The Elements of Success

The discovery phase is a crucial first step for any web design or software development project. It includes the necessary research and analysis required to determine how the website, software or application can best serve the needs of the business and its customers. Our research and technology experts will guide you through the business strategy, user experience, and technical analysis areas of discovery.

This is the phase where we enter the “solution space,” where we look at how we can meet the organizational objectives and user needs that are defined in the discovery phase. Designers and system architects take the lead in design. This is when we finalize the features and functionality needed, the technical architecture of the solution. This is also where we provide a visual design concept and user workflows that will define the user experience on the website.

This is the phase where the developers take over and start building the underlying infrastructure, the platform on which all else rests. They build the features and functionality as specified in the technical specifications from discovery. Front-end developers implement the design concepts and user interface created in the design phase. Our software development life cycle is mature, hardened, and secure. We use industry-standard continuous integration, static code analysis, and modern DevOps principles to build and secure code.

Once all the code is complete, the IT group takes the fore and leads the deployment process. Our expertise in DevOps and Infrastructure-as-Code enables us to make the complex and challenging task of taking a complex website manageable and a smooth transition for users. The automation we leverage to deploy code also follows the best practice of planning for failure and creating environments that scale, self-heal and are secure. We limit human interaction with production environments to simply lessen the errors that can be introduced.

While the name may sound a bit frivolous at first, the delight phase is extremely important for any website that is interested in attracting, engaging and retaining customers who exist in a continuously evolving web-enabled world. This is the phase where the KPIs identified back in the discovery phase, incorporated into the design, and developed into the code should be monitored. Whether it is monitoring page views to determine user interest, assisting with A/B tests to optimize interfaces, or tracking conversion funnels, monitoring is the best way to ensure you are keeping your users happy. Of course, monitoring is only as effective as the insights gained from monitoring are put into practice.