Meet The Table

Posted on August 28, 2023September 20, 2023 by Pavel Tantsiura

In this issue:

What is Meet The Table?
Our challenge
Our solution – Meet The Table, the online networking platform
Project details
Step 1. Discovery phase
Step 2. Project documentation phase
Step 3. Product development phase
Value delivered

What is Meet The Table?

Meet The Table is an online platform for business networking we developed for StepintoCity, a business accelerator of entrepreneurs and international companies based in New York.

The platform matches Guests – entrepreneurs from Korea who want to start their business and Hosts – New York-based service providers, such as distributors, financial services, marketing agencies, etc.

Both parties can discuss business opportunities in more detail at a virtual meeting table. Such a table includes a built-in calendar to schedule meetings and enables communication via video conferencing and text messaging with live translation to your native language.

The platform also includes City Mates – New York residents who bridge the language and culture gaps by coordinating communication between guests and hosts while advocating guests’ rights and needs.

Our challenge

Junhwan Paul Kang is CEO of the New York-based business accelerator StepintoCity, inc. The business accelerator includes over 30,000 Korean entrepreneurs who want to open a business in New York.

Junhwan Paul recognized that it is hard for Korean entrepreneurs to enter the U.S. market with their business due to several reasons. They are – lack of an online base of reliable service providers, cultural and language differences.

Junhwan Paul hired us to build a project that will combine a networking platform with matching functionality, a virtual solution for business events, and a job marketplace to face those challenges.

The client wanted the platform to support three user roles: guests, hosts, and city mates. For this project, we needed to develop three different user cabinets for three user roles. We also needed to provide users with networking opportunities via secure text messaging and video calls.

Our solution – Meet The Table, the online networking platform

Let’s take a look at the features we implemented for each of the three user cabinets.

Guest profile

The profile includes a guest’s personal information, contact details, and localization (time zone and language). Allows a guest to add a payment method and view the history of payments.

The Product section allows guests to place a request for services they need with a description of the work scope.

The Host catalog includes a list of service providers, the type of services they provide, the project’s duration, and the price for consultations.

The Citymate catalog allows the guest to select a city mate with relevant experience, service category, and availability.

My Booking allows the guest to schedule virtual meetings with hosts and citymates by selecting available time slots in their calendars.

Upcoming Meetings include virtual meetings accepted by both parties (the guest and host), information about the participants, and payment status.

The Inbox allows the guest to communicate with hosts and city mates via text messages with live translation by clicking on a message.

[The prototype of in-app message translation by The APP Solutions]

Video Calls allows the guest to join a visual meeting with the host and a city mate and exchange text messages in a built-in life chat with online translation.

Feedback enables the guest to share their experience with a host and a city mate by writing feedback and rating.

Host profile

The dashboard includes weekly, monthly, and annual booking statistics and their status (initiated bookings, progress, completed).

The profile includes a host’s personal information, contacts, specialization, and location, payment details (Stripe account), and setting of business hours when the host is available for a consultation.

The Guests Products section includes requests from guests, the type of service they are looking for, and a detailed description of the service to be provided.

Create Tables enables hosts to create new tables, add their description, and specify its price.

Tables include the history of services provided, their type, status, and the amount of payment received.

Booking includes all virtual meeting requests from guests.

Citymate profile

Profile with information about a detailed description of one’s specialization, provided services category, hourly rate, and a Review section with feedback from other platform users.

Booking includes a list of requests for virtual meetings from guests.

The Upcoming Meetings section includes virtual meetings accepted by hosts and their details.

Project details

The delivery of the project took us through the following steps:

Step 1. Discovery phase

To ensure the scope of the project was aligned with the client’s business needs, we divided the discovery phase into two stages:

Analysis of competitors

After we defined business requirements, we analyzed several job marketplaces, such as Fiverr, Freelancer, and TaskRabbit, and found some drawbacks in their functionality.

