Software Development Projects – Engagement Models at Aress

Software Development Projects – Engagement Models at Aress

Aress Software offers Engagement Models to suit all software development projects.

Depending on the project type, timelines and complexity clients can choose from the engagement models below or a combination of them for different phases of the project.

• Fixed Time Pricing

• Dedicated Developer

1. Engagement Modes

Fixed Time Pricing

This model is most suitable when the project requirements are clear along with its scope and specifications.

• The project is scoped based on the customer requirements and specifications.
• Fixed time estimates are calculated as per the defined scope of the project. Estimation technique followed at Aress is based on WBS (Work Breakdown Structure)
• The project is priced at a fixed cost. Project Management is calculated as 15% of the total implementation effort
• Anything above the defined scope of work needs to be considered as additional and charged separately.
• Project Management for such projects follows the Aress defined Project Management process wherein communication plan is defined and a point of contact at both the client’s end as well as Aress’ end is also defined.
• A Project Lead is allocated to the project and takes the role of point of contact from Aress’ end.
• Based on the approved scope of work a project plan is defined and followed throughout the project SDLC cycle. Project schedule is prepared using Microsoft Project.

Dedicated Developer

This engagement model is particularly used to provide a dedicated facility as an extension to the client’s own software development team. This offering normally follows an extensive period of engagement.

• Dedicated developer(s) is assigned to the customer on a monthly basis based on the project skill set requirement.
• Minimum contract period of 3 months.
• The day to day tasks to be given to the developer are defined by the client.
• For dedicated developer engagement mode, we encourage customers to also hire dedicated QA as per the team’s requirement.
• 100% upfront payment at the start of each month.
• 30 days of notice period before the termination of the dedicated developer contract.
• Daily reports and project status tracking.
• Direct interaction with the developer over the preferred IM to have quick discussions with respect to the work to be done or even walk-throughs of the work delivered.

2. Global Delivery Model

This is best suited for companies who have onsite/onshore teams and also have a supporting offshore team. This model features the combination of onsite, and offshore models. The Hybrid model provides the cost-effectiveness of the offshore model as well as the face-to-face contact that is crucial to preventing communication gaps and ensuring projects’ success.

Communication

Communication is, far and away, the most important aspect of working with offshore and onsite teams.

• Calls - Calls are very important, but has limitations due to language, accent, and dialect differences. Therefore, very concise, clear, and simple instruction is more beneficial. A single point of contact at the onsite team end is preferred to minimize various communication issues.
• Written Communication - Emails, product documentation and instant messaging tools are the common forms of written communication between the offshore and the onsite team members. These all provide members of the team time to read, and analyze the written content before responding. Better understanding and less confusion results in higher efficiency and can save all team members time.
• Meetings
  • Daily standup meetings - These would help streamline the daily tasks for each of the team members. It also helps to identify and flag off task blockers well in time for the onsite team to address it so that the offshore team member can get going on the same
  • Weekly status meetings – These could be meetings done with the project manager and the high-level stake holders of the project to understand the progress and the health of the project. This can also be used to discuss any specific concerns or risks involved at the project level.

Configuration Management

• When more than one teams work together on a single product/project its essential that code versioning systems are in place to avoid code loss, code conflicts etc.
• Tools like GitHub, BitBucket, TFS, SVN etc can be used to avoid such issues.
• Code commit and checkout processes need to be well defined and followed by all the development team members to ensure that work is done always on the latest code.

Work Timings

• When working with an offshore team, time differences can be drastically different. It requires even better communication and better documentation. For achieving maximum work efficiency between the separate teams
• There should be a time overlap between the teams to hand over the work.
• Code commits need to be done by all the developers in the team at the end of the day to ensure that the other team’s developer would get the latest code to work on.
• Clear and specific communication is needed when work needs to be transferred from one team to another.
• Development team works 5 days a week; 9 hrs per day. Saturday and Sunday being the weekly off.
• All Indian National Holidays will be observed for the length of this contract. List of holidays for the current year would be shared at the start of the contract period.

Project Level Processes

• To avoid misunderstandings about how work should be done, define, document, and educate the team on consistent processes that will be followed across all the teams.
• Define the artifacts to be produced, the metrics to be tracked at the various stages of the processes.
• Clearly define authority and responsibilities: who does what, what is delivered to whom, and what standards are to be met. You may want to use the concept of a "RACI" matrix to determine who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, or Informed for each deliverable or process step.