Better Simple's Project Development Process

Some potential clients may be scared by the uncertainty of how a software project is completed. This is completely understandable. We don’t expect clients to know this nor do we require them to fully understand it either. Better Simple’s process is (unsurprisingly) simple. At the core of it, it’s about managing expectations. If you’re surprised at the end of a project, then we’ve failed. The process itself should be methodical and consistent. Better Simple’s process breaks down into the following three steps:

1. Identify desired changes, their rough estimates and project budget.
2. Refine list of changes based on need and budget.
3. Implement changes in an iterative process, demonstrating functionality to the client.

The first step boils down to the client determining what they want to do along with their budget. Once we have the initial list of changes, we’ll review and estimate the work involved for each and share that information with the client.

The second step requires the client to look through the estimates and decide which features will be implemented. The reason for this is that typically the client’s budget is not big enough to implement everything. However, this is also done to force the project to be trimmed down to what’s absolutely necessary. This helps improve the user experience, reduce code complexity and allows the product to be more flexible in the future.

The final step is for us to implement the changes. Typically we will implement the changes in an order that will allow us to develop and deploy them in small groups. These small groups of changes will be deployed to a staging/test environment for the client to review. This review is critical since the client verifies that the new functionality meets their expectations. If it’s not, then it’s reworked until it matches the client’s expectation.

These three steps make up Better Simple’s project development process. The purpose of it is to produce a product that the client expects to get. It’s accomplished by over-communication and short iterations of creating software. If you are considering working with us for a project, and are concerned about this process, please let us know immediately!