Cornerstone's 4-D Dynamic Development Process ^SM

Cornerstone’s development track is designed to take you from where you are to where you want to be. We start with an in-depth Discovery to answer two vital questions: Where are you now? And, where do you want to be? From this can be determined what will have to be done. Discovery is a process and can be as simple or complex as the unique issues facing your organization. 

The results of the discovery are handed off to our Design and Analysis Team. This is where your technological future starts to take a tangible shape. Using the information in discovery, a complete statement of work (SOW) is created. This document then is reviewed with you for any adjustments. The process of Discovery and Design will reiterate until where you want to be has been fully described in form, price, and schedule.

The SOW includes what will be done, how much it will cost, who will do it, and when each step will be completed. It is common for larger projects to have many milestones – points along the way where tasks can be evaluated with the client. At Cornerstone, we use milestones, but we do not limit your inspection of the project to these key times. We offer bi-monthly. Twice each month, the project manager over your project, will update your project information and produce a report. This way you will always know where your project stands.

During the course of Development, you not only have the chance to review progress and function, but also to make changes. Changes to the SOW are documented on a Change Form to ensure a record is created to track the work done and associated cost changes. This simple administrative tool ensures that you will not have costs for which you have not budgeted. 

Before a project can be Deployed, it needs to be tested. Testing is the process of comparing the actual program to the specifications it was created from and the questions that need to be answered are:

• Does the software work correctly?
• Does the software do what it was designed to do?
  

Another important, and often neglected, form of testing is for usability. Usability testing answers a very vital question:

• Will the software be used?

Software that is hard to understand or too slow is hard – if not impossible – to use. For example, a web page that loads slowly is hard to use because the user may just give up waiting and go somewhere else. In the case of desktop applications, if the software uses terms or visual clues which the user has no reference for understanding, the software will either be miss-used or unused. Usability testing and/or the use of existing standards ensure that your software will be used.

Top of Page

---

Copyright © 1996 - 2003 Cornerstone Software, Inc. All rights reserved.