ALM - Proof of Concept
If you are uncertain about taking the next step and moving to an Application Lifecycle solution, or what it has to offer, Black Marble’s Proof of Concept Service provides you with a demonstration in your own environment that can give your peace of mind and help you achieve buy-in from the key stakeholders in your business.
Black Marble recommends the use of Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server (TFS), as the state of the art tools for your business.
Black Marble’s implementation will be based on your requirements and processes, allowing you to evaluate how the tools can be incorporated into your infrastructure and development methodologies. We will collect a set of requirements, design and configure the tools, allowing your company to rapidly make use of the features it provides – ensuring a growing confidence in what they have to offer.
- Deployment of the tools in a pilot environment
- Customisation of the Process Templates in the tools based on your current processes and Microsoft best practices
- Development of a code promotion strategy that will enable concurrent development and follows best practices like continuous integration
- Development of automated build including build verification testing
- Customisation of acceptance practices managing requirements
- Development of procedures on how to operate the build process
- Development of the tools deployment plan for your entire organisation
- Knowledge transfer and hands-on training for the pilot group
The following deliverables enable you to deploy the tools with minimal impact to your operations team and developers:
- Installation of the tools in a production pilot environment
- Requirements management guidance
- Operational planning and guidance
- User access and security planning
- Project definition planning
- Process template customisation planning
- Build operation guide
- Source control strategy planning
- Team build server planning
- Full deployment project plan
Benefits
The fully operational tools deployed and properly configured during this engagement can provide you with the following benefits:
- Enables coordinated, consistent, standardised, cross-project reporting that provides transparency to management and makes meeting statutory requirements simpler, easier, and less expensive.
- Helps the project administrators employ the best set of tools and methods while meeting organisational requirements for consistency.
- Provides high-level managers with consistent and reliable information on which they can base business decisions.
- Ensures the use of standardised methodologies and taxonomies, consistent across all projects in the tools.
Outcomes
- Documented goals and success criteria for the proof of concept
- Installation, configuration and build of a proof of concept environment
- Documented findings from the proof of concept with recommendations and decisions for next steps for deployment
- Proof of Concept Solution.
- Report
Key areas addressed by our Proof of Concept Service
- Build a Proof of Concept.
- Deliver with initial training.
- Follow up review
- Planning for full delivery
The Report
The report will include:
- Summary – identified areas where your business would benefit from Optimisation.
- Recommendations – which optimisation solutions would work for your business.
- Next Steps
We will provide a set of recommendations to optimise your Visual Studio tools implementation.
Black Marble’s Proof of Concept offering gives the technical decision maker within your business the metrics needed to justify the full rollout of the tools.
Microsoft Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server
A rich set of integrated tools and server infrastructure coupled with flexible and agile process’s that represent a breakthrough for development tools, help you manage and optimise your entire software development process. Available products include: Professional, Premium, Ultimate and Test Professional.
Our Engineering Director, Richard Fennell, is an MVP for Visual Studio (ALM) – providing you with the confidence that your business is in safe, experienced hands.
For more information on our service you can call Lisa on +44 1274 300175.
You can find out more by coming along to one of our Technical Events
Or by attending one of the Microsoft UK ALM, Test and Developer Events.