CodePartners business analysts and project managers are trained and certified in both prevailing project management methodologies used today: the Waterfall Method and the Agile Method. The diagram follows a Waterfall sequence of events; however, even a one-week Agile sprint must include basic requirements gathering and scope determination followed by a short development and testing cycle focusing on a few key deliverables. 

Also, a Waterfall sequence of events can wrap many repetitive development and testing iterations (sprints), which can seem to give the best of both methodologies. To automate project lifecycle management, we use technology tools such as Microsoft Project Server. Also, our larger clients sometimes give us access to their technology tools, such as JIRA and Rally, when we are augmenting their staff. For source code control, we use various technologies such as CVS, SVN and TFS. All of these tools add value and accuracy to the software development and project management processes.

Regardless of which software project management methodology we use, quality must be assured. This requires testing the code along the way. Our QA department works hand-in-hand with our software developers to put the code through the tests using, in some cases, automated tools to apply use cases to deliverables. For automated testing, we use Load Runner, QTP, and Selenium. Bug management tools we use include Bugzilla and JIRA. It’s not always possible to discover and eliminate every software bug; however, we work hard to deliver substantially bug free code to our clients and then stand by to assist during their testing procedures. In doing so, we prepare for the next stage in the Delivery Phase, the Conference Room Pilot, which is a concentrated testing process meant to simulate a production environment in which the client can and should participate. I’ll share more about the Conference Room Pilot in future posts on the CodePartners’ software development methodology.