Services

Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints.  This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. The primary constraints are scope, time, and budget.  The secondary challenge is to optimize the allocation of necessary inputs and apply them to meet pre-defined objectives.  The objective of project management is to produce a complete project which complies with the client's objectives. In many cases, the objective of project management is also to shape or reform the client's brief to feasibly address the client's objectives. Once the client's objectives are clearly established, they should influence all decisions made by other people involved in the project – for example, project managers, designers, contractors, and subcontractors. Ill-defined or too tightly prescribed project management objectives are detrimental to decision-making.  A project is a temporary and unique endeavor designed to produce a product, service, or result with a defined beginning and end (usually time-constrained, and often constrained by funding or staffing) undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value.  The temporary nature of projects stands in contrast with business as usual (or operations),  which are repetitive, permanent, or semi-permanent functional activities to produce products or services. In practice, the management of such distinct production approaches requires the development of distinct technical skills and management strategies.

Business Analysis

Business analysis is a professional discipline focused on identifying business needs and determining solutions to business problems. Solutions may include a software-systems development component, process improvements, or organizational changes, and may involve extensive analysis, strategic planning and policy development. A person dedicated to carrying out these tasks within an organization is called a business analyst or BA.  Business analysts are not found solely within projects for developing software systems. They may also work across the organization, solving business problems in consultation with business stakeholders. Whilst most of the work that business analysts do today relates to software development / solutions, this is due to the ongoing massive changes businesses all over the world are experiencing in their attempts to digitize.  Although there are different role definitions, depending upon the organization, there does seem to be an area of common ground where most business analysts work. The responsibilities appear to be: To investigate business systems, taking a holistic view of the situation. This may include examining elements of the organization structures and staff development issues as well as current processes and IT systems. To evaluate actions to improve the operation of a business system. Again, this may require an examination of organizational structure and staff development needs, to ensure that they are in line with any proposed process redesign and IT system development. To document the business requirements for the IT system support using appropriate documentation standards.  In line with this, the core business analyst role could be defined as an internal consultancy role that has the responsibility for investigating business situations, identifying and evaluating options for improving business systems, defining requirements and ensuring the effective use of information systems in meeting the needs of the business.

Software QA

Software quality assurance (SQA) is a means and practice of monitoring all software engineering processes, methods, and work products to ensure compliance against defined standards.  It may include ensuring conformance to standards or models, such as ISO/IEC 9126 (now superseded by ISO 25010), SPICE or CMMI.  It includes standards and procedures that managers, administrators or developers may use to review and audit software products and activities to verify that the software meets quality criteria which link to standards.  SQA encompasses the entire software development process, including requirements engineering, software design, coding, code reviews, source code control, software configuration management, testing, release management and software integration. It is organized into goals, commitments, abilities, activities, measurements, verification and validation.