Building Something New, Done Right
A proven, disciplined process for building a new Ruby on Rails application - from vision and strategy through a working MVP to ongoing iteration.
At Rietta, we believe in delivering high-value results early and often, in a proven feedback-driven process. We deliver working software incrementally so your project’s course can change in response to the best available information at each stage.
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
— The Agile Manifesto
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
1. Vision & Strategy
Every new project starts with a high-level product vision discussion, where a senior developer collaborates with you to understand your project’s requirements and goals. This meeting is best in person, but when that’s not possible, we conduct it over a web conference. We aim to confirm the technical and market viability of a given product before bigger investments are at stake.
2. User Stories and Wireframes
The next step is an intensive two-day workshop to kick off the project’s development cycle with a clear, shared understanding between our developers and your business team, in person where possible.
During the workshop, our team works with yours to document the system’s design goals and write the first draft of the user stories that get distributed into weekly development iterations. We normally leave this workshop with enough specific requirements to begin implementing a rudimentary version of a usable product.
3. Implement a Minimum Viable Product
From that initial vision, we use test-driven development to build the simplest thing that will work, putting a proof of concept into your hands for feedback in the shortest feasible timeline. In some cases, the goal is a full minimum viable product (MVP) to reach end users and gather feedback as early in the project as possible - narrowing the focus first to a bare-bones proof of concept that can be tested and refined before the MVP goes out to customers.
Projects with special security requirements often involve a technical proof of concept for the relevant custom security controls before we flesh out the user-facing features, so security-critical parts of the system get proven out early rather than bolted on at the end.
4. Iterate Hand-in-Hand With You
While development is underway, our team works in regular short iterations, moving your product from technical prototype or MVP toward something users will love. At every step, your feedback gets folded back into the requirements so the product can course-correct toward the right fit.
Our code changes go through pair programming, code review before merging, and automated testing, and we integrate automated security and quality checks into our toolkit wherever we can. For more on what a typical development week looks like, see our core services.
5. Continued Development in Production
The early goals are all about getting the application into real users’ hands as soon as possible. Once real users are involved, we work with you and your customers to build not just the product you planned, but the experience your end users actually need - establishing sensible, sustainable operating procedures, security and privacy policies, and refinements to usability, performance, and security as the application grows.
6. Continuous Support
Many clients with production applications don’t need a full development team and iteration cycle indefinitely, but a web application needs ongoing care the same way a car needs fuel and periodic maintenance. From here, an application graduates into our maintenance and support onboarding process - the same long-term care we provide for every application in our care, whether we built it or took it over from someone else.
Ready to Get Started?
Give us a call at 770-623-2059, or get in touch - even if it’s just to ask a question.