DS_Upsourcing
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CodeStringers provides outsourced software development services using an "upsourcing" model that aims to seamlessly augment clients' internal development teams. They offer agile development resources, product consulting, and a blended onshore-offshore model to improve clients' development velocity and quality while extending their budgets. Key attributes include offshore costs with onshore quality, a product development culture, cloud service technical expertise, and proven execution of agile methodologies like Scrum.
DS_Upsourcing
- 2. 22 Virtually every VP of Engineering has an outsourcing horror story. They typically involve hiring a collection of individual contractors - that’s like trying to driving a car with multiple steering wheels - or hiring a bottomfeeder outsourcing firm that overpromises and underdelivers. CodeStringers promises and delivers a different model entirely. We call it “upsourcing”. CodeStringers provides startups with agile software development resource augmentation and bundled product and process consulting to improve their development velocity and quality. UPSOURCE YOUR SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
- 3. 33 CodeStringers, as a division of FileString, places as the primary tenets of software development: development of high quality software; creating great end-user experiences; taking pride of craftsmanship; and individual responsibility for organizational outcomes. Unlike more traditional “fire and forget” outsourcing organizations, every member of the CodeStringers team takes ownership of their work and the outcome that work creates. CodeStringers is first and foremost a product development company that has refined Scrum/Agile software development. Over the past three years, we have built a technologically complex cloud service under the brand “FileString” with interdependencies and integration among multiple client applications and cloud services. CodeStringers offers a unique outsourcing service that complements our product business and cloud service offering in that it leverages our expertise, product culture, and proven capabilities in software product definition, design and development. CodeStringers’ unique value is generated through the intersection of four attributes: CodeStringers’ development organization is based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and managed from the United States. Vietnam offers skilled software developers that rival the quality of those anywhere in the world, but affords the low cost associated with offshore development. 1. Offshore Cost, Onshore Quality 2. Product Development Culture Offshore Cost, Onshore Quality Product Development Culture Cloud Service Technical Expertise Proven Agile / Scrum Execution Seamlessly & Affordably Expand Your Development Organization 4. Proven Agile / Scrum Method Execution 3. Cloud Service Technical Expertise Agile methods, including Scrum, are idyllic process guidelines that are academic in nature. Institutionalizing a process requires adapting the method to fit the unique aspects of a given product and the team building that product. In short, becoming an agile company requires battlefield indoctrination of the method such that the process is part of the culture, driving not just how work is completed, but how the people in the organization think about completing their jobs. CodeStringers has three years of experience tailoring, hardening and insti- tutionalizing our Scrum development method. Building cloud services is far more complex than building a client application or a website. Developing cloud services requires integration of full-stack technologies, orchestration of multiple development and testing teams, and operation of software as a service to achieve adequate service availability, scalability and quality. The FileString service, which is the cloud-based software product developed by CodeStringers, is a testament to our organization’s ability to deliver. CODESTRINGERS IS UPSOURCING
- 4. 44 Responsive, easy-to-use web development utilizing best practices Native mobile application development for iOS and Android platforms User experience and interface design for cloud-based software with web and mobile apps Core services engineering including system architecture, service/API development, and integration with third-party services SQL and NoSQL database architecture and development for cloud-based software Software quality control process and business systems implementation and test plan execution Test automation strategy and execution including system implementation and scripting Agile software development product management consulting and execution Agile software methodology project management and business systems implementation Product strategy, roadmap, release planning and agile process consulting Web Development Mobile App Development User Interface Design Core Services Development Software Quality Control Test Automation Agile Product Management Agile Project Management Database Development Product Consulting OUR CAPABILITIES
- 5. 55 Great websites and applications are the marriage of form and function. The CodeStringers team is skilled at developing aesthetically pleasing, easy-to-use and responsive websites that employ current web design and development best practices such as Flat or Material design, micro inter- actions, card style layouts, parallax scrolling, and single page architecture (when appropriate). We are able to develop using every common web application platform in- cluding ASP.net, PHP, and JSP as well as web technologies such as HTML/ HTML5, CSS/CSS3 (in addition to Bootstrap or other responsive style sheets), JQuery, JavaScript, AngularJS, NodeJS, MVC, AJAX. DEVELOPMENTWEB