Fiverr does not protect sellers from unfair buyers. Buyers can request some extra work from sellers for free threatening to leave negative feedback. Also, buyers can cancel the project after it is done and get a refund. The chat is very buggy. Users do not receive clear explanations in case Fiverr deletes their user accounts.
The Freelancer platform has fraud issues when freelancers/employers must pay the security and may disappear after money is transferred. There are cases when employers pay for work done and later take money back from freelancer wallets by closing their accounts. There are issues with the synchronization of web and mobile apps. Users cannot connect to their accounts via web and mobile at the same time.
TaskRabbit allows service providers to cancel tasks at the last minute and cause issues for clients. Users have problems with the “forgot password” flow. The system takes a “one-time sign-up fee” from taskers, and as a result, many potential taskers refuse to register in the system.

Recommendations

After we learned about the competitors’ weaknesses, we made up a list of recommendations for the project’s functionality which we considered during the development:

We must avoid fraud from guests, hosts, and city mates. We need to validate hosts and city mates to ensure that they are reliable contra gentes. The system must not include any security payments and show guests that they should not perform direct costs.
We need to check all cases when guests request money back.
Rating of host or city mate should not significantly influence their possibility of being involved in service requests. In such cases, guests will not be able to request any extra work for free, threatening to put a low rating for host or city mate.
The payment system must be stable because issues with payment flow always harm the user experience.
We should avoid canceling the meeting at the last minute by any user. The system must block such requests or charge a fee.

Step 2. Project documentation phase

We created a product vision and roadmap and built an architectural design in line with business goals.

The project documentation consisted of several parts:

General description – we gave an overall vision of the project, explained prominent user roles, and the project’s primary business goals.

General functional and non-functional requirements – we clarified that functional requirement as “The system must send emails to Users in defined events.” We also determined the primary non-functional requirements as “The system must handle approximately 3000 users at the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) phase”.

Payment flow. To avoid issues and fraud with payments from both clients and service providers, we documented all scenarios in which the platform withdraws charges and sends them to hosts and city mates. Based on those scenarios, we wrote a detailed payment flow for the project.

As a payment solution, we decided to use Stripe, a third-party payment gateway that includes high-end security. Using existing payment solutions is much cheaper than developing a payment gateway from scratch.

MVP scope. We start working on most new projects by developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and this project wasn’t an exception. Before defining the MVP scope, we wrote user stories for three types of users (actors). Then, we isolated MVP user stories for the Meet The Table app’s core from the rest of the project scope to be implemented during the second development phase.

Step 3. Product development phase

With a formalized product vision in Technical documentation and the MVP project scope for the development team, we arranged a Kickoff meeting with stakeholders from Step into City and performed the initial project setup.

The development phase took us through the following tasks:

Design creation

Since Meet The Table includes three user roles, we made the UX convenient and clear by adding only the necessary functionality to each user profile type. We also used a navigation tab on the header available on any page for quick access to essential information. In a nutshell, we did the app’s design in the following ways:

Mockups. We made several mockups of the approximate layouts of main pages and user flow, described in the project’s tech documentation. As the main color scheme, we used yellow and gray, previously agreed with the project stakeholders.
Prototype. We added more elements, such as widgets and buttons, to the initial mockups. We combined ready screens into a clickable prototype, which we also agreed with project stakeholders.
Polished the design. Once we agreed on all the pages and their elements with the StepintoCity team, we polished the design with minor changes. Then, the front end developers implemented all the necessary functionality.

Backend development

While part of our team worked on the platform’s design, the backend developers did the following tasks:

Code refactoring. We decided to use an existing marketplace code as a core backend. So we needed to do a code refactoring at the initial stage of the backend development phase.

Code refactoring is a process used in the DevOps software development approach that involves editing and cleaning up previously written code without changing the code’s function. The essential purpose of code refactoring is to make the code more efficient and maintainable.

