Our Methodology

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Working with us means you will become involved with the MindCrafted way of creating software. We have established a systems development methodology that maximizes quality while minimizing cost.

Our methodology emphasizes careful planning.  It eliminates confusion about what to do next and what to produce. Our methodology results in proven successes. It provides a road map for project participants and guides us in developing systems in a systematic way, not by accident or momentum.

Numerous studies have shown that the cost of changing a specification in a software development project increases at least tenfold with each step in a project. There is never any cheaper time to make a change than right now. Projects that use careful planning from the very beginning minimize later changes, thus holding down costs and reducing the time to complete a project.

Steps in the MindCrafted Methodology Include...

	Methodology

Gathering Requirements	Every software development project comes with its own unique set of requirements, both business and technical. Depending on the size and complexity of a project, MindCrafted Systems uses numerous modeling techniques to document requirements and as verification that we truly understand a client's needs. Models can range anywhere from ER and object diagrams, functional specifications, use cases to full blown prototypes. We would also gather statistics required to make technical decisions concerning the scale of the system and which platform would provide the best solution given any business or organizational constraints.
Creating A Design And Implementation Strategy	Once we know what a system needs to do, then MindCrafted Systems can specify the steps necessary to construct the system. This would include database design, program and interface specifications, wrapper definitions and all user-interface deliverables, including screens and reports. With this information, then MindCrafted Systems further defines the design given the choice of development tools and implementation platform. Concurrently, MindCrafted Systems can help you plan the steps necessary to physically deliver a system to its end-users. This would include hardware and software specifications, specifying network requirements and specifying installation requirements.
On Your Mark, Get Set, Start Coding!	Only after we know what to write, how to write it and what to write it with do we begin generating programming code with its own code generator as well as writing code by hand. We differ from our competition  because our teams are small and each member wears many different hats, interchanging them where  necessary. This streamlines our efforts since, from the very beginning, all of our team members know that actually writing a system is the final goal. This is also the point in the project where testing begins. We start with the original requirements, mapping each one back to a deliverable within the system. That is how we check for the system's completeness. We then map each deliverable back to its design specification in order to check for correctness.
Implementation	Before installing a new piece of software into your organization, we outline the preliminary steps necessary to assure success. This includes everything from hardware and software considerations to training and documentation. We work to make the implementation of a new system as seamless as possible, avoiding the disruption of your daily business practices.
Refinement	Changing requirements are not a sign of sloppy work, they are a fact of life. All businesses change and adaptability is a key component in successful businesses. We at MindCrafted Systems design our systems to easily allow alterations and additions to functionality. They are built to change. Each system we create comes with a built in change control system for tracking changes. We use this to manage priorities as well as managing what to include in a new release of the software. This allows you to manage what changes get done at what time.