- 6. 66 Great mobile applications start with the right architecture and a balance between adherence to platform user interaction guidelines and custom experience development based on the unique features and overall user experience that the cloud service intends. Building an application starts with architectural decisions concerning persistent and in-memory data storage and synchronization, data security, third-party versus custom technology selection, and application design. Failure to consider these factors often results in future code refactoring due to application quality or performance problems. CodeStringers has proven experience architecting and developing mo- bile applications for iOS and Android platforms that considers the per- formance, security and usability of the application including connectivity, data storage and synchronization, business logic and user interface im- plementation. We can help you build your applications right the first time so you can avoid unnecessary code refactoring in the future and, instead, focus on your product roadmap. DEVELOPMENT MOBILE APPLICATION
- 7. 77 Our design team has experience in designing user interfaces for websites, web applications and mobile applications - and multi-screen cloud services that require consistent UI designs across multiple device types and application platforms while simultaneously applying the best practices and human factors guidelines web, iOS and Android platforms. Our team designs using the latest best practices, including: • Flat or Material Design - a minimalist design style that emphasizes usability and reduces use of flashy effects and styling. • Micro Interactions - designing based on contained product moments in- volving a single use case. • Typography Emphasis - using fonts styles and text as the centerpiece of a design. • Card Style Layouts - use of index card style design to organize large amount s of content in a more easily consumable layout. • Parallax scrolling - creating an effect where the background of a site scrolls slower than the foreground creating a depth illusion. • Single Page Design - building sites that have only a single scrolling page with navigation up and down within the page. • Use of CSS over images - reducing use of images where possible and in- stead building graphical representations of objects using CSS. The CodeStringers’ user interface design team can also help you rapidly test interactions and aesthetics prior to development implementation using web- based user feedback tools. DESIGNUSER INTERFACE
- 8. 88 Core services are the brain of a cloud service, providing the glue to connect applications to server-side data and connect the cloud service to third-party applications and services. CodeStringers has deep experience building appli- cation programming interfaces (APIs), business logic, and server-based pro- cesses for everything from account creation and login to feature APIs to mes- saging services to content encryption and decryption. CodeStringers Core Services developers can help with system architecture, technology selection, and API and service development for high-volume, low-latency cloud applications. Our team routinely works with technologies including Java, Python, NodeJS, Javascript, REST, JSON, ASP, RabbitMQ, nu- merous server operating systems and cloud hosting platforms including Ama- zon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. DEVELOPMENT CORE SERVICES
- 9. 99 Virtually every cloud service starts with a data architecture. Often, the com- plexities of the service features and the data types being stored require multi- ple database technologies and architectures to optimize service performance and scalability. CodeStringers core services architects and developers can help with technol- ogy selection, database architecture and schema design, and implementation including planned redundancy and failover. Our team works with the following technologies: • Relational databases including PostgreSQL, AzureSQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Hadoop, and MySQL. • NoSQL databases and caching systems including Redis, RethinkDB, Taran- tool, Memcached, Oracle NoSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra DEVELOPMENTDATABASE
- 10. 1010 Quality control practices in Agile / Scrum development are often an area in which startups under-invest. As a result, quality issues create future problems relative to product releases and the company’s funding strategy. CodeString- ers understands the issues that commonly occur and can participate either as an extension of an internally-managed quality assurance and control team or by taking on holistic responsibility for quality assurance and control, providing a surrogate manager and team. Our quality control skills include: • Deploying a test management system and documenting test cases based on product requirements or, if documentation is unavailable, a systematic review of your implemented product. • Integrating quality control personnel into your Scrum Development Team(s) to ensure quality tasks are included in user story estimates, are included in each sprint backlog as sub-tasks to the stories to which they apply, and are performed as part of the sprint execution. Those tasks include defining test cases for new features or iterating test cases for feature improvements; performing integration and component tests on new features and, option- ally, full-product system and regression tests when required; identifying and documenting defects; verifying defect fixes; and ensuring that quality related criteria and the definition of done are met prior to declaring stories “done”. • Designing and developing performance and load testing using a combina- tion of black and white box tests. • Developing black and white box test scripts using a variety of scripting tools required to support web, mobile and API/system testing. SOFTWARE QUALITY CONTROL