The developers performed code refactoring by getting rid of switch statements, making conditionals descriptive, and eliminating code duplication.

Data storage. We integrated cloud data storage into this project. As a cloud storage solution, we used Google Cloud Platform since it ensures the necessary data storage level and scalability in real-time, thus, ensures main non-functional requirements, i.e., handling over 30,000 users during the MVP phase.

Calculation logic. We developed the price calculation algorithm that calculates the platform’s revenue and revenues for host and city mate received from guests.

Feature implementation. As the tasks backlog, developers used the functionality described in the MVP project scope and user stories from the tech documentation. Developers spend from one to two weeks of coding to implement one user story, based on its complexity. As soon as a user story was implemented, QA managers tested the ready-made functionality and returned them to fix errors.

Project Tech Details

Backend: Node JS
Frontend: React JS, jQuery
Database: MongoDB
Cloud Storage: Google Cloud Platform

[Meet The Table architecture diagram]

Third-party software integration with API

We decided to use existing solutions for some of the project’s functions. Right after the project core functionality was ready, we integrated the following REST APIs:

Stripe for online payments
Twilio for online text messages
Socket.io for real-time bi-directional communication between the web client and server
Google Translate for multi-language online chat
WebRTC for online streaming and video calls

Team composition

1 Designer
2 Frontend Developers
3 Backend Developers
2 QA Managers
1 Business Analysts
1 Project Manager

Value delivered

The Meet The Table platform was developed as a networking tool that ensures secure and fraud-tolerant cooperation of U.S. based service providers, New York residents, and Korean entrepreneurs. You can check out the project by visiting the official Meet The Table website.

When we created Meet The Table, we focused on making the project to complement Stepinto City’s value proposition as a company to make it easier for global entrepreneurs and companies outside of the U.S. to open their business in New York.

To see more results of our work, visit our Portfolio.

Related readings:

Developing a Successful Event App

How to Make a Streaming Website Like Twitch

How to Develop an App Like Netflix

Online Marketplace Development Guide

Outstaffing vs. Outsourcing vs. Managed Services: Differences and Benefits

Posted on August 28, 2023September 20, 2023 by Pavel Tantsiura

In this issue:

Outsourcing vs. Outstaffing: What Is The Difference And What To Choose?
Outstaffing services
Development outsourcing
Product Development Services
Client view
Cost of moving ahead
Value of moving ahead

Terminology is a tricky thing. In various organizations, outsourcing and outstaffing can mean very different things. In Ukraine, the majority of small and mid-size IT companies call themselves IT Outsourcing.

On the other hand, large and public companies tend to position themselves as in IT outsourcing, but only in the Product Development Services and Managed services areas. As time goes on even small companies reject “outsourcing” positioning using “custom software development” instead.

So let’s look under the covers of outsourcing and product development services based on what we know about the IT sphere and IT market. We’ll also go over the outstaffing practice further in the article.

HOW WE NAIL HIGH-LOAD PROJECT DELIVERY

Outsourcing vs. Outstaffing: What Is The Difference And What To Choose?

I enjoyed working in several companies, including startups, small private IT development Shops, and large enterprises with tens of thousands of people on board.

Playing different roles on a different level, I have had multiple challenges regarding the differences between outstaffing vs outsourcing, as well as what differentiates Managed Services. In the end, each business practice has its advantages and disadvantages, so there’s no universal answer to the “outsourcing or outstaffing” question.

Let’s take a look at the following summary table, and then go one by one starting with outstaffing and building our way up.

	Outstaffing	Outsourcing	Product Development Services
Purpose	Team Extension	Business Function	Technological Partner
Managements	Client	Client/Vendor	Vendor
Quality Ownership	Client	Client/Vendor	Vendor
Revenue	Low	Low-Medium	Medium-High
Source of revenue	Workforce	Operational Excellence	Intellectual Product

Outstaffing services

Software outsourcing and outstaffing are sometimes used interchangeably. However, those two practices are completely different. Basically, outstaffing is the most straightforward model to understand. Many companies are shorthanded and need a development team to help their house developers. Outstaffing comes in handy when the client’s needs mean increasing the software development team’s capacity and jumpstarting the development process. In the case of outstaffing, offshore employees for remote software development are officially employed by another client to speed up the development process.

