At Amadeus Consulting, we designed our proprietary hybrid development method by combining leading-edge best practices with proven development methods from our over 14 years of experience. The method is constantly evolving as both the industry and our experience grow. Our clients need a process that can be flexible and rigid; flexible to meet the changing requirements, and rigid to ensure that both the budget and timeline constraints can be met. We appreciate the apparent conflicting nature of these needs, and have customized a methodology to balance them.
Our commitment is to provide software deliverables to review and explore every two weeks once we move into the project development phase. This commitment is another example of how we design our process to ensure the big picture "win" along with a series of intermediate wins as the project progresses. In our development process at Amadeus Consulting, we incorporate the best elements of what is often referred to as the Agile and Waterfall methods.
We use the two week sprint as a way that we can both plan and yet be flexible to changing client needs. A sprint begins with a planning meeting in which both the client and Team Lead participate. The purpose of this meeting is to align upon the immediate priorities of the sprint, as well as to discuss longer term goals and priorities.
While the sprint is taking place, the Team Lead and the client are in high-level discussions for future sprints and together strategizing wins. At the end of the sprint, the development team will test the results and deliver to the client a working, demonstrable piece of functionality. This allows the client to see the results of the development effort as the project progresses. In most cases, sprints are cumulative allowing the client to be able to see more and more of the end-to-end solution as time goes on, in much the same way one can watch a house being built. If the client signifies, however, that a tangential piece of functionality needs to be completed, the team is flexible enough to be able to accomplish that goal, thus delivering a win in a shorter time frame. As this process does not replace major milestones, longer term planning can still be done without the long gaps between seeing the results of the development effort.