- 11. 1111 Most startups do not automate their test cases until they realize that the amount of time required to complete a full regression test on their product is prohibitive given the length of their development sprints and/or they must continually add new quality control testers to complete the manual test- ing. The absence of a test automation project is caused by a lack of focus on quality assurance or a concern that the budget required for engineers and test automation software will be prohibitive. As a result, either the organization’s quality control budget increases for additional staff and/or full regression tests are completed increasingly less frequently and product quality suffers. Creating a project to automate testing will increase product quality and re- duce the company’s development budget in the mid-term by ensuring that regression defects do not accumulate and reducing the number of manual software testers that are required. CodeStringers can help cost-effectively plan and execute a test automation project by completing the following tasks: • Select open-source test automation framework and scripting tools that reduce the cost of business systems to the cloud instances required to host the framework. • Help identify test cases in your product that are ready for automation and will provide the greatest time savings if automated. • Develop automation scripts for test cases using programming languages that your team can review and incorporate into your product source code library. • Integrate automation testing into sprints seam- lessly to enable code coverage or full regres- sion tests to be performed in line as a sprint task. • Manage the test automation project as a paral- lel development project using the scrum meth- odology and providing standard artifacts, such as a product backlog of test cases to be auto- mated, and reports, such as the burn down. TEST AUTOMATION
- 12. 1212 At the majority of startups, the product owner is often stretched thin, attempt- ing to support fundraising, sales, and partnership activities while also acting as the company’s Product Owner. The impacts of this are that requirements are often incomplete when sprint planning starts and developers and testers face a bottleneck to obtaining answers to questions that represent sprint impedi- ments. Adding one or more business analysts to support the product owner can pro- vide resource to more effectively complete the following tasks: • Convert traditional product specifications (requirements documents) into user stories and epics to support an Agile / Scrum development process. • Define “negative” use cases (errors, secondary paths) for user stories to ensure that questions from Engineering and Quality Control are pro-active- ly addressed. • Participate in Sprint Planning meetings to represent the Product Owner. • Ensure Quality Control defines all test cases for new features and edits test cases for feature improvements. • Solicit and aggregate usability feedback from the internal team and prod- uct users based on story descriptions and wire frames. AGILE METHOD PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
- 13. 1313 Agile development methods such as Scrum promise to improve the pace of development, achieve and sustain a high level of quality, and ensure that products are more customer-centric. However, the advantages of Scrum are only realized with the Agile Manifesto, ceremonies and artifacts are operation- alized and rigorously followed. Success executing the Scrum method depends entirely upon the existence of a job role within the organization that is dedicated process adherence. That role is a Scrum Master. CodeStringers has years of experience work within the Scrum methodology on our own product as well as client products and has learned how to operation- alize the method in small organizations. We can provide qualified Scrum Mas- ters to each client with which we work to ensure that the development process is as efficient and productive as possible and that the organization is continu- ously improving. AGILE METHOD PROJECT MANAGEMENT
- 14. 1414 As part of every customer engagement, CodeStringers bundles product con- sulting that can improve your organization’s efficiency and productivity as well as improving the success of your product. Our consulting will help you: • Create a framework for prioritizing features in order to help you focus on a minimum viable product for a first release and a roadmap for future releas- es. • Develop product release plans that provide transparency and predictabil- ity into progress across multiple sprints culminating in your product being commercially released. • Write more effective user stories including a definition of done that will result in more accurate estimates, higher quality levels and more efficient development. • Implement a project and issue tracking system (Jira) that will enable you to manage product features and defects through a single system, gain valu- able insights about your development status and performance, and im- prove communication across your team. • Migrate from a waterfall development methodology to a Scrum develop- ment methodology across your product management, user experience and interface design, development and quality assurance and control teams. By combining software development upsourcing and consulting services from CodeStringers, you will stretch your funding further to extend your runway. PRODUCT STRATEGY & PROCESS CONSULTING
- 15. 1515 About CodeStringers CodeStringers exists to solve the nightmares of traditional outsourcing. We are a software development “upsourcer” that helps technology startups develop high quality software at a fraction of the cost of insourcing. We help our clients achieve their product milestones and extend their financial runway. Unlike traditional out- sourcers that operate with a primary goal of achieving customer acceptance as quickly as possible, CodeStringers strives to become an seamless extension of your internal organization and culture, dedicated to developing defect-free software, manageable code and extensible architectures. CodeStringers was borne as a prod- uct company, developing our own product, FileString (www.filestring.com) a cloud- based file control and intelligence service. With every client engagement, Code- Stringers provides bundled consulting services to help your organization improve products strategy and agile development execution. CodeStringers is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area with development operations in Vietnam, empowering our clients with local product leadership and expertise combined with affordable de- velopment resources in a world’s preeminent emerging software development locale. www.codestringers.com upsourcing@codestringers.com