Logistics Services

  • Process Improvement
  • Technical Project Management
  • Business Analysis
  • Requirements Gathering and Definition
  • Implementation
  • Training

What is the next step for your company to improve the productivity and effectiveness of your project teams?

Auctus Blue has the answer. We can provide everything from consulting, training and coaching to providing turnkey business analysis teams that can collaborate with your project team in gathering requirements, defining the business context, and delivering a vetted and approved Business Requirements Document (BRD).

For more mature systems, we can also conduct dynamic validation of requirements with the customer using screen mockups and system simulations. Our teams can enter your software development lifecycle at inception and depart upon hand-off of a fully vetted, fully documented Business Requirements Document that includes an integrated traceability matrix.

So what makes us better? We use tools that capitalize on recent technological advancements in social media that are rapidly making email, spreadsheets and manually produced charts look like 1st generation collaboration processes. Most project teams find that the systems to capture artifacts, decisions and discussions are poorly-linked to requirements and inadequate for auditing throughout the project lifecycle. The whole history of a project is typically muddled in a string of emails, sticky notes, pictures of white boards, chat conversations, and frankly Navaho knowledge that can only be extracted through interviews with the team and all stakeholders. This is a costly and time wasting process.

Our systems provide complete visibility of requirements, key discussions and decisions from the C-Level through to the core staff studying and defining the business processes. This gives your company instant visibility at a very granular level of the details and progress of requirements definition.

Note that 53% of business analysts responding to recent surveys said that the majority of requirements feedback happens after sign-off in the development and testing stages. We have seen requirements errors that were approved and entered development only to be corrected when the BRD was vetted for final validation and approval. This is costly and frequently results in late deliverables, longer than anticipated project timelines and even project failure.

In the same survey cited above, 54% of business analysts said that spreadsheets were used to manage traceability. This hampers the ability to bundle requirements within the designs and test cases themselves. Over half of all business analysts are dissatisfied with the tools they are using. They reported 80% of their time is spent on clerical tasks and only 20% of their time is spent on strategic thinking.

Many IT companies expect transitioning to Agile methodologies will be the cure for the failings of the requirements gathering and design phases of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). Yet recent research into companies implementing the Agile Methodology shows that only 28% reported that they had a "successful result". Reorganization and new processes can only make a difference if they are supported by systems that are just as sophisticated yet easily understood across the organization. Development teams working with poorly defined requirements will simply develop the wrong solution faster with Agile.

Lack of common visibility is another key reason projects fail. Without an accurate, comprehensive dashboard provided to all levels of the organization, the project is bound for inefficiency. Project Managers (PMs) attempt to create common visibility with more meetings and new reporting formats but this is a pull-based system that promotes micromanagement and takes team members away from their core tasks. Chasing after the statuses wastes precious management time and distracts core staff from getting their jobs done. Common dashboards create self-directed, self-accountable teams that know they can rely on one another.

Flurries of emails, spreadsheets, charts and the iteratively evolving versions of process control are born of a lack of proper tools and stakeholder training in the use of these tools that enable common visibility from the C-Level to the core staff level. Auctus Blue can help your company institute the processes, tools and training to drastically increase collaboration and effectiveness while decreasing resources and errors in requirements definition.

Current technologies can link requirements, traceability information, test cases and dependencies in a single tool documenting key conversations and decisions within the requirements documentation. These tools can display Visio depictions of the processes under discussion and generate traceability matrices that are hyperlinked to the details of the requirements. They can even capture screen mockups and produce test cases and tailored reports in an automated way. Finally, the tools are visible to all levels of the organization from C-Level to core staff.

CONTACT US

HEADQUARTERS

16 Plantation Oaks Dr
Mary Esther, FL 32569
Phone: 703-507-0662
Email: info@auctusblue.com