis (BRA)
• Ideation and conceptualization
• Architecture, R&D, and prototyping
• Design and development
• Testing and assurance
• Release management
• Training and product support
• Sustenance/maintenance

Taking into account the client’s project requirement and interests, Futuretone has adopted many successful software development approaches. We are well conversant with the classic software development life cycle and the Agile methodology as well.

When Futuretone adheres to the conventional Waterfall methodology, the following phases are implemented: requirements and analysis, design, implementation, and eventually, testing. All these phases have specific entry and exit criteria. When the stakeholders approve a phase and its deliverables, transition takes place from one phase to the next.

Futuretone is a pioneer of the collaborative software development methodology. Herein, the client retains its own onsite team, and Futuretone’s offshore team becomes an extension of this onsite team. These two teams collaborate to attain a common goal. Futuretone streamlines and synchronizes the processes essential for this collaboration. In this regard, Futuretone has implemented the Agile methodology with a highly responsive approach for numerous clients.

Considerations

• Business problem definition
• Product development objective
• Stakeholder viewpoint
• Onsite-offshore knowledge transition and requirements gathering

Implementation

• Assemble project team
• Knowledge transition
• Define project execution strategies and communication channel
• Customize offshore process
• Execute offshore project
• Review deliverables and identify areas of improvement

Execution

• Project charter and business case
• Documentation of user, functional, and system requirements
• Top-level architecture, technical approach, and system design
• System decomposition into component and unit specifications and design
• Coding, unit test planning, and unit testing
• Generation of test data for unit testing and system testing
• System integration and testing
• Implementation, delivery, and cut-over

These phases are aimed at helping Futuretone comprehend the company standards, business practices, client requirements, specific IT system environments, and the approach to be followed. The offshore team definitely experiences this comprehension as a learning curve.

We take into account the client-specific requirements and customize the operational methodology accordingly.

Simultaneously, we collaborate with the client to improve the business processes and efficiency. For this, we utilize our past operational experience to recommend the best practices.

Product Development Life Cycle Practices: We have a thorough understanding of the challenges encountered during software development in various technologies and the established processes and practices required to attain success. To choose the optimum process for projects, we consider points such as type, scope, complexity, technology, and timeline. During a typical software development life cycle, we adhere to the following practices:

Requirements engineering

• Vision statement
• Elicitation and prioritization of requirements
• Knowledge acquisition and management
• Feasibility study or risk analysis
• Functional and non-functional requirements
• Safety, security, and performance requirements
• Buy-in, validation, and approval of requirements
• Tracing and change control of requirements

Prototyping

We believe that creating a working prototype helps in collecting further requirements from the stakeholders and also enables them to comprehend the system. It also helps in reassuring ideas and defining the go to market (GTM) feasibility.
Our emerging technology expertise and architectural services capability facilitate prototyping; selection of tools, technology, and framework; and defining of benchmarks. Moreover, this prototyping exercise also considerably decreases requirements and design errors, including UI errors.

Architecture and design

The key is as follows: selection of an appropriate architecture for the application, a good design of the application, and finally, a good representation of the design. Our design team is equipped with extensive knowledge and understanding of industry-standard architectures and best practices. The team adheres to the following fundamental principles:

• Good designs require in-depth application domain knowledge
• Only what is hidden can be changed without risk (hence, it is important to expose interfaces and hide implementations)
• Separation of concerns leads to standard architectures
• Reusing designs through patterns yields faster implementation and better maintenance. The output of a design activity is a technical plan or blueprint of a system that helps the developers construct the system.

System construction

A set of activities that transform a design into a running system is termed as ‘construction’. This phase requires the engineering teams to adhere to the following principles:

• Well-structured programs have fewer errors and are easier to maintain
• Software-reuse decreases cycle time and increases quality and productivity
• Adherence to Agile methodology decreases the effect of change in requirements

We emphasize on robust coding standards, useful code comments, and extensive unit testing during the course of system construction. We urge our teams to practice test-driven development, continuous integration, and short build cycles.

Review and verification

We believe that error prevention is better than error removal. This implies that inspections result in significantly increased productivity, quality, and project stability. Therefore, our construction phase is composed of review and inspection of the design and code. During review, if some issues are identified, we amend them. To avoid repetition of identical errors, we share the learning across the team.

Testing and Quality Assurance

Testing is an integral part of the software development process. Our project plan is accompanied by a test plan. We develop test cases during the designing and coding of an application.
To ensure that the delivered system is of the best quality, we promote random testing and bug bashes. The basic principle behind these activities is that ‘formal testing can show the presence of errors, but not their absence’.

Governance

During all phases of software development, we continually monitor the progress of our efforts and tune our processes. These activities encompass project management, configuration management, requirements and change management, and quality and defect management.
Our extensive use of Software Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) helps us track and monitor the different areas of requirement management, software architecture, development, software testing, software maintenance, change management, continuous integration, and release management.