Bootstrapping a software product development effort

Software companies need to take concepts to products quickly so that they can reach the market

faster. However, in this process, sometimes they end up building a monster application, which

upon maturity, companies have to spend tons of time and money in scaling.

Let me explain this in detail. In your development efforts, doing it right the first time is always

costly and time consuming. A workaround will take less time and will probably save a whole

load of money from the budget. The general attitude is that we will fix it as we go along when

we have the resources. As the time moves on, the workaround never gets done, more and more of

the code starts to depend on the workaround. Not only that, users also depends on the

workaround. The amount of fixing that needs to be done now begins to multiply and your core

product starts losing its significance. Foresight here really pays in the long-term and makes life

easier in the future.

Finally, it gets down to designing the product properly. Your design needs to ensure that your

product will not only work well when it is released, but will be able to accommodate the needs of

users in the future. Our experience of having worked with multiple software companies has made

us realize that this has been a huge problem for them to solve. Analysis and design, the two most

critical phases in software development, is not given its due. This results in products that take a

lot of re-working in the future.

Essentially, we help companies bootstrap their product development by turning their

requirements to specifications to architectural design to detailed design to development to testing

to implementation to integration to maintenance.

From the requirements, identify what to build in the analysis phase, and come up with the

specification document – a clearly documented functional specification that explains clearly

what needs to be done. Mind you, it is the ‘needs’ and not ‘wants’.

From the specifications, identify how to build during the design phase, and come up with the

architecture and design documents. This phase includes identifying modules and designing each

of the modules.

Once this is done well, development, testing, implementation and integration should be a breeze,

assuming that you have the resources to code, test, and ensure quality.

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