Management

With the outstaffing approach, the client has full control over management. The outstaffing software development team inherits the existing methodology, processes, tracking tools, and communication approaches. The repository, environments, and automation tools are usually on the client-side or administered by the client. This factor is often considered among the main outstaffing pros.

Quality ownership

The outstaffing projects are also frequently called Staff Augmentation.

The outstaffing company augments their remote employees with the client’s existing house team.
The manager is responsible for the terms, product, and budget.
The outstaffing manager is an employee of the client’s company.

Revenue

The outstaffing model is a time for money trade. So, there are no cons of outstaffing from this perspective. You can imagine it in the form of the hourly rates or cost+ model. Clients buy an hour of work; the vendor gets their profit from hours sold.

Consider that the required organizational complexity here is low. There are many competitors, and competition is based on the price. Many vendors are competing around small-sized clients, so the market’s invisible hand keeps the costs low.

One of the primary sources of revenue is the workforce. The key to making more revenue in the outstaffing area is to sell more hours. The more people – the more money. That’s what the outstaffing model is about.

KOTLIN VS. JAVA: WHAT TO CHOOSE FOR AN ANDROID APP?

Development Outsourcing

Within the outsourcing vs outstaffing paradigm, software outsourcing means when companies delegate one of the business needs to a third-party service provider. Apart from software development, a company can turn to outsource to help with their manufacturing, accounting, software development, testing, support or call center, and other digital activities.

Speaking about the tech area, a development team can be employed by another company to perform testing, product management, maintenance, and support, along with software development outsourcing. The outsourcing model also applies to different technologies, and an integrated software development function. Let’s continue with the outsourcing vs outstaffing comparison related to three core points.

Management

Outsourcing project management may have a complex structure. Usually, management is done on the client-side (Product management, Program management), and the outsourcing provider is responsible for proxy management (Project Manager, Team Leader, proxy product ownership).

Quality ownership

Depending on the management structure, the outsourcing vendor commits to the quality of the outsourcing function. Quality standards and formal development methodologies are applied to measure quality and results. Having managerial positions allows contractor companies to use standards and measurements and perform control over them. Furthermore, it brings an obligation to comply with standards and achieve the KPIs.

SHOULD YOU HIRE APP DEVELOPERS NEAR ME OR OUTSOURCE OVERSEAS?

Revenue

Processes, web development guidelines, prebuilt solutions and pipelines, and much more – are the solution accelerators. By keeping standard things standard, the company can avoid reinventing similar wheels for multiple projects. Lower costs with improving operational excellence give extra margin. Therefore, revenue is among the major outsourcing pros.

In other words: with the right attitude for the client, it won’t matter if developer John switched the whole project and QA Pete automated his tests. As long as the dedicated software development team produces the results they are committed to, no one cares whether it’s software outsourcing or any other hiring practice.

<br />How to make your IT project secured?

Download Secure Coding Guide

SHOULD YOU HIRE APP DEVELOPERS NEAR ME OR OUTSOURCE OVERSEAS?

WHAT TECH STACK TO CHOOSE FOR YOUR PROJECT

HOW TO OUTSOURCE MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT

Product Development Services

Apart from outsourcing – outstaffing models, there are also product development services. When I got to know the PDS term for the first time, I worked in a 10+ tech outsourcing company. The company initiated a series of events to educate its personnel about the PDS Delivery model. One example for developers was, “you stop thinking that the business wants this button painted in red: You start thinking, how would the end-user like to see this button.”

