Software consultancy
Software design
A specification you can price from, or a written roadmap for a system that already runs. Requirements through to extensibility, security, and stability.
Software requirements
Informal and formal requirements work aimed at a functional specification: what the software must do to meet the business goal. A functional specification is usually required before a quote on anything that will see a large deployment or touch core operations.
A technical specification then says how it will be built: user interface, entities, how they interact, and usually the database design. Duration and cost get tighter at that point.
Software architecture
Informal diagrams for a meeting, and formal ones for a specification. We use UML unless the job is healthcare, in which case the modelling is typically HL7.
Performance, recovery, tests, documentation
- Performance tests on an existing system, to find the bottleneck and say what would actually help
- Disaster recovery, backup, restore testing, and continuity, including geo-replication when the system cannot be lost
- Unit tests, capacity tests, and manual QA: install them, or improve the ones you already have
- User guides through to functional and technical documents, for a system you already run or one we are about to build