We know how difficult it can be to hand over your project to an offshore team. Our team has an extensive experience of managing projects for overseas customers and we always aim to work together in a way that fits into the customer organisation.
This includes using tried and tested procedures to ensure everything runs smoothly and our own specially-developed project-management and record-keeping software to document every stage. You can also keep up-to-date with the latest developments by phone - the majority of our programmers and all our project managers speak English to a high level.
We intend to make your outsourcing experience as much like having a separate department of your own company as we can.
We understand that communication is the key factor in a project's success. Despite the fact that all of the project managers (as well as the rest of the team) speak very good English, we know that having a live meeting is much more efficient than talking over email. Thus, we are keen to fly over to UK for meetings. In addition, we also use other communication methods like conference calls and desktop sharing.
Each project at Future Processing is assigned to a carefully selected group of qualified engineers led by a project manager who is responsible for achieving the project objectives. Ideally, there also is a single point of contact, acting as a project manager at the client side. Future Processing is used to this model of managing the projects as most of our clients are based abroad and smooth communication is always essential to the project success.
Several project development methodologies are used by Future Processing, depending on project characteristics and customer requirements. We have developed our own methodology based on Feature Driven Development. It focuses on frequent deliveries of usable and tested code to the users. Although this methodology is our preferred option in some of the projects we have used:
But our strength lies not in these methodologies, but our flexibility and our ability to adapt. We know from experience that projects and clients differ from each other and so we try to take elements from the most appropriate methodologies to find the best way forward for each individual project and client. Although each project has great autonomy, Future Processing also has its own set of general principles projects adhere to.
Over the past few years, this approach has proven to work best for our clients as well as for us.
Project management at Future Processing is supported with software tools which facilitate communication among team members and store documents related to the development process. The main tool is FP Dev, a web-based project management system that has been internally developed to fit our processes as closely as possible. It is used for issue tracking, provides comprehensive information on the project progress and supports planning and managing project resources.
If the need arises, our own internal systems are integrated with clients' or other external systems (like.g.: SharePoint, BaseCamp, jira, etc.) to make it easier for the client (and for us) to have everything in one place.
We always make sure that the source code as well as documentation related to the projects is version controlled. Depending on the project and customer we use Subversion (SVN), Team Foundation Server (TFS), GIT or Mercurial. All files, which are stored outside of the version control servers, are regularly backed-up so the risk of any data loss is minimised.
You can click on the following link to learn more about project management in offshore software development.
There are certain parts of the development process that are fully automated. We use so-called continuous integration so any source code change committed to the version control server triggers an automatic compilation process. It leads to automatic tests execution and in some projects creation of the software installation package. The continuous integration helps in monitoring the project progress and notifying all the relevant team members about the current project state.
Self-development is one of the principles that we follow, not only in the project management area, but everywhere in the company. At Future Processing the most experienced project managers form an internal experts group. These experts deliver internal trainings to new project managers. Additionally, everyone has the opportunity to take external exams and / or certification programmes, like for example: Prince2.
Future Processing is committed to providing the best possible products and to continually improving the quality of its service and management practices. We have achieved ISO 9001:2008 certification for our Quality Management System which addresses all areas of our software operation.