The main difference between the approaches mentioned above and PDS is that the latter means, first of all, a shift in mindset. Mature companies realize that, besides technical assignments, the company can provide their expertise and advice. The evolution from doers to thinkers to become a technological partner with the client’s business. Commit to the product and give the product more than just the hours spent.

CLOUD SERVICE MODELS EXPLAINED: PAAS VS. SAAS VS. IAAS VS. DBAAS

Management

To provide the Service of Product Development, the provider company shall acquire the competencies of Business Analysis, Project Management, Product management, and domain knowledge of the industries their clients are working at.

The PDS project is usually expected to have a Project Manager, Product Owner, Stream, and group leaders among the team members. In some cases, those roles can interface or mirror the respective roles on the client’s side. In other cases, they can be positioned as provider-side roles only. Additionally, the company establishes competency centers and practices – the non-production people responsible for acquiring and growing the competency and domain knowledge.

This gives the vendor much more autonomy and freedom. Dedicated software development teams can arrange convenient processes and adapt the methodology of choice.

Quality ownership

Having Product and Project Management on the provider side also means having Ownership and Responsibly on software end product delivery so that the quality ownership is entirely on the vendor side.

Revenue

On PDS projects the company still makes more money with more people. But that becomes a side-effect. The PDS source of revenue is an intellectual product that can take different forms. The form of higher hourly rates for engineers with higher qualifications, and additional knowledge of industry and business. The conditions of phases for generating intellectual outcomes: Solution Design, Technical/Process Audit, Marketing research, etc.

Generally, as the vendor takes more risks and responsibility, the more revenue it generates.

What solutions can we offer?

Client View

As an IT company, we are a supplier for our clients; an IT Service Provider. There is a traditional categorization of suppliers.

Let’s go through the classification:

Commodity: for suppliers who provide low-value or easily available products or services, which could be alternatively sourced relatively easily.
Operational: for suppliers of functional products and services. These relationships would usually be managed by junior operation management and would involve infrequent but regular contact and performance reviews.
Tactical: for those relationships involving significant commercial activity and business interaction. These relationships would usually be managed by middle management and apply for regular contact and performance reviews, often including ongoing improvement programs.
Strategic: for significant ‘partnering’ relationships that involve senior managers sharing confidential strategic information to facilitate long-term plans. These relationships would usually be managed and owned at a senior management level.

Being in outstaffing, the vendor falls into the Commodity category. No significant risks are associated, and alternatives can be found and engaged fast enough.

Outsourcing can be either Operational or Tactical suppliers, depending on the importance and impact. Taking more ownership, and providing more value, is the key to progress toward strategic partnership.

By practicing the PDS approach, the vendor company can achieve a strategic partnership with a client.

FUNCTIONAL VS NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS: MAIN DIFFERENCES & EXAMPLES

Cost of moving ahead

Staying in ‘commodity’ keeps prices (and in turn salaries) limited by the market. Too many Outstaff service providers competing to maximize the revenue can exhaust the labor market and lower the entry criteria. That’s pretty much what is happening in the Ukrainian IT labor market. And like anything else in this world, all approaches have their pros and cons.

To bid for providing services as a strategic partner, the company must understand the client and contribute to the client’s business success better than other competitors. That requires investments into:

Management – improve governance, consistency of deliverables, communication, and reporting
Practices and competencies – acquire unique selling points in the form of a group of people with “know-how”
Sales – change of focus from “selling standard services at a low price” to “provide complex technological consultation and analytics”
People – attraction and retention of talents. Utilization of bench programs, internal and external education, improved work conditions

Value of Moving Ahead

Better sales, dedicated remote team, more extensive projects, more considerable challenges and impact, higher salaries, and much more room for professional growth in almost any direction; All of these at the cost of ownership and responsibility.

I hope you liked the article. It’s challenging to cover outsourcing or outstaffing the development process and its pros and cons fully in one piece. Please share your experience, questions, and comments. It’s always exciting and motivating to get feedback.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO DEVELOP AN APP: DETAILED FEATURE BREAKDOWN

Decided On a Team Model?

