Project Delivery

Customers use Coherent to create technology solutions and perform projects they are unable to complete on their own or in situations where the constraints or opportunities in their business make the opportunity cost of doing a project high enough that it is more advantageous to outsource it.

Coherent’s project delivery model is designed to provide the full life cycle of services for software development including complete testing and ongoing maintenance and enhancements. Customers benefit from Coherent’s ability to deliver high quality solutions on time and on budget.

• Pricing options include fixed bid or time and materials
• Project management controls used to provide detailed status throughout
• Project execution model set in cooperation with client based on project. Options include Agile, Iterative Waterfall (Traditional), and others
• Warranty options available to assure specified quality requirements

Coherent’s model delivers superior results because it uses its industry leading delivery management to create strong integration between its teams and the client’s organziation.  The following diagram illustrates the company’s base project framework.

      Discovery

Goal: Gain detailed understanding of customer objectives and project        parameters

 

Can be performed on site at client.

 

 

Pricing: Fixed     

Duration: time boxed in weeks

                                          Read more

 

 

      Planning

Goal: Start up outsourcing team and begin productive work in alignment with client expectations

 

Select execution methodology - agile, iterative waterfall etc. 

 

Pricing: Free

Duration: 1-2 weeks      

                                          Read more

 

 

Operation

Goal: Deliver project on in accordance with customer expectation

Full life cycle to be executed 'natively' in your environment or separated on total tunkey basis.

Pricing: Fixed or T&M 

Duration: months-years        Read more

 

 

Maintenance & Enhancement

Goal: Maintain system and enchance it       for customer and market opportunities

SLAs defined for governance.

 

 

 

 

Pricing: T&M or FTE based

Duration: months-years        Read more

 

 

Discovery
Coherent begins project engagements with a discovery phase intended to provide Coherent with insight regarding the customer’s overall business objectives and the detailed parameters surrounding the project to be completed.  This phase is used to ensure alignment within the customer organization on project objectives and scope.

Coherent performs requirements and technical analysis in order to define base process flows, user scenarios, high level requirements, and the general solution architecture for the project.  The goal of these activities is to document the project in enough detail that a proposal can be created outlining how a vendor could execute the project.  These artifacts can then be used by Coherent or any other vendor to create a detailed bid for the project.

Our experience shows that every discovery phase is distinct because of differing customer needs and system complexity.  As a result, the exact activities and deliverables to document the situation may vary but will include some combination of the following:

• Requirements specifications
• Architecture model
• UI design and wireframes
• High level data model

Frequently, this phase is conducted onsite or by a blended onsite / offshore team.  In most cases the Discovery phase is done on a fixed cost basis.

Planning
Coherent uses the Planning phase to create a proposal based on information gathered from the Discovery process.  The proposal defines scope, major milestones, deliverables, and completion criteria for the project.  In addition, the plan will specify the execution methodology to be used for the project.  Methodologies are selected based on the stability of requirements, the timeline, industry/application imposed process requirements (e.g. regulatory, compliance, etc.), and the customer’s software development process maturity and norms.

The most common methodologies used are:

• Agile - Scrum is Coherent’s default project execution methodology because it’s our experience that its emphasis on teamwork, collaboration, and tangible results is the most effective way to organize distributed teams.  Coherent has successfully used Agile methodologies on dozens of project in a wide variety of environments. This approach:
  • Minimizes process overhead to only value-added components
  • Accommodates changing requirements and customer needs
  • Develops products and applications quickly with minimal documentation
  • Provides a more constructive framework to engage the offshore team to gain their commitment and leverage their initiative, creativity, and passion.

  Agile projects utilize task burn down and feature velocity metrics as the primarily gauges of the health of the project.

• Iterative Waterfall (traditional) - Coherent uses an iterative adaptation of the classic predictive waterfall methodology.  This methodology is appropriate when team sizes are bigger or certain factors such as regulatory requirements, standards compliance, or budgetary tracking create an environment that requires more elaborate documentation of plans and activities.
  • Allows for the coordination of larger teams in a methodical manner
  • Manages costs and schedules more explicitly
  • Manages risks on a more formal basis
  • Provides for more formal change control
  • Generates better documentation, plans, and artifacts

  Traditional projects use earned value metrics against baselined project plans as the primary gauge of the health of the project.

Execution
The execution phase of the project is performed in accordance with the proposal created during the prior phase.  Work is performed onsite at the customer as necessary and at Coherent’s Minneapolis and Minsk offices. The execution phase can be completed ‘natively’ within the customer’s development infrastructure or on a separate turnkey basis within Coherent’s infrastructure.

In the instance where the project operates natively within the customer’s infrastructure, Coherent uses the customer’s version control, application lifecycle management (ALM), defect management, and build management systems.  In addition, Coherent may use the customer’s test and integration environments as necessary.  Customers select this option to increase their visibility and control over work or to simplify the task of integrating the Coherent team with other parts of the project.

In the instance where Coherent performs the project on a separate turnkey basis within its own infrastructure, it supplies all version control, ALM, defect management, and build management systems as well as any required integration or testing environments and provides customers access to these as needed.  Customers select the turnkey option in instances where they do not have sufficient infrastructure to host the project or where there is little need to integrate the Coherent team’s activities on the project with other parties.

The execution phase follows the basic steps of the software development life cycle (SDLC) regardless of whether an Agile or Iterative Waterfall methodology is used for management and coordination.  These steps include the following:

Maintenance & Enhancement
Once the project is finished, Coherent provides ongoing services for its maintenance and support as well as extension through enhancements.  Services offered during the Maintenance & Enhancement phase include:

• Production monitoring and support
• Level 2 (break/fix) and level 3 (bug/fix) ongoing maintenance
• Ongoing enhancements driven by new customer or market opportunities
• Flexible resource pool queued up to respond to ongoing needs