Touch and Click works as an intermediary between programming teams and clients to manage the software development process for web applications, business systems, and commercial products. We have programming teams in house who work with our design team primarily in PHP development, JavaScript, and Ajax. When a project is first proposed, we conduct an initial analysis that will guide the whole development cycle of the software to be designed. The first questions are to determine the context of how the application is to be used, which programming language will be most suitable for its development, and how the team should be constructed to build it. For simple projects, it may be possible for a single coder to bring the work to completion in a number of days or weeks. For more complex applications, we need to specially construct a team that will work together on an ad hoc basis for the term of the project, which may span upwards from 3 months to 2 years. Due to the wide variety of specializations required for software development at the current time, with a multiplicity of programming languages being used and a vast number of disparate platforms providing the base for implementation, we prefer to build our teams around the requirements at hand on a temporary basis. The most cost-effective and practical means of doing this is outsourcing on an international level. We build collaborative development groups who work together online as easily as being in the same office, and recruit top specialists uniquely qualified for the requirements of the application under development.
In conducting our analysis of the software development project under consideration, we first determine the context in which the finished software will be used. Is it for a website or a particular CMS? Will it be used across multiple platforms? Will it be released to the public under an Open Source license? Is it a proprietary business application for internal use? Will it be a stand alone desktop application? Answering these questions definitively limits the scope of the requirements and presents an obvious starting point for developing the team and the implementation plan. We then decide upon the programming language. In many instances the answer to the first question will present the solution to the second. For most web applications, it is a question of choosing to develop in PHP or ASP .Net. Simple web applications may be better suited to Java, JavaScript, or Ajax that can be easily scripted into a page, and other complex, stand-alone CMS and ecommerce projects may have requirements better suited for Ruby, RoR, or Python. We consult with our project managers and lead programmers in house to build recommendations, and then decide upon the best platform for implementation. When this decision is made, it is easy to proceed to the next requirement, which is assembling the core team to do the programming.
Touch and Click works internationally to outsource programming on a temporary basis to talented partners around the world to bring software development projects to life. We have excellent contacts in the Indian IT community, and are working to build a dedicated team of programmers there specializing in PHP and ASP .Net development. We also work with international coders from Europe, America, other countries in Asia, and locally in Australia depending on the requirements of the project. Touch and Click reviews each programmer individually, and gives them test projects to complete before joining one of our teams. If the programmers pass, and their portfolio and experience is world class, we make an offer for them to join our development team for the term of the project. All of our outsource partners are coordinated by our in-house project managers who draw up the implementation plan and manage quality control, testing, and final implementation. Over time, we have found this model to work best in building new solutions for clients on the most cost-effective basis, and under strict deadlines for a final product. Our project managers build relationships with outsourcing partners to last beyond a single project, knowing that it is not easy to recruit and keep top talent. Nevertheless, this method gives us the flexibility to build teams that specialize in new technologies and standards while maintaining the over all quality of the final application.
For more information about software development services at Touch and Click, contact one of our customer service representatives.
