Softwire has performed consultancy for a wide variety of companies, including many in the FTSE 100, and all with business-critical IT needs. We have built up experience of a very large range of technologies, systems and applications.
We specialise in software consultancy - as opposed to more general IT or business consultancy - because this is where we can provide the most value to our clients. We assist our customers in a number of ways, such as:
- Advising on project scope, to understand where technology can provide value for money in meeting business requirements, and where it can’t.
- Producing specifications and designs to translate those business requirements into well-defined, concrete technical proposals that can be implemented by a subsequent software development project.
- Assessing existing application workflows and advising on consolidation and streamlining of processes and systems.
- Investigating the technical feasibility of new projects.
- Providing advice on software project management, development, and testing processes - all based on our years of hard-won knowledge and experience.
- Performing code and/or design review to provide an objective view of the quality of your software and systems.
- We can also advise on search engine optimisation techniques to clarify the facts amongst all the hype.
Our consultants and business analysts possess many years of experience at the sharp end of the software development industry. They are all extremely technically knowledgeable and have first-hand experience of developing, managing and delivering complex software development projects themselves. Depending on your requirements they can produce any or all of the following:
- Specification
We can deliver a detailed specification for your project, to be used as the basis of a subsequent development project (by us or a third party), or of a formal tender process. This will give you the confidence of a watertight solution which truly meets your business needs. - Development and enhancement roadmap
Once we've gained a detailed understanding of your existing systems we can provide a report containing well-considered and thorough recommendations for consolidation or replacement, or for development of new applications to streamline your workflow. - Feasibility report
Many of our customers contemplate projects that push the envelope of what today's technology can achieve. We can advise on whether such projects are likely to be possible and economically effective. We can also use our considerable technical experience to provide guidance on which approaches are most likely to bear fruit - and which will turn out to be expensive blind alleys. - Training
We can provide training to individuals or teams on a wide variety of technologies, development processes, and methodologies. - Code and design reviewing services
Another area where our experience really counts is in providing detailed code, design and architectural reviews. This is an extremely cost-effective way to add value to your existing team, by having our reviewers provide a report on what you are already doing well and where technical or design improvements can be made. Studies have repeatedly shown that the cost of fixing bugs in the field is many times that of fixing them during earlier code reviews.
Examples of consultancy projects we have conducted (with links to case studies) are:
- Analysing business requirements for a large international company, Serco and converting those requirements into a comprehensive, high-quality specification. Serco was then able to give this spec to their development partner and be confident that the finished software would meet precisely their needs.
- Understanding a complicated set of disparate existing systems for the Telegraph Media Group and coming up with a plan for integrating some of these systems into a streamlined and comprehensive replacement solution.
