Our process.

To best understand your aims and intentions, the ioSTUDIOS team builds relationships with relevant stakeholders from all areas of your organisation.

From the overall vision and budget to the granular day-to-day implementation, key voices hold equal weight, and combine to create a bespoke solution that works at every level of your business.

Our projects are most successful with a full understanding of the environment and expectation the finished product will exist in, so spending a day or two in your workspace, getting to know your teams and their everyday processes, is what helps us build effective and efficient solutions.

Once all discovery phase research is consolidated and analysed, we define the solution that best serves your specific needs.

Here, our Technical Lead creates a Unified Modeling Language (UML) alongside an architecture of how it will work. We’ll explore any necessary third-party integrations (such as Xero, Stripe or MailChimp) based on your current systems, and will identify any knowledge gaps that need reconciling before we move to the next stage of the project.

This is also when we scope where your software should be hosted to be most effective, and what top-level functionality should exist at this early stage, within a host plan, support plan, test plan and data structure.

Once the solution has been defined, we begin working on your prototype. Our expert User Experience/User Interface (UX/UI) team takes the lead on this, involving you and your colleagues as much or as little as you’re experienced or comfortable with.

We understand that not everyone comes from a technical background, so the initial wireframes are kept simple to ensure any early issues or edits aren’t masked by complex design or functionality.

Following sign off of the wireframes, a more detailed iteration is created, incorporating narrative User Stories, taking into account feedback and suggestions.

This Prototype will introduce design elements and will be fully linked to create a journey that begins to more accurately resemble what will become the final solution - operating as if it is a working piece of software.

This gives you a full overview of the details of the system to visualise and scrutinise before we begin the real build.

Feedback is crucial to advancing the discovery phase from initial wireframes through to sign off and acceptance, and so is encouraged at every stage in order to ensure you're getting exactly what you require as our client.

Once we’ve made any amends and completed the Discovery Outputs (including Project Plan, Test Plan, Hosting Plan, UML map, the Prototype and Wireframes), our team will send these over including a final Development Cost to build the work - this encompasses Development, Quality Assurance, Implementation and Maintenance stages and takes into consideration your initial expectations and budget.

Once this has been accepted and signed off, the outputs of Discovery will be locked down and the solution built to that exact, bespoke specification.

The majority of RnD (Research and Development) takes place during the Discovery phase, but can continue where necessary. Essentially this allows us to create actual working technical solutions of any challenging areas in your software.

This will ensure you have peace of mind before the Development Stage officially begins and proves that we can build it in a way that achieves the business requirement.

Examples of this may include integrating a new or unfamiliar third party system with your proposed software solution, or developing a very bespoke piece of functionality that is specific to your project.

By completing this before full Development of a project begins, ensures expectations and deadlines are not compromised during the build by any unexpected bad news.

We are a Microsoft development house, using the latest tools and technology (.net5, MSSQL, C#). Our diverse team also has expertise in frontend Javascript frameworks like Angular and Vue JS and are also experienced in complex API integrations.

When developing, the briefing cards our Development Team follow comprise of the Discovery Outputs, including any relevant User Stories and Prototype screens.

This provides all of the detail required to build a piece of functionality, which ensures you receive exactly what you had signed-off in Discovery.

The Technical Lead assigns these briefing cards out accordingly and will lead daily meetings to discuss challenges, successes and progress on the project.

Once an area of development is completed, it is assessed first by the Technical Lead, before going through our rigorous Quality Assurance (QA) process

Once Development has finished our Quality Assurance Lead will begin testing the work. Every piece of functionality is evaluated against a prescription Test Plan to ensure the quality matches your - and our - expectations.

The work is compared narratively against the User Story, visually against the Prototype and technically against any RnD work. Once our QA Lead has completed their review, the Test Plan will be sent over to you, the client, to test and sign-off yourselves.

All testing - both internal and external - is conducted on a purpose built Test Site, this allows us to mimic a live system without any risk. Once we are happy with the software’s performance in this environment, it can safely and confidently be deployed to a live site when the time is right.

This process ensures you receive a robust, issue-free system that matches your expectations in terms of usability, design and functionality.

After our internal Quality Assurance process is complete, you are encouraged to complete your own testing, not only to eliminate all possibility of errors, but also to get to know your new software prior to launch - think of it as a mini-training exercise.

Following this, we will agree a scheduled date in which the software can be safely released to a LIVE environment, so all Users can access it.

A Warranty Period begins during which any issues that arise after launch can be rectified within a certain amount of days.