Your Journey with Fusionbox

I have an idea for a project. What next?

Introduction > Ballpark > Discovery > Proposal > MVP Sprints > Launch > Continuous Iteration > COS

Great! Let’s talk about what you want to build. We’ll have an introductory meeting (or a few) to talk about your idea. You’ll get a chance to meet the Fusionbox team, and we’ll give our developers a chance to ask you questions about your project. The process below also describes what should be best practices for kicking off a project with any software development company.

Once we have discussed your goals and your budget, and determined that Fusionbox would be a good fit for your project, we typically recommend an initial timebox for discovery (more on timeboxes below). The discovery phase is where we’ll figure out the nitty-gritty details of how your project needs to be built. We’ll work to identify technical requirements and how best to meet them. Our goal in discovery is to ensure the team has a thorough understanding of the project goals and the technical challenges in meeting those goals.

During discovery, we’ll also discuss your preferences for communication and project tools, if you have any, so that we can be sure to accommodate those preferences during development. We’ll also provide our process recommendations and answer any questions you may have about development.

After discovery is complete, we can compose a proposal summarizing what we learned in discovery and recommending a timebox that will allow you to build an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). It’s extremely valuable to have done in-depth discovery before providing a proposal as it sets team expectations appropriately, allows us to be much more accurate in our estimates, and gives us a great foundation for building the project. 

 

How will my project get built?

Your project will be built in sprints. Sprints break a large project into smaller, more manageable chunks of work that are completed in a few weeks. 

 

What happens in a sprint?

At the beginning of a sprint, during our status meeting we will discuss the work completed in the last sprint and demo our progress to you. We’ll discuss any obstacles that arose and how they were overcome, or if any new information was discovered that may alter the project priorities. Then we’ll evaluate our current next priorities and determine if they need to be adjusted. We’ll identify which priorities can be completed in the next sprint, and conduct discovery on those items. This will be similar to the discovery completed at the beginning of the project, but will focus on a single feature rather than the project as a whole.

During the sprint, the design and development teams will work on each task before our internal QA team reviews the feature in a staging environment and prepares to demo the feature at the next status meeting. We’ll also conduct internal stand-ups between status meetings to make sure any obstacles are brought to your attention as soon as possible.

 

How will you communicate with me? How frequently?

We prefer to make our process as transparent as possible between status meetings, so you’ll have access to our project management tools and the opportunity to communicate directly with anyone on the development team. We’ll also send weekly reports detailing how we’ve allocated our time so you have a thorough understanding of your project’s progress.

 

What if something urgent comes up?

Because we use Agile processes, we can be exceptionally flexible in changing priorities as needed. Simply contact your project manager to discuss any urgent concerns and we’ll do our best to accommodate them.

 

Will you host and maintain my project?

Yes! We provide Continuous Operations Service (COS) for many of our clients.  COS includes hosting, security services, and a maintenance support time-box. COS provides a hands-free solution for the hosting, maintenance and baseline security for your digital properties.  We use an Agile approach to these DevOps services that allows us to make micro-refinements to the server configurations and security policies in short, continuous iterations.
 

What is a timebox?

A timebox is a method of budgeting for a project that supports agile development practices. Rather than providing an estimate based on a fixed scope of work, we’ll recommend a number of hours to invest in building an initial version of your project. Throughout the project, you’ll continue making decisions about how that time is spent. Since you’ll be adjusting priorities throughout development, you’ll be making more informed decisions about how you spend your money.

A traditional estimate and fixed scope of work supports waterfall practices, which can introduce undue constraints on the development of your project. Agile gives you the most flexibility and control over development of your project, which is especially useful if you’re new to software development. These timeboxes give you an opportunity to try working with the Fusionbox team without committing to a long-term contract.