Conceptualisation

The conceptualisation practice covers all the important early phases of a project where careful problem definition and solution selection are critical to the success of the project. The services offered by the conceptualisation practice include:

• Research: Reports, discussion papers, policy papers and executive briefs on domain or system issues with a view to providing informed opinion and offering appropriate options.
• Business / Technology Strategy and Alignment: Working with C-level executives, Conducive will review the company’s business strategy to ensure that it fully utilises the competitive position that new or existing technology might create. We enable the alignment of business and technology strategy within the organisation, and beyond to the external market within which the company operates.
• Business Case Creation: Creation of business cases to support or verify management decisions. Particular cases might include buy versus build or outsource versus in source comparisons.
• Business Model Verification: Conducive will work with clients to verify pricing and operational models with a specific focus on low value, high volume payment systems.
• Business Analysis, Requirements Analysis and Specification Development: Assistance in gathering customer requirements through artefact review, structured interviews, development sessions and joint interface design sessions. Once gathered, requirements will be grouped, analysed and articulated in a requirement specification.
• Product Selection: Conducive will lead a customer through the process of defining the product requirements and creating a choice model, identifying candidate products and finally assisting in the evaluation and selection of an appropriate product.
• Procurement Strategy, Tender Development and Vendor Evaluation: Selecting products and vendors can be complex and risky process even when rigorous tendering techniques are used. Conducive will assist in identifying and pricing vendor and product risks, review specifications for consistency, applicability and testability, and assist in vendor analysis.
• Test Strategy: Test strategy and planning is an oft forgotten early stage in the project or development lifecycle. Conducive can assist with early identification of resource and technical needs for testing, methodology to follow and early conceptual requirements verification to remove ambiguity and expensive rework.

Volere Capability

The Conceptualisation practice has adopted a framework based on Volere for requirements specification. Volere was selected because of the atomic and testable nature of the requirements definition and prioritisation of the requirements.

Conducive was engaged by a client to pilot and assess Volere as a standard for business requirements specification across multiple divisions, and help customise templates and guidelines to encompass specific quality and regulatory checkpoints. The successful outcome reinforced the selection of Volere over alternate methodologies used by our consultants in the past.

The prioritisation of requirements provides a strong lead into our Design practice where Agile approaches may be used, and the way in which Volere defines a rationale and fit criteria for each requirement supports the Execution practice, particularly in defining user acceptance criteria.

Selected Conducive consultants have already attended training on the Volere framework and the company has committed to train other key members of the Conceptualisation team during 2009.

Design

The design services practice focuses on translating the business vision and customer requirements into the important technical blueprints that ensure project success. It is widely acknowledged that the early stages of software and technology projects are critical in ensuring project success; our design services practice has many years experience in articulating requirements, vision and desired outcomes in design and architecture artefacts. Some of the services delivered by the design practice include:

• System Architecture: We adopt a big picture “system of views” approach incorporating technical architecture (including performance, reliability etc.), database architecture, business architecture (including roles, responsibilities, processes and flows) and software architecture.
• Software Architecture: Class diagrams, sequence diagrams, interactions.
• Software Design (High Level): The correct design of components to ensure maximum reusability whilst remaining performance sensitive.
• Interface Design: Interface design is the key to seamless integration of disparate systems. Conducive has many years experience in developing highly interfaced systems.

Execution

The execution practice is responsible for ensuring that the correct inputs (from conceptualisation and design) are delivered correctly. Conducive remains intentionally uninvolved with the development, unit and integration testing activities so that the execution practice can act as an independent advisor and manager, to provide customers with inside knowledge of software development and infrastructure delivery. The execution practice includes:

• Project Management: Traditional project management services focusing on cost, time and quality over the entire software development lifecycle and covering technology infrastructure deployment and commissioning.
• Test Management: Specialised project management covering integration, test bed setup, test case development, test execution and reporting.
• Skills Transfer, Measurement and Feedback: Conducive is in business for the long term and we believe that by transferring our skills we create customer value and loyalty. Part of this service is measurement of the final output against the initial objectives both from a technical and customer satisfaction perspective.
• Independent Verification and Validation: Independence in verification and validation is based on three parameters: technical independence, managerial independence and financial independence. Conducive’s decision to avoid partnerships or alliances with vendors and maintain a technologically agnostic approach, coupled with our extensive experience in ICT delivery, places us in a perfect position for independent verification and validation.