We at Aumadi have refined our process and engagement model with our customers over the last five years through learnings and experience. This process suits organisations of all sizes but fits better with startups and smaller businesses who don’t have the cushion of time and money, similar to a bigger company.
The steps in our model have been derived from the understanding that software development can never be perfect, no matter how strongly someone else in the industry might claim to be. There could be numerous factors derailing the project from its timeline and budget. After all, software is designed and developed by humans (at least until AI takes over completely, haha!).
We are sure you would have heard of the Agile Methodology of software development. It’s a widely popular industry-wide practice followed by software development teams to build software. For the uninitiated, Agile is an iterative approach of software development where teams deliver value in iterations. You can read more about the original Agile Manifesto here.
But what happens before you start building? And what happens after? This is where we have documented our process to build around the framework but make it more comprehensive and suitable for startups as well as small businesses.
For any new product development, most often than not, we follow the below stages of our process or engagement :
To begin the journey we learn what problem are we solving . We have one or multiple rounds of discussion with you to better understand what we need to build and why are we building it. Who is the user and what your objectives are from this new product that you are building.
We also get to know each other and decide we are the right fit. Once discussions are over, we come back to you with the solution approach and the estimates of time and cost for the prototype phase.
Design stage is where we work with you to understand the details of the requirement and design the solution. Together with you we decide the priority of features that would go into the first build. Once the priority is in place, our product designer can go ahead and create wireframes that give you an understanding of how the application would look like.
After the wireframes are reviewed, we build the UX/UI for the application including the look and feel of the final product. The high-fidelity prototype, built on Figma, allows you to follow the user journey like a real app.
We recommend our clients to take this prototype to their potential users and get feedback. This feedback can be utilised to make changes at this stage, thus de-risking the development.
Now we are ready to build. This is when our software developers start coding. We follow the agile methodology and breakdown the first version of the application into iterations.
From our experience and Design Thinking principles, we recommend our customers to build an Minimum Viable Product (MVP) first. There are many advantages to this approach such as low cost to develop, lower risk, time to market and capturing feedback.
After the development stage, we launch the product online and handover the codebase to you. You own the IP and the tangibles of the application. We also offer ongoing support and maintenance for the application as well.
As you can see, this is a cyclic process. After the MVP is out there in the market, you get feedback and some initial traction, then we go back to the first step to understand what is the next objective, design and then develop.
An important thing to note is, all these stages are treated independently. At any stage, if you feel you don’t like what you have achieved with us, you can take the deliverables till that stage and find another agency or hire your team.
We, however, have seen 94% of the clients who start the journey with us have continued all the way through with us. More than 70% have returned for the next phase of development.
If you are also looking for a passionate team with the right process to build your product, feel free to reach out to us here.
