How we do it

... either as limiting factors (i.e. ‘we can’t do that – the software won’t support it’); as drivers for change when business processes are tailored to the use of a new application; or in providing the support required to develop, refine and operate a new business process. 

Conventionally, new business processes and supporting IT are designed and developed in isolation from the day-to-day business and may take months or years before they are ready for implementation and rollout.  Once rollout begins, problems with the supporting information technology are difficult and expensive to correct.  Plus, the process being supported will have changed during the development process, so that the system will be out-of-date on day one.

We offer an alternative approach, focused on the definition of a set of incremental steps.  With each step, the business has time to adjust to the change, assess benefits, provide feedback and drive the next set of changes based on real information rather than guesses and assumptions.  Each step is designed to take the business closer to its strategic goal, and is driven by the business, not the technology.  This allows the business to accommodate external commercial or regulatory changes as a matter of course.

We are able to do this because of kinodb, our application development and deployment technology.  Based on industry-standard technology, kinodb has been used to produce large-scale applications for many blue-chip organisations.

Iterative development using kinodb

Whilst almost any development environment can be used iteratively, most offer poor support for this type of development.  In contrast, kinodb is ideally suited to such use for the following reasons:

Speed – keeping iterations short is essential to maintain momentum.  Using kinodb, each iteration may last only a few days.

Productivity – iterative development becomes difficult in large teams.  kinodb’s productivity means that development teams are far smaller than are required with other development techniques.

Transparency – maintaining the application definition as a meta-model means that the impact of changes on existing functionality can be easily assessed by a developer.

Availability – When users review the output of an iteration, they’re reviewing the real application, not a mock-up or prototype.  kinodb applications are deployed to users’ browsers, so users throughout a global organisation may be kept involved with no overhead.

Manageability – kinodb has sophisticated version management functions fully integrated with the development process, allowing tight control of development, test and production environments.  Every change in application functionality is traceable back to the requirement that gave rise to it.

We would welcome the opportunity to discuss how our approach and toolset would be of benefit to your organisation - please contact us if you would like to know more.