The Requirements Agency
Fail Fast, Fail Often. In Other Words, Iterate.
Iteration is one of the core principles of how we work. We believe you simply won’t get it right the first time. Fast Company has a really great article about how iteration leads to innovation. It tells the story of the Wright Brothers and how they failed, tried again, and failed, and tried again hundreds of times before they found flight.
The article goes on to talk about rapid prototyping, which is simply another way to describe our use of software visualization. Visualization is how we help companies define software. We start with Pre-vis, which is a very low fidelity representation of high-level business requirements and system features. We may take multiple passes to make sure everyone is on the same page about what the project is about, what it will accomplish, and more.
From pre-vis we go into visualization. Now that everyone understands the baseline of the project, we kick into medium to high fidelity and iterate on all the fine details. During visualization, stakeholders see their software come to life. What they see isn’t traditional static wireframes or reams of documentation. They see a fully interactive and functioning “prototype” of their software. During visualization we will iterate on functionality multiple times until we get it right.
Through each iteration and review, the functionality of the software solidifies. We may explore many ideas that we find after testing and review simply don’t work. Making rapid changes to these failures is quick, easy and inexpensive because we’re not writing or deploying code. Changes can be made in minutes, not days or weeks.
Our clients are consistently amazed at how much work we can accomplish over a few days. We are successful because we fail fast, and we fail early.
Your next project has a 72% chance of failure. Here is how to avoid it.
According to the leading industry analysts, approximately 72% of projects failed in 2010 due to mis-understood requirements and objectives. This number has increased from prior years due the ever-growing complexity of software applications. Even with a plethora of tools to choose from, our industry still hasn’t figured out a way to define and deliver projects successfully – every time. At OneSpring, we believe it’s more about the talent of our people and the approach we take than the tools we employ. As one of my colleagues aptly put it, “just because you have a paint brush in your hands doesn’t make you Monet”. So, what if you could ensure every feature and function of your next software project would be a hit with your end-customer and project stakeholders? This is possible, and it is completely within reach to you and your team – today.
Eliminate failed projects by first rapidly visualizing your project to gain clarity and acceptance before committing time, money and IT resources to building the wrong project. Whether your company is creating a new project from scratch, redesigning an existing project or even adding new features in an enhancement project, ambiguity is the number-one threat to your project failing. While there are a number of software development methodologies and techniques in use today, they still fall short in being able to effectively communicate the requirements of a project clearly. For example, common techniques such as Use-Cases, Sequence Diagrams, UML and even Wireframes that are used today by corporations across every industry still lack the ability for you and your stakeholders to truly interact with and see your requirements in action. In short, your project requirements cannot be fully understood unless they can be experienced. A fully interactive simulation of your requirements gives you, your team and your customer the ability to experience your future state application before it is built. Traditionally, creating a prototype of the product has been an optimal solution for testing, feedback and requirements validation purposes. However, it is typically cost-prohibitive to engage large teams of Information Technology (IT) staff to create code-based prototypes for every project. Previsualization is a modern method for prototyping that typically takes one-third of the time and budget previously spent on prototyping to accomplish with the same beneficial results. In some instances, the savings are even greater.
Previsualization was originally created in the motion picture industry as a means for film makers to quickly and cost-effectively plan each shot of their movie. Using a lower resolution version of the picture, the film’s director and other key players could easily envision each scene and make changes until they had refined it to a perfect scene. Then, once perfectly planned, the crew would produce the high-resolution version for use in the final film. This method proved to be so successful at saving time and production costs that previsualization is required on virtually all films made today. Even those working on the “small screen” of television have begun to use previsualization as a way to cut costs and improve end products.
OneSpring has brought the technique of previsualization to the software industry. Piggy-backing off lessons learned in the entertainment world, OneSpring has developed a unique process that combines low-resolution interactive models with feature-level requirements and traceability into a “movie” that everyone on your team can easily view and understand. Equally important, if changes are needed, then the previsualization of your application can be rapidly updated until the desired results are achieved. This approach provides a highly efficient and effective means of working through multiple iterations until all stakeholders understand, validate and ultimately approve the application’s requirements.
With cost savings typically over 50%, OneSpring has allowed companies to elicit, capture, manage and deliver their application requirements faster and more efficiently, allowing them to better determine customer acceptance of their software application projects before committing to costly development. Previsualization now provides a competitive advantage that can help your company best address your customers’ needs and the goals of your business and ensure success.
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