Pivotal

The Pivotal Approach

We believe there must be a clear balance between technology, people, and process.  Building a great web site or creating an engaging social media campaign involves ordered steps, an understanding of the business needs and technological capabilities, and people who are driven to see the goals met.

To achieve this balance, we help our clients:

  • Evaluate existing web strategies and its effectiveness in support of business goals.
  • Manage costs more efficiently through better utilization of human resources, vendor management, and innovative solutions.
  • Review current business process, applications, and systems. Where applicable, introduce and integrate new components into the existing web strategy .
  • Build smart.  Right-size the solution to the business challenge.

The result: clients are able to innovate, scale, and react with speed.

The Pivotal Software Development Life Cycle

The Pivotal Life Cycle

Discovery

Whenever a new program is being considered, the discovery phase is essential. The length of discovery varies on the complexity of the new initiative, the similarity of the products or applications to others that have come before it, and Pivotal's familiarity with the organization and its existing web program. This information provides the basis for the design needed in the next stage.

Pivotal can:

  • Understand program goals.
  • Create program and project management plans.
  • Define business and product requirements, including the creation of Product Requirements Documents (PRDs).
  • Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
  • Provide strategic guidance and recommendations.

Design

At this stage, best practices are incorporated into a detailed plan of recommendations. This design includes all aspects of the program (business objectives, technology objectives, vendor management, team management, communications) and the processes that will support it. The proposed architecture is flexible, scalable, and adaptable to the changes the product will experience over its lifetime.

Pivotal can:

  • Architect a technology solution to the business challenge.
  • Create a systems or application architecture.
  • Create Systems Architecture Documents (SADs) and Design Requirements Documents (DRDs).
  • Address interaction design, usability, and information architecture concerns, and create the appropriate annotated documentation.
  • Address security: systems security, application security, authentication, authorization, and compliance requirements.
  • Create a monitoring and metrics infrastructure.
  • Allow access to data for calculation of KPIs.
  • Formulate a set of processes that will support the program.

Implementation

Software development commences once an understanding of the project has been achieved and a solid architecture and design has been created. Pivotal can work within both waterfall and agile methodologies. Ideally, Pivotal will work within the organization's pre-existing software development life cycle (SDLC) functions, but we are also willing and able to advise on the approach and offer our own structure for organizations that need it.

We also provide strong quality assurance services, and our team of QA engineers are experienced and process-driven. While we understand that tight time lines are common, we highly encourage all clients to consider a strong QA cycle within the Implementation phase in order to produce a quality product, application, web site, or campaign.

Finally, once the program is ready to launch, our Operations team of highly experienced systems and network administrators, database administrators, and security specialists will be on hand as necessary to ensure a flawless launch.  Our goal is to minimize risk to the product itself, any pre-existing systems, and the brand.

Pivotal has worked with a multitude of applications to manage software development and quality assurance testing, including the Atlassian suite (JIRA, Confluence), the Microsoft suite (MS Project, Excel), Trac, and HP Quality Center.

Pivotal can:

  • Manage the project.
  • Develop the system.
  • Test the system.
  • Launch the system.

Maintenance

Once a product has been launched, day-to-day tasks must be performed to keep the product working optimally. Using the KPIs that were identified in the Discovery stage and the monitoring system that was deployed in the Implementation phase, product availability, capacity, performance and security must be maintained.

Pivotal can:

  • Ensure that the monitoring and metrics infrastructure is in place and functioning as designed.
  • Institute Operational best practices to ensure maximum availability and uptime.
  • Deliver KPIs via Executive Dashboards.

Refinement

Products are rarely static. Web site usage may change or enhancement may be needed to keep competitive in the market. Social media campaigns must always shift with the online communities. Whatever the case, successful applications are constantly upgraded and improved. Operations play an integral role in developing and prioritizing these modifications, as well as in ensuring that these modifications will not adversely affect availability, capacity, performance, or security.

Pivotal can:

  • Participate in product discussions.
  • Determine the strategic and tactics to reach the next round of optimizations.
  • Ensure changes are consistent with business principles.