alligatortek continuously refines its business process in order to provide its clients with the most cost effective solutions. Our goal is to not just program databases and websites, it is to make them work for a business. To accomplish our goal a well planned project is needed. A well planned project will deliver an application that will help run a business more efficiently and effectively.

Proper Planning Saves Money

• A properly planned project provides for:
• higher success rate of meeting budget and timeline goals
• an application that will better serve business needs
• an application that will generally require fewer changes down the road
  • fewer changes mean cost savings recognized through less maintenance and future development

High Level Planning Steps

Proper planning starts at the discovery phase and ends at application development. The following are steps in the planning process:

• discovery phase
• high level requirements gathering phase
• proposal phase
• requirements gathering and functional specifications phase

The time spent and deliverables alligatortek provides during the discovery, high level requirements gathering, and proposal phases are provided pro bono – free of charge.

Phases Involved in Proper Planning

Discovery Phase

During the discovery phase the following will be gathered and documented:

• how the business operates today and how it should change as a result of the project
• the business process that will be affected by the proposed application
• what the business is currently doing to meet the needs of the proposed application
• what functions the application provide and in what order

These items will provide for a high level understanding of the project goals and scope.

High Level Requirements Gathering Phase

During the high level requirements gathering phase the following will be gathered and documented:

• screens needed so that required information may be captured
• reporting to enable management to better utilize the information in the application
• security access levels so that users can only see information they need
• architecture the application will be developed on: i.e. ASP.Net website, VB.Net, Microsoft Access
• time frame the application needs to be developed by

Proposal Phase

During the proposal process the information documented during the discovery and high level requirements gathering phase will be assembled into a proposal. The proposal will provide for a complete project understanding which includes project scope, screens, reports, timeline, and cost.

Requirements Gathering and Functional Specifications Phase

The proposal provides higher level specifications. Once a project is accepted the application must be completely defined and documented before development can start. This entails the documenting of detailed business requirements. Once the business requirements are completed, then functional specifications are assembled. Functional specifications include:

Information Architecture

• Database schema and data relationships
• Screenflow diagram defining logical route to access screens and reports
• Mockups of application screens and reports

Functional Requirements Definition

• Detailed functional requirements specification documentation to provide in-depth descriptions of all screens and reports
• Process and workflow diagrams that detail the data flow throughout all affected and integrated systems

The functional specifications are often provided to the client for review before programming begins. This provides the client with the ability to make any changes to the application while it is defined on paper. Changing a few paragraphs in the functional specifications document is less time consuming (and less expensive) than changing 200 lines of code.

Conclusion

Once the planning phases explained above are completed application programming begins. It has been proven over and over that a well defined project provides:

• complete understanding between the client and IT project staff of how the system will look and function
• higher on time and on budget success rate
• lower development costs
• less errors when the application is launched
• documentation to go back to in the case where somebody has a question of how something works