We offer focused Software Development Process expertise & consulting that measure strengths and identify improvement opportunities of organizational IT processes and prioritize areas of improvement in terms of criticality to quality, costs and productivity.

• Software Development Methodologies
• Requirements Management
• Software Project Management
• Configuration and Release Management
• Project Performance Metrics

Software Development Methodologies

Data Concepts employs variants of Rational Unified Process and Agile Software Development Methodology as frameworks for building reusable software components. In determining the appropriate methodology for a given project, Data Concepts evaluates the needs of the project along with organizational requirements as well as the following:

• Current stage of the Development Lifecycle
• State of the Requirements
• Probability for Scope Change during the course of the project
• Time-to-deployment requirements

Some of the most common methodologies we employ include:

Rational Unified Process, an iterative software development process which is tailored by the development team that will select the elements of the process that is appropriate for their needs. The methodology dictates multiple iterations of demonstrable product functionality and constant user review.

The Agile Process, used in development projects that need to accommodate constantly changing requirements, even during the later stages of development. Agile programming focuses on frequent delivery of working software, with small development teams and close collaboration among developers and business owners.

Requirements Management
A formal Requirements management process allows one to define, manage and verify requirements to predictably deliver software at less cost by getting requirements right the first time and ensuring business-IT alignment throughout the software lifecycle.

We have successfully deployed commercial Requirements management solutions based on Borland's CaliberRM and Rational Requisite Pro that deliver both on traceability and collaboration among developer and user groups.

Software Project Management
The Data Concepts Project Management Office (PMO) has been established to ensure quality, discipline, and added value to our project engagements. Working together with the Data Concepts sales and delivery teams, the PMO helps evaluate future opportunities, reviews risks, provides tools and processes, and conducts Quality Reviews of ongoing projects. The Data Concepts PMO conducts periodic assessments to benchmark our current maturity level to the target maturity level and to industry standards of best practices.

Our Project Managers are encouraged to get PMP certified by Project Management Institute's (PMI) industry standard "Body of Knowledge" (PMBOK), which embodies the best practices for managing the nine knowledge areas associated with any flavor of software project.

Our Methodology has been tested and proven in a large variety of project engagements. The insights developed have been incorporated into the Data Concepts project approach for designing, building and testing quality applications for our clients.

We offer our expertise and experience in Project Management to our clients. We can provide assistance establishing their PMO, advise them on the use of Project Management tools, and help develop and establish repeatable Project Management processes for a successful delivery.

Configuration and Release Management
Release management is a significant area of focus for many enterprise organizations and federal/state agencies, and proper release management can be critical to application uptime and availability as well as ensuring compliance with IT Audit procedures. Our professional services teams can build repeatable and documented processes around release management for your organization ensuring you have proper separation of duties, a bill of materials for each deployment and a verifiable audit trail of all release activities.

Project Performance Metrics
Forward Leaning Organizations that are progressive in their strategic plans, continually push to improve performance in achieving sustained success in all areas including that of managing projects. Performance Metrics can help guide businesses towards informed decisions as they function as a litmus test regarding quality, project progress and processes.

Data Concepts utilizes enterprise wide Project Dashboard tools such as MS Project Server to track and analyze health of our various projects in execution. Our Dashboard allows us to effortlessly disseminate project information and tasks to both team members and stakeholders, track project status, monitor and control cost and schedule overruns and serve as a single repository for all project related information.

Data Concepts PMO utilizes Earned Value Management among others to assess and quantitatively validate project performance and success. These metrics are used to gather information on Cost, Effort, Duration, Productivity, Quality of Deliverables, Client Satisfaction and Team Performance and are reported in context for meaningful delivery.