Inception Phase of Software Projects with The APP Solutions

Posted on August 28, 2023September 20, 2023 by Pavel Tantsiura

In this issue:

What is the inception phase in agile?
What is inception in software engineering?
Inception phase deliverables
What are the inception phase stages?
Step 1. Initiation
Step 2. Research
Step 3. Gathering requirements
Step 4. Prototyping
Step 5. Preparation for the development stage
What happens after the Inception phase?
The inception phase adjusted to your needs
The unified process of the inception phase for clear objectives for the project

The inception phase is a unified process that helps business owners validate their business idea, define risks, clarify the project’s requirements, and make the development process run smoothly.

This article will share The APP Solutions experience describing the inception phase of a software project, its main stages, deliverables, and explaining why it is crucial for a project’s success.

What is the inception phase in agile?

The inception phase is a unified process of gathering objectives for the project and getting ready for the development phase. The inception phase brings the following benefits:

Predicted results. We break down your project into smaller parts called use cases and user stories to clarify how one or other features should perform and then confirm the results with you

Flexible project scope. With the big picture of your project at hand, you can easily change the project’s MVP scope

Reduce development costs. Agreed project specification, architecture, and tech solutions allow us to describe the project in more detail, prioritize tasks more effectively, and schedule the development phase in a better way

Do you need to hire us for an inception phase for your particular project? Let’s find out.

What is inception in software engineering?

When you start a new mobile app project, there is tons of work to be done – selecting the best mobile app development team, shaping the business idea, clarifying requirements, creating technical documentation, and finding the most appropriate tech solutions.

There are too many tasks for a non-tech person. To complete all of these tasks you can hire a development team to start the inception phase.

The inception phase is a unified process of collecting and analyzing information about the project for:

Creating a project knowledge base for accessible knowledge transferring to avoid unnecessary development alterations and ensure a quick onboarding time
Structuring a team of people with the required experience and expertise
Mitigating risks which occur during software development
Performing project monitoring and providing excellent customer service – constant business function assessment, clear separation of responsibilities, transparent decision making, and escalation path

The business analysis part of this phase helps to understand the end-users, their needs, and requirements.

The technical aspect of the process leads to the system requirements specification that includes information necessary for development—for example, primary and additional features, measurable deliverables, and more.

At the end of the inception phase, you’ll have a well-rounded and in-depth understanding of the project goals, scope, and limitations.

What is the inception phase scope of work?

The scope of the unified process of the inception phase includes the following activities:

Elicitation of business goals, requirements, and other drivers that affect the implementation of a solution
Description of use cases of the solution
Generation and justification recommendations and decision options to implement the solution
Creation of prototypes of UI/UX design of the solution
Estimation of implementation scope and preparation of resource plan for the implementation phase

Inception phase deliverables

The App Solution team will prepare and deliver these deliverables to the client:

Technical documentation structure for the MVP phase

Documentation covering the MVP scope and including:

Elicited requirements and constraints
Defines solution use cases
Written solution architecture recommendations and decision options

Prototype of UI/UX

Our designer will create 3-4 screens of design proposals or assessment reports of existing designs.

[UI/UX design prototype, made by The APP Solutions. Try it on the link]

Resource plan for implementation

Our team estimates the implementation of the project and plans the development resources for the next phase.

What factors are estimated in the inception phase?

