Our Approach
Our Method
Lightwave® is our proprietary software development methodology. It is a set of processes, recipes, tools, and best practices that help us deliver software efficiently and with low risk, while giving our clients an excellent experience.
Open For Business
We aim to give our customers full project transparency and ensure your team has continuous influence over the product's evolution.
I very much appreciate the updates and all the hard work Jonah Group is putting into ensuring we deliver a meaningful and useful tool to our members. Jonah has done amazing work thus far and continues to develop a superior and useful product.
CEO, HVPA
We Discover
LightWave® begins with a Discovery phase to introduce your product vision. Our team aligns on your business model, target markets, and goals to clarify project requirements and evaluate constraints.
We plan effectively and accurately, then work hard, fast, and smart to meet those targets.
Clarity power ROI
Missing project targets always costs more than the marginal savings offered by consultants who "bid low, sell high" with change requests. We don't do that.
Instead, we believe in getting it right the first time. This puts extra up-front load on discovery, but the focus and clarity of our planning creates huge business value.
Discovery delivers
100% of our software development projects are delivered into production (compared to an industry average of 82%). We're not exaggerating — every single one of our projects goes on to create real value for our customers.
This perfect record is in part attributed to the quality of our Discovery. It's proof we don't mess around. We plan thoroughly, we budget our time and resources effectively, and we deliver.
We Iterate
Frequent, iterative delivery reduces risk and ensures the right features are being developed to maximize value. Continuous integration and automated unit testing allow us to specify acceptance criteria and properly test for every environment and scale.
Prioritize
The outcome of one iteration often informs the choices made in subsequent ones: what was important 3 weeks ago may not be as important now. Re-evaluating priority at the beginning of each iteration ensures that you're always doing something valuable.
Analyze
Requirements may have been specified at a high level, but in the analysis phase of each iteration we drive out the remaining details such that features can be built without the developer having to invent missing requirements.
Design
User goals and activities eventually drive Interactive, Visual and Technical designs. The Design activity of each iteration translates feature requirements to models in these three domains. These are reviewed by our clients before we proceed to build.
Build
During Build, requirements are translated directly into source code so that the application mirrors these directly. We develop object model programs to model the business environment, transaction programs to update the model, connectors to integrate other systems, and intuitive user interface to engage the user.
Test
In addition to the automated unit tests created during the build phase, the application is deployed to the test environment so that we can test the end-to-end functions of the application, and our clients can validate the iteration result. Early and frequent deployment allows operations scripts and processes to be developed in parallel with the application, avoiding risky big-bang deployments.
Deploy
During deployment, the application makes the transition to its user's community, which includes manufacturing, delivering, training, supporting, and tuning the application until the users are satisfied. New story development can continue (beginning with Prioritize) while released stories provide interim value and ROI.
Improve quality with feedback
An iterative development process provides ample opportunity to tune the requirements and steer the project outcome. It also ensures that the highest value features are available for any given budget.
Automated unit testing, continuous integration, source code as the primary artifact, convention over configuration, “just enough” documentation, and frequent, iterative delivery are the cornerstones of our method.
We Sustain
Completing a full project cycle is an exciting time for everyone — you have an exciting new app or feature and we have a clearer picture of your ambitions and operating preferences. Our relationship continuously mirrors the increasing value of the product, and we are better able to serve your needs and work to the specifications that make you most comfortable.
Full service maintenance
Comprehensive product support begins as soon as some aspect of the project has been deployed. Further development can continue while our role expands to training, service, and even maintenance and operations of the product, if you like.
Long-term partner
We're excited by the prospect of long-term customer relationships — they allow us to do our best work, and are one of the primary ways we measure success as a company.
Meet the TeamUnprecedented project transparency.
We understand customer stress levels are directly connected to project progress visibility. Lychee is the mobile project management dashboard we created that shows you every detail of your project, including how much progress we've made toward our shared target, and what the outstanding issues, risks, and milestones are today. We know where ever dollar and hour are spent on our projects — now you can too.
Lychee lets you track all parts of the project process, if you want to.
Why Choose Custom?
Exploit a competitive advantage
Develop a custom system that your competitors can only dream about.
Tune security, performance, scalability
Understand and gain control of your entire system.
Match your process
Fit the system to your process, so it can support how your team already works.
Gather intelligence from diverse sources
Consolidate incompatible data sources and generate dynamic reports to improve business.
Eliminate licensing fees & bloatware
Use 100% of the software that you buy, without the need for ongoing licensing fees.
Modernize legacy systems
Gradually replace legacy framework code, and re-use valuable business logic on modern platform.
Custom-built solutions are tailored to match how you already work. All aspects of your specific business are considered: your strategic objectives, human resources, business processes, timelines, specific technical environment, and more.