iPad Development

SITUATION

A leading financial institution wanted to take full advantage a new mobile sales tool for the Apple iPad, but wanted to deliver a beta version of that tool on a 2-1/2 month timeline, with a release just a few days after New Year.

Given the robust requirements of the sales tool and the added pressure of a tight deadline, the client team partnered with Digital Foundry partly because of our reputation for meeting challenging deadlines for mobile applications and our extensive relationship with company as well as for our deep understanding of project goals from the software planning workshop.

SOLUTION

Close collaboration may be the most essential success factor for meeting tight deadlines. By integrating our team with the client’s, we worked together to rapidly identify and develop new features.

Although our engineers, consultants, architects, and project managers were located thousands of miles from our client’s project team, we established regularly scheduled conference calls, telepresence, and on-site meetings to enhance collaboration. These working sessions allowed the teams to demo beta progress, review user data, and adjust project priorities.

By working together through these various channels, our architects and consultants were able to work with client stakeholders to implement features in the most efficient way possible, often refining and tweaking functionality to ensure release goals matched the timeline. What’s more, it allowed us to incorporate a wide range of changes and updates based on user feedback – all within a 7-week time window.

RESULTS

Because we worked with our client to set up a collaborative, agile development process at the beginning of the project, we helped:

• Leverage communication: An open and effective communication style between the project teams assured immediate action as requirements were identified or modified.
• Integrate with existing technology: Digital Foundry eliminated the need for new technology by making sure the tool was properly integrated into existing CMS and authentication systems that met corporate data standards and specifications.
• Rapidly incorporate user feedback: Through quick development iterations, Digital Foundry and the client were able to rapidly incorporate user feedback to deliver an impressive and innovative tool that users would actually use.