Since the inception phase is a unified process that includes many tasks from different areas, we gather the following team members that have specialized expertise in a particular sphere:

Business Analyst for:

Driving requirement sessions
Performing requirement analysis and prioritization
Collecting and writing use cases
Writing documentation

Solutions Architect for:

Initiating architectural sessions
Performing architectural analysis
Writing architecture vision or assessment report
Composing and estimating the implementation road map

[Example of project system architecture made by The APP Solutions Solution Architect]

UI/UX designer for:

Running UI/UX sessions
Performing UX analysis
Creating and preparing UI/UX design of the solution

Technology Experts for:

Contributing to the architecture analysis within their area of technological competence
Participating in the architectural sessions
Contributing to the assessment report, estimates, and presentation

[Environment vision example made at The APP Solutions]

Client’s Obligations

The client acknowledges that the completion of the Deliverables under this proposal depends on and requires the client’s commitment to provide all information needed to complete deliverables, give access to the necessary product owners and technical participants, and provide access to assets required by this phase.

You, as a client, agree to timely provide the mentioned above resources for The App Solutions to fully comply with its obligations under this proposal.

What are the inception phase stages?

The inception phase kicks off after you’ve signed an NDA, given us the project vision, and approved a rough project estimation. The inception phase includes the following software project planning activities:

Step 1. Initiation

During this planning phase of the software development life cycle, our business analyst schedules a call with you to clarify your project objectives and strategy, including target users, monetization models, an estimated number of users, and project scaling perspectives.

The main activities during the unified process of the inception phase are:

Introduce the team to stakeholders
Review your business case and project goals
Define the current state of the project

Step 2. Research

Next, the Business Analyst (BA) conducts market and competitor research to find out whether there is a place for such a business case in the market and to show how many similar projects already exist.

Main activities include:

Define business goals and needs
Demo of an existing product
Requirements elicitation session
Identify stakeholders’ concerns, risks, and issues

Step 3. Gathering requirements

We write down technical requirements for your project’s business case and start creating project technical documentation with use cases, user stories, suitable technologies, and third-party integrations.

Main activities are:

Technical assessment session
Requirements elicitation session
Collect functional and non-functional requirements
UI/UX review session
Identify and verify solution use cases

Step 4. Prototyping

Using the use cases of your project, our designer starts making layouts, wireframes, and prototypes while consulting with you on each result.

Our team is busy with the following actions:

Define scope boundaries
Prioritize the scope
Define MVP scope
Prepare outcome documentation
Validate outcomes with stakeholders

Step 5. Preparation for the development stage

Now, using a technical project specification, we prioritize features to identify the MVP’s scope, i.e., the list of functions sufficient to verify your business model and estimate the time and money required to implement one or other features.

Main activities are:

Finalizing outcome documents
Sending outcomes to the client
Final meeting to present deliverables to all client stakeholders

What happens after the Inception phase?

When the inception phase is over, you have several options:

You can use the technical documentation to launch the development stage with our team
Compare our technical specification with specifications provided by other developers and select the best one
Extend your existing development team with our specialists to build your project using our technical documentation

The inception phase adjusted to your needs

There are three main scenarios in which we provide clients with the inception phase:

Project lifecycle objectives from scratch

In this case, the main inception phase objective is to disprove or confirm your business idea. To achieve this, we create technical documentation so that you can build the project’s MVP.

The main deliverables are user stories, use cases, mockups, diagrams with system architecture recommendations, a list with technologies, third-party integrations, and precise estimation of project cost and length.

Project prototype without tech specification

If you have a ready-made project design and prototype, you can hire us to shape the technical side of your project, such as system architecture, user stories, and feature lists.

In this case, you will receive technical documentation that will include high-level requirements, use cases, user stories with general user flow, project system architecture diagrams, detailed project cost estimation, and project timeframes.

Improvement of a ready-made project

Such clients have ready-made projects, but they do not meet their business goals or work improperly. For such clients, we conduct a code review and show you how we can improve the project.

We provide a list of system errors and gaps, as well as recommendations on how to fix your project.

The unified process of the inception phase for clear objectives for the project

In a nutshell, the inception phase of software development allows us to achieve predictable results in business and technological solutions, reduce risks, decrease project costs, and receive a bigger picture of your project.

If you are ready to launch an inception phase for your project with us, drop us a few lines and our sales manager will schedule a call with you.