C3IT follows a well known and proven path to defining, implementing and deploying software for our clients, from initial requirements through to sustaining.

1. Defining Project Requirements - During this first phase we work closely with you and understand all the details of your current practices, business objectives and marketing goals, ensuring we thoroughly incorporate all of your project’s requirements. By gaining insight into your needs and strategic challenges we define the project scope along with the technologies and the application development approach, setting the stage for a successful implementation in the most cost effective manner, while managing risks and ensuring high quality of the final product.

2. Proposal

Based on the information gathered through communication with you and our internal analysis, C3IT provides a detailed Proposal including:

• Our Scope document providing our understanding of the entire project
• Goals of the software, application functionality, constraints (such as schedule, cost) and requirements that must be satisfied;
• Preliminary Estimate covering the project size, work effort, and software development costs;
• Project Plan setting the major milestones and providing a preliminary timeline for the project implementation. The Proposal document is sent to the customer for review and approval before proceeding further.

3. Functional Specification Development & Approval - Any changes or updates suggested during the course of your review of the Scope document are discussed and mutually approved with the primary focus on refining the project requirements. The output of this rigorous requirements definition process is the Functional Specification. This document is a full and complete specification for the software product, describing both the functional requirements of the system and non-functional requirements such as interface requirements, performance, reliability, security, and any other particular non-functional attributes. With the thorough understanding of all the application requirements, the software architecture and design representing the decomposition of the software architecture into its main components and describing the relationships between those components are developed and incorporated into the Functional Specification document. The fundamental software system design helps eliminate any late stage structural changes which may be costly and may impact the project schedule. The Functional Specification document approval and sign-off marks the project requirements freeze and proceeding to the next stage of the software development life cycle - implementation. Additional functional and non-functional changes are negotiated and managed via the Change Request Process.

4. Software Development and Alpha Release - Once a clear and complete project requirements specification along with the architectural design is confirmed, the application development phase is started. Throughout the application development process intermediate deliverables are provided according to the scheduled milestones allowing you to track the implementation progress. The milestone deliverables for each sub-system, sub-element or module can be reviewed for verification against their business requirements, ensuring the end product will meet the original objectives. The intermediate deliverables review can also help to discover a problem or flaw at early stage of the development before the application evolves into a complete product, thus lowering the costs of corrections. In order to discover early logic errors, software engineers perform unit tests immediately after the completion of code programming. Individual classes are tested to ensure reliability and functionality within a unit level. Furthermore, when a few programs within a module pass the unit tests, they are combined together for modular function tests. After a few modules undergo the module function tests, they are integrated and tested together to ensure sufficient execution and compliance with the requirements after integration. Eventually, the whole system is used for system testing and it passes functional testing, performance testing, and stress testing to ensure all requirements are met. The outcome is an Alpha Release of the software product which can be provided to the customer for the review.

5. QA Testing & Beta Release - The next phase - QA Testing & Beta Release, includes extensive QA testing; the code will be reviewed and validated for consistency and functionality. Responsibilities of the QA team are to detect any deviation from the quality procedures and ensure all requirements and specifications are properly considered and met. Any errors and bugs are detected and fixed; all required changes will be made to ensure compliance with the requirements. After the system successfully passes rigorous tests and is approved by the QA department, Beta Release is provided to the customer. Beta Release is deployed in the final environment at the customer's side for additional test and review within a certain period as specified in the Project Plan. During this stage we gather feedback from the customer and conduct final testing and debugging based on customer feedback. The approved and accepted Beta Release evolves into the Final Release and the project implementation phase proceeds with the Final Release Deployment stage.

6. Final Release & Deployment - The Final Release & Deployment phase spans all activities on the new software product delivery and deployment. After the final application is installed, configured, and launched at the deployment site, follow-up activity for close monitoring of the system performance is included to provide immediate response to any issues and ensure complete customer's satisfaction. During this phase, C3IT transfers appropriate knowledge, conducts comprehensive training for the customer's personnel and provides final technical/user documentation on the delivered application, if requested.

7. Ongoing Technical Support & Enhancements – Once the completed software solution is deployed, C3IT provides ongoing support during a pre-defined period of time after the final delivery. During this period, any programming error or bug detected is corrected at no additional cost. Since nothing is constant in the IT arena, the software applications should also evolve to meet new challenges and keep remaining on target in the market and be responsive to the end-users. By additional agreement, we can provide the second line support and enhancement services. These services involve activities on enhancing, refining and optimizing the developed software.