Services

(i)mobius follows a process driven development life cycle to ensure there is no chaos.

We understand the temptation to dive into a project and start creating site designs and content features straight away. However, without careful planning at the start of a project, beautiful designs can become restrictive monsters. (i)mobius has evolved a disciplined development process designed to ensure your digital presence achieves your objectives. The following is the full process, although this process may be simplified for less complex briefs.

Initial response to brief
It starts with your brief to (i)mobius. By interacting with you and with our various internal specialists we develop a detailed response which will include an indicative timeline and budget.


Scoping
This is a critical phase. It’s important to allow sufficient time to complete scoping, because it involves consultation with all nominated stakeholders, internal analysis of the provided information and the creation of a series of documents that comprehensively define the work to be undertaken. Creating a clear scope of work at the beginning of the project will minimise backtracking and changes later on. Depending on the scale and type of project this phase may involve the following elements:

• Completion of a detailed requirements analysis;
• Creation of a sitemap, wire diagrams and a White Site;
• Development of functional and technical specifications; and
• Finalisation of costs, resource requirements and timeline.

Design
The design phase is the process of adding the colour and movement. During this phase, (i)mobius will provide a design for the key pages/templates that will make up the site. We will not necessarily provide a design for every page as the design of many pages can be extrapolated from the key templates. It should be noted that the base page layout and user flows may have been finalised as part of the Scoping phase for larger projects.

Development
The Development phase is the process of taking the design, the functional and technical specifications and creating the actual website or application. This involves two stages, which may overlap:

• Front end development (eg. HTML/CSS)
• Back end development (eg. SQL and .net)

Quality assurance
(i)mobius has evolved a range of internal processes to ensure the application will meet the requirements of the functional specification. (i)mobius’ quality assurance processes may include some or all of the following.

• Functional Testing: the process of ensuring that the application conforms to user workflow requirements set out in the functional specification and takes place throughout the development of your application. This process includes defining a range of likely scenarios and paths that a user may take and ensuring that the application continues to perform as scoped on all paths. Basic functional testing is initially undertaken by the development team to ensure that the application achieves the desired outcome. The development team will also run a series of automated debug tests to ensure the internal consistency of the code. A separate QA team will undertake both conformity testing and destructive testing. Destructive testing involves running a variety of user scenarios in which the application is used ‘incorrectly’ (as users are want to do) in an attempt to ‘break’ the application. The objective is to ensure that the application copes in all instances with appropriate error messages and warnings.
• Load Testing: the process of verifying that the application will continue to perform within the acceptable parameters under capacity specifications set out in the Functional Specification. Load testing involves running a series of automated test which simulate demand on the application and measure its performance.
• Usability Testing: the process of ensuring the information architecture of the site best achieves the defined user objectives. This process may be managed internally, or may involve external sources to test the application. If usability testing is managed by (i)mobius,  we will prepare the test plans and supervise the session.

Client acceptance testing and training
Once the application is complete then it is released to you. This allows you to undertake your own testing processes to satisfy yourself that the application does, in fact, meet the functional specification. (i)mobius will usually conduct administrator training at this stage.

Documentation
If requested in the Scoping phase, (i)mobius can provide both technical and user documentation for the application. (i)mobius does not provide technical documentation for populus because this is a hosted application for which (i)mobius will be undertaking all technical support. However, we do provide a knowledge base for populus administrators, and the ability to log questions to be added to the knowledge base. In addition, the admin interface includes tool tips for reference and guidance where appropriate.

Install & Release
Once you are satisfied that the application meets the agreed specifications, the development process is complete. We either provide you with the application if you are managing the install in the hosting environment, or work with you to install the application and assist with any data migration.