How I steer you through your software project
I support you in your software projects - from writing requirements to final acceptance of the solution.
My mission is to save you from expensive pitfalls, help you find innovative and creative solutions and get the best out of it for you..
Make or Buy
- Do you want to establish new processes and require software?
- Your operations have been managed for many years by older software that can no longer be maintained and expanded?
Products may already exist on the market, or companies may have specialised in your or similar requirements. A product is usually cheaper than a new development, but there are several questions to ask:
- How many of my requirements are covered?
- How high is the configuration effort?
- How sustainable is the solution? Is it constantly being developed and renewed?
I help you ask the right questions, and we build a decision matrix on which you can base your further action.
Requirements engineering
If you need individual software, you need good requirements:
As the client, you must ensure that your requirements are precise and complete. Whether we use a classic or an agile approach, if a developer needs to rewrite a feature, it just costs time and money. Quite the contrary is over-engineering: too many requirements with questionable value inflate the project unnecessarily and increase costs.
My job in requirements engineering is to bring together the needs of different stakeholders (end users, administrators, management), evaluate them, channel, expand and finally transfer them into a requirements specification that is unambiguous for the software provider.
Design phase
Good requirements are one thing, but for complex projects, much more is needed to be able to start development:
- A business process model helps to clarify the complete process flow.
- Re-defined test cases and acceptance criteria make it easier for both sides to work together.
- A clickable prototype costs only a fraction of the actual development costs and helps developers and clients develop a customised solution immensely.
Implementation phase
With clear requirements and a collaborative design, nothing can go wrong? Sometimes, however, it can. Here are some examples I have encountered several times:
- The provider tries to convince you with an agile concept, but you need to figure out what to think of it.
- The provider's project manager or product owner keeps changing and then doesn't have a clue.
- You want to accommodate change requests, but you are afraid of the cost.
- The supplier suddenly claims that a technical requirement is not feasible.
As an expert, I can help you assess such situations and steer you successfully through the project.
Test and acceptance phase
Trust is good; control is better!
Did you know that up to one-third of the costs of a software project go into quality assurance? The software provider should deliver a well-tested solution, but the more critical the application is, the more likely you, as a customer, will be forced to re-test. It seems obvious to let the future end-users test, but do they have the time, besides their daily business, to test systematically and accurately?
Testing can be a burden, and I can relieve you from that.
