Initial approaches to Dapper Apps will come through sales and marketing channels; you’ll meet our lovely staff in these departments, talk with them about your needs, and work together to see how we may assist.
There will be a significant first meeting where everyone gets to know each other and we talk about your project in broad strokes. We’ll try and ascertain the technical requirements of your project and see if we have the skill set to provide what you need. We’ll talk to you about budget as well, as it is critical to know if we are being called upon to create a masterpiece with bells and whistles or an MVP for the lowest cost to test a concept, or something in between.
We ask a lot of questions. While this may potentially seem time-consuming or frustrating answering in such detail, there are reasons why this is beneficial. Some of the reasons are:
- Clarifies the goals and objectives.
- Removes the need for assumptions (where discrepancies can arise later down the track).
- All stakeholders can provide input.
- Provides criteria for evaluation.
- Indicates metrics for success.
- Allows us to allocate adequate/appropriate resources to the project.
- Keeps costs to a minimum.
- Minimises any delays or hiccups when the team is in motion.
Depending on the complexity of your project, we may have subsequent meetings to explore your project in more detail. Our goal at this stage will be able to provide you with a scope of work that describes a scope of work for your project, and ultimately a contract of engagement to provide the product described by the scope of work. The scope of work puts all the ideas floating around a project down on paper, and becomes the main talking point about the specific implementation to be provided – so it is important that we all spend the time necessary to make this document a succinct and accurate description of the product.
We will assign an Account Manager who will remain your primary contact for the duration of the project and be responsible for consistent clear communication clients, developers and other parties associated with a project. You may meet the Account Manager during the creation of the scope of work, or after a contract has been signed, depending on the complexity of your project and the timeline available.
A project manager will also be assigned internally to allocate resources, schedule in work and track progress. The project manager will always be involved in the creation of a scope of work, either quietly editing documents in the background or hosting client workshops to define requirements for more complex projects. Our project managers generally have a higher technical proficiency, and may be able to offer solutions to programming challenges or design decisions that arise, as well as greater capacity to reach out to additional resources where needed.
Most of our apps require our designers to create the look and feel in accordance with brand guidelines and other parameters. Our designers take great care to make each app unique, more than just a re-skin of the last job, and something distinct and inviting in its own right. We consult with the designers early in the project, so by the time we are ready to start a new project there is already a full team knowledgeable of your requirements, and ready to hit the ground running.
We don’t generally engage a designer for back end systems such as administrator portals designed for internal maintenance and operational tasks; the cost is rarely worth it and we can easily provide functional systems of this nature without a design. However, if you want a pretty admin portal or CMS, we can certainly still do this for you. This means that development on projects with these systems may start immediately, depending on resources and client needs, whereas iOS, Android, Web, and other apps that will be used by the public or workforce will often not commence until the design is finalised. Such considerations are made on a case by case basis in consultation with the client.
Once development starts, we will normally run your project as a series of two-week sprint cycles, with milestone reports at the end of each sprint. We talk about this more in the topic why we are agile. We value open communication and transparency, and will be in constant communication throughout a project life cycle.
We had one project recently where the clients became unavailable after a project started, and were happy to receive progress report after progress report every fortnight (which they never read) right up until the day we announced the product complete. In this extraordinarily rare case, the client was super impressed with what we achieved, and we released a product with few further changes. This is not a recommended process! The best products are those that are created with consistent feedback from stakeholders, mindful of scope, but eager to review and commend their product. We’re keen to work with you on your project, so let’s get started!