Software Development
At Moorhouse Works, our goal is to create quality software to meet your business needs.
To achieve this, we follow a structured development process that normally includes a number of stages - the exact sequence and emphasis on each stage will vary slightly according to your needs and the scope of your project.
- We start by learning about your business processes. A consultant will interview your key people to understand data that already exists, and how it supports and flows between key business functions. We document the relevant information in a high level requirements document - a concise statement of your needs.
- We may produce a mockup of key aspects of the system to facilitate understanding of your needs. This helps to ensure that you have framed your business problem clearly and that we understand what is required.
- We will then present our proposal where we provide options on how the system can be developed. We often use a workshop to ensure we have an accurate assessment of your business needs.
Once you have decided to proceed, we then move to another phase. Some of the tasks we typically undertake include:
- Working with you to define your business requirements in more detail.
- Depending on the scope of the application we may build a prototype. Just as a picture is worth a thousand words, we find a prototype enhances communication and helps you to visualise how the system will look and feel.
The end result of this second phase is a Functional Specification. This document describes in detail what functionality the system will provide, and how it will appear. Various inputs to the system and outputs such as reports are also described. The document will also contain a brief overview of technical requirements such as where data will be sourced from and the operating environment for the system.
From here we proceed to the actual construction of the system which involves tasks such as the detailed design of screens and reports, conversion of existing data, documenting and testing the system.
The final and most important stage is commissioning the system, where the system goes live.
At each stage we work closely with you to ensure your requirements are met. Some of these activities can happen in parallel or be repeated as we refine the design of your system.
If you're interested in understanding this process in more detail, read our Methodology page.
