Our process
Treating the project disease
and/or nurturing the project growth.
Our approach and the process we apply to software development depend on the project
condition.
Quite often projects experience growing pains or middle age diseases and need curing before
flourishing
(again). We have seen many times when some seemingly hopeless initiatives took a different turn and
came
to a successful conclusion or continued growing.
On-demand rapid rescue process
By our front-line team with
a positive and can-do attitude.
Short response time from reporting a threat is crucial for any rescue mission.
Your message will reach
people
who understand that you may be tired of
hearing “it’s not possible” or “it works with me.”
Following your contact and quick consultation of your problem by our expert, we will immediately provide
you with the information on the nearest availability of our rescue team for an investigative workshop,
the first step of our rescue process.
We will then quickly sign a non-disclosure agreement (an NDA) and meet you and/or your team on the
free-of-charge investigative workshop.
On this occasion, our experts are going to ask you numerous questions to get the big picture of your
project situation. This knowledge will let us roughly decide on how engaging for us the next step, that
is, a complete diagnostic audit of your project, should be.
The aim of this second stage of our process is to understand and pinpoint the root cause(s), that is,
the most important factors behind your troubled project situation. This will, in turn, make it possible
to decide which problem(s) to solve first, second, etc., and which not to touch at all (this time).
Even though it may be tempting to try to get us into action right away after your first call or initial
investigative workshop, that would most probably be a costly mistake which we will not agree to make.
Knowledge gives us power to solve problems with surgical precision.
Sometimes the discovery process may take longer than elimination of the problem, yet trying to solve
wrong problems will get you nowhere.
Even though you have probably already spent too much on the project in question, investing in the audit
works will simply prevent further waste.
Next, apart from the audit results, summarized in an actionable report, we will prepare the proposal for
our own involvement in the rescue project itself, time and cost estimates inclusive.
- 0,5-2 days' long
- Gathering key input from the client
- Up to 1-2 weeks’ long
- Root cause analysis, recommendations & action plan
- Its length depends on the problem complexity, etc.
- Steps agreed with the client
- Constant communication
- Regular results review
Some of our project rescuing steps and solutions
Skillfully chosen and combined to get you back on track
The mixture itself differs among projects. Whether it is going to work most effectively very much depends
on
the involvement on the client side.
We will most definitely need your ownership and
quick decision
making.
Information gathering
We will want to find out how your company had imagined the project and where it should have arrived
by
the moment we talk.
We will ask you a lot of, sometimes inconvenient, questions that will
touch
upon
your business strategy, project history, including team dynamics, technologies used, taboo problems,
etc.
Root cause analysis
Locating and solving the right problem(s) is the key to saving a troubled project.
To
discover
the
problematic area(s), we look at the project from different perspectives (i.e., product and project
management, technology, staff competencies including quality coding skills, and many others).
Quality and gap analysis
Our experts will thoroughly evaluate the quality of the current project assets and results (e.g. code base) and then compare it with what the project had been expected to look like and achieve by this time. Thus, we will be able to provide you with a clear picture of what is missing.
Drawing an initial action plan
Based on these findings, our team will be able to recommend certain decisions regarding the future of
the
project. If we are going to believe that the project is worth further investment at all, we will
analyse
different project saving scenarios and describe in detail the one that should pay you off the
most.
Our
recommendations will include among others:
- new priorities,
- an inventory of tasks to execute, together with the suggested ways to achieve them (e.g.),
- a list of behaviour protocols for different circumstances (e.g. for the situation when your key project member would like to leave the team).
Our proposal will come in an actionable form that you can try to implement on your own or, increasing the success chances, with our involvement.
Realizing the action plan
The activities performed to bring your project to (at least partially successful) end may include:
- completing the gaps in the existing code, while improving its quality,
- adding people to the team to quicken the development process,
- taking over/supporting project management activities,
- solving communication problems (e.g. by applying “overcommunication“),
- fostering a transparent and collaborative environment for everybody involved, and many others.
Monitoring the progress of the plan implementation
Our team might be involved in the plan execution in the supervisory role. Or, when we are realizing the plan ourselves, our experts, together with project leaders on your part, will closely observe how well it is being implemented and adjust the direction if necessary.
Consultancy work
Mente experts typically consult a lot of different matters throughout the whole rescue project.
Issues
where we provide advice are derived from the discovery process and may arise during the plan
implementation.
As you probably expect, the topics we share our knowledge about may range
from
strategy and product management, through software project priorities and budget management, to
supporting directly your internal IT team in their programming and testing tasks.
The experiences that we have shared with our clients throughout the rescue projects frequently lead to
years’
long partnerships based on trust and loyalty.
The rescued projects, untangled and uncomplicated, are often continued.
Our experts become natural, knowledgeable, partners for the clients to entrust the projects development
with.
Such projects are executed in a different, more peaceful atmosphere but our team maintains the same key
attitude of vigilant problem solvers.
Especially that having become experts in project fire fighting, we are also able to prevent many issues.