Magenic has developed its own software development process called the Magenic Performance Process™ to help ensure each project team consistently delivers high-quality technology solutions on time and within the budget. The templates, tools and procedures in the Magenic Performance Process™ provide our consultants with industry-standard best practices to produce consistent results while maintaining a flexible software development process that can be applied easily by the entire project team.
At its core, the Magenic Performance Process™ is based on Microsoft Solutions Framework™ (MSF). Magenic Foundation Process™ also incorporates many Rational Unified Process (RUP) artifacts and best practices. Quality in the Foundation Process follows principles outlined by the Quality Assurance Institute.
The goal of the Magenic Foundation Process™ is to promote the successful delivery of business-driven technology solutions using proven tools and techniques while adapting to project changes.
The Magenic Performance Process™ methodology uses a set of models and phases. By providing templates, tools and procedures for project initiation through project closure and integrating quality principles throughout, the Performance Process accounts for the details needed to drive towards successful completion of simple to complex application development projects.
The Magenic Performance Process™ was designed to be a fast, focused, and efficient methodology for delivering business applications. The approach is iterative, allowing Teams to implement stable software releases in rapid succession, utilizing smaller pieces. The Magenic Performance Process™ builds quality planning into the process which includes checkpoints and reviews to ensure the issues unique to software development are addressed. Issues such as security, fault tolerance and supportability as well as other design goals are built into the process documentation and verified during reviews.
Envisioning Phase
The Envisioning Phase is used to determine the short-term and long-term goals and objectives of the business solution. Discussing and understanding both sets of goals allows the Team to plan the development of the solution with these in mind. The primary activities accomplished during the Envisioning Phase are the formation of the core team, the Vision/scope, the Project Agreement and the Design Goals document along with producing a final project test to validate the success of the project.
Requirements Phase
The Requirements Phase gathers the detailed business requirements of the project giving the developers the necessary information to create database schemas, build a user interface, code the business rules, design reports, and interface to other systems. The Requirements Phase also provides the testing team with valid test criteria. Verification processes completed during the Requirements phase help reducing project risk by integrating quality early in the project.
Design Phase
During the Design Phase the detailed business requirements for the project are defined, the testing plan is developed, a prototype is created (if needed), and design is completed. The level of design required for a project can vary, based on the complexity of business infrastructure to be developed as part of the project.
Development Phase
The Development Phase takes the results of the Requirements and Design Phase and implements them in terms of components. The components are usually broken out into sub-releases. Each sub-release will culminate in a controlled build of the system. These builds will then be deployed to separate development and testing environments using an automated install (when possible). Documentation developed for operational support will also be generated. Scheduling the development in this way provides several benefits:
- As part of the development process, Magenic collaborates with partner resources to perform the development and build processes. This ensures there is knowledge transfer focusing on how the system is designed and constructed. Support and operational documentation is also validated during this process.
- The testing team receives functionality early and often providing the opportunity to finalize testing scripts, document unit testing efforts, develop and integrate automation tests and introduce stability early into the product creating a more productive development environment.
- The project team is provided with an informal opportunity to audit the solution being developed.
Stabilization Phase
The Stabilization Phase approaches testing and deployment by focusing on the classes of testing required to produce commercial-quality solutions. The Foundation process provides the development and test teams with standardized testing processes and templates thereby providing maximum benefit from testing resources. This reduces the possibility that important features are not tested and provides for consistent and accurate delivery.
The Stabilization Phase is also designed to ensure that not only is the functionality of the solution confirmed, but also that the project can be operationally supported in the long-term.