Nobody knows what a system should be doing as well as the users. We therefore encourage user participation as early as is possible in the development process by implementing an iterative development process. This approach allows developers to prototype a system and learn where changes are required. In our experience, this ensures that the final application tracks the evolving business needs and allows for appropriate scope management.
We pride ourselves on our consistently high quality of project delivery. Our skilled technologists take ownership of our customers' requirements from business analysis to implementation. The critical success factors of any project rely on the coordinated effort of certain functions within the development team. These four elements are:
The business analysis must match high-level processes and workflow to business needs. Our founders have a strong business analysis background, having worked both in South Africa and overseas with leading IT providers and large corporate clients.
The high-level architecture must match the business analysis to the application and the current IT infrastructure. This function determines the technologies to be used, integration efforts required, environmental and infrastructure issues, and the adoption of new technologies with their greater efficiencies.
The project-specific architecture and design must ensure a speedy and efficient execution of the technical specifications. Greater efficiencies can often be found in many aspects of the design and implementation practices.
The project's development leadership must adopt international best practices in terms of development processes and the handling of the development team. This includes staffing, communication skills, mentoring, knowledge transfer and the on-going responsibility for the well-being of the project team.
Our inherent philosophy is that every project is a risk during the process of actualising the functional requirements to a tangible, real system. Our approach is to minimise risk and thus prevent issues such as slow system response by first creating a detailed architectural design and application framework. This reduces risk significantly early in the development cycle and allows the system response time to be assessed.
In tandem with the architectural phase is gaining an understanding of the business requirements through careful business analysis. The business analyst makes sure the technical team understands the requirements and is able to develop a solution specific to the customer's reality. The four elements critical to the ultimate success of the project are the setting of project milestones and the acceptance testing to accompany each phase, effective data migration, report analysis and development, and the competent design of external interfaces.
We have consistently used this approach throughout our developments to maintain successful delivery. There have been no miracles, only the constant mantra of reducing risk and managing unknowns proactively. Dariel Solutions has a mature software process that is comprised collectively of many hundreds of person-years of software experience. We have used all this valuable experience and lessons learned to constantly improve on all our system development projects at financial institutions.
