Requirements gathering
Without question this is the most important stage of the
development process. This is where we sit down with the client and
really try to iron out the exact requirements a client has. We come
into the process as a complete outsider to the business / industry
our client operates in and we hopefully leave it as a bit of an
expert, allowing our design nerds to create a site that looks
great, delivers fantastic content, is painfully easy to use and is
incredibly easy to manage.
Design and development
Once we know what you want and we've managed to come up with a
design, wire-frame and sitemap for a fantastic new website we start
the leg work and commence development.
To ensure that your site gets to market as quickly as possible
we design the content structure first whilst we plug-in the really
geeky "back-end" stuff. Because Umbraco separates the content
from "code" really nicely this enables you to start entering your
content before the site is actually finished, eliminating the need
for a content entry stage at the end.
Sprints
We work in an agile manner and where possible (with
the larger projects) we split the entire workload of the project
into a number sprints (normally 1-2 weeks in length).
At the end of a sprint a complete section of work will be
available for demonstration, review and sign-off by the client. The
completion of all of the sprints thus marking the completion
of the project.
To ensure complete customer satisfaction at each and every
stage, we give the client the ability to sign-off each sprint (as
opposed to the project as a whole).
Working in this way allows us to involve the client at every
stage of development thus increasing communication / feedback and
culminating in a vastly improved end result.
Testing and deployment
Following completion of the development sprints we
perform our final checks for compliance with web
standards and then place your site on our staging server. At
this point your site will be visible to the world (though under our
staging url). This is where we (and you) really try to break the
system with some heavy user testing and fixing.
Once testing and fixing is complete your site is ready to "push
the button" and send live. Quick, find a soap box and tell
everybody.