It's Functional, but is it Reliable?

Your days are consumed ensuring that you understand the features your clients want and have translated that understanding into software that accomplishes those tasks as cleanly as possible within your resource constraints. Maybe you've even balanced your development schedule to allow for a few last minute feature requests and that unexpected defect you know will pop up.  What does that leave?  Reliability and Scalability. 

We know it's hard to set aside time for reliability and scalability validation. 

• It's hard to quantify when you're done testing:  Did you test it with enough users?  In an environment close enough to production?  With data close enough to what real users will have? 
• Requirements are very soft:  How fast is fast enough?  When does slow response become more than an annoyance and start to impact your ability to sell or service customers?
• It's hard to test correctly:  Setting up real performance and reliability testing takes time and special skills when compared with normal functional testing.  The tests may take days or weeks to produce usable results.
• It's optional:  Or at least it feels that way.  It could be fast enough, you have faith that your team did the right thing at each stage to avoid common performance pitfalls.  Your management just expects it to be fast, and why hold back perfectly good software when you don't know for sure that there's a problem?

Most organizations do little or no true performance and scalability validation.  Typically there are a few critical areas where performance is a functional requirement (for example - a search must return in ten seconds) which get checked when initially developed but users expect the entire application to be fast all the time. 

Find out more about our approach

How do we help?

1. We work with your Infrastructure and Support teams to ensure consistency, bridging the gap between your development team and the team that hosts your software.
2. We work with your team to identify options for application metrics and monitoring that fit your needs and then assist with integrating and deploying them.
3. We work with your team on how to optimize your software construction process from requirements gathering through deployment to improve effectiveness and consistency over time and recognize when performance or reliability problems are introduced with the least amount of work.

Find out more about our services for Product Development Teams

How do we work with you?

• We supplement your team, lending our experience on how to make the subtle but crucial decisions that lead to better performance and controlled costs.
• We recommend trusted partners where you want long term or high volume development assistance.  This lets us match you with the best cost option that matches your preferences and specific needs.
• We have experience with a range of technologies and third party solutions that let us recommend options that fit your specific scenario.
• We're not paper architects.  We help you get important pragmatic changes integrated and operational so they deliver on their promise. 

Find out more about our services for Product Development Teams

Why trust in our advice?

• We have a track record of success designing and building robust, maintainable systems that deliver business value.
• We focus on proven approaches while being open to new technologies and methodologies where appropriate. 
• We are not a development shop.  Our focus is on providing sound advice and specialized expertise in just those areas needed to complement your existing team.
• We work only for you.  We don't represent a particular hardware or software vendor's solution to problems.
• This is all we do.  We succeed through referrals from customers that are enthusiastic about the value we have provided to them.

Find out more about us