Implementation Process Ensuring Effective Development and Deployment Highlights Our spiral process facilitates rapid and accurate development Iterative software deployment, which captures and incorporates user feedback Ensures functionality, usability, reliability, and performance! FileMaker Pro enables rapid development Powerful point-and-click environment Simple file-based deployment We utilize active project management Requirements management and tracking Project schedule definition and tracking Risk and contingency management When a software vendor tailors its software product to your organization s unique requirements, the vendor should employ a development process that results in a functional, usable, reliable, and high-performance application. In addition, the vendor s process should provide management controls ensuring that the application is customized in a timely fashion according to a schedule that meets your business needs. As part of evaluating application software, you should be confident that the vendor has a defined development process, and has the experience and knowhow to effectively leverage that process. At Facility Wizards Software, we utilize a highly efficient process that captures and manages your organization s requirements, including user experience and feedback. This results in rapid and accurate implementation of an easy to use and robust database application that fully meets your organization s needs. Rapid and Accurate Development Facility Wizard s utilizes a spiral process to rapidly define, refine, develop, and deploy the customizations to your application. The keys to this are defining the basic requirements for your customizations, and quickly putting the application into use within your organization, and then capturing feedback from your users. Our staff are expert at working with you and your users, asking the right questions, and then leveraging this information to implement successive revisions of the application. This iterative approach allows us to continually refine the requirements, including the usability aspects of the software, as well as integration with external software systems. FileMaker Pro s Rapid Development Support Our software applications are based on FileMaker Pro, a robust, high performance database system with an integrated visual design and development environment. More than 10 million units of FileMaker software have been sold to customers around the world. Customers include individuals and small businesses everywhere, 49 of the top 50 universities in the U.S., the top 250 U.S. school districts, and 70 of the Fortune 100 companies. At the highest level, FileMaker Pro applications are made-up of FileMaker files. Each file contains its own set of screens and reports, tables, data, relationships, and scripts, with the files tied-together through relationships. The total application simply consists of the set of physical files that contain it.
Implementation Process www.facilitywizards.com Page 2 This simple high-level model of how FileMaker Pro applications are built allows a FileMaker application to be deployed and upgraded in a very straightforward manner: Installing a complete application is simply a matter of copying the files to a directory. Individual files may also be copied, overwriting the previous version of the file, allowing just a portion of the overall application to be upgraded. As long as the inter-file relationships and scripts-calls have not been changed, the new file can just replace the old file, and the application will happily keep on working. In addition to the ability to simply deploy an application or portion of its application through its files, an application that is running within FileMaker Server (FileMaker s server technology that provides scalability to hundreds of users) can be changed while it is hosted and executing. This is particularly worthwhile for making minor changes such as fixing development defects or tweaking functionality. This simple deployment model yields a significant time savings when performing iterative tailoring of an application.
Implementation Process www.facilitywizards.com Page 3 Our Process Approach 1. Requirements Gathering and Analysis 3. Data Conversion and Migration 2. Software Installation 4. User Training 6. Implement Custom Functionality and Reports 10. Follow-On User Training 11. Full Production Use 5. External System Integration 7. User Experience 8. QA/Test User Feeback 9. Follow-On Requirements Gathering and Analysis Facility Wizard Software Development Process The steps in our process can occur in parallel to some degree, as common sense dictates. First there are some preliminary steps to begin designing and implementing your solution needs: 1. Requirements Gathering and Analysis Discussions with your team facilitate documentation of the base requirements. 2. Software Installation Installing and configuring desktop instances of FileMaker Pro and the base application product, as well as FileMaker Server if it will be used. 3. Data Conversion and Migration Exporting data from your prior application, and then converting and importing it into your new application. 4. User Training Training your users on the base functionality of the new application. This can be a smaller, select group of users who will participate in the iterative development. 5. External System Integration Implementing interfaces between the base application and your other software systems and databases.
Implementation Process www.facilitywizards.com Page 4 Once these steps are completed, the iterative portion of the process begins: 6. Implement Custom Functionality and Reports Using FileMaker s integrated development environment, the data, screen, report, and script changes are made to develop the customized capabilities. This can also affect external system interfaces. 7. User Experience This is the key to the our process Your users are able to use the software, including the newly implemented customizations. Your users then provide feedback that results in follow-on requirements (Step 9) that are subsequently implemented. The requirements resulting from this step commonly define tweaks to data, screens, and reports, which increase and ensure usability. 8. QA/Test To supplement the user experience step, we also often include a formal QA and test step to target testing of specific functionality, and to capture defect reports. Defect reports usually result in defect fixes that are made during Step 7, but can also cause changes to the follow-on requirements (Step 9). 9. Follow-On Requirements Gathering and Analysis Discussions with your users, focusing on their use experience, are used to capture and document requirements for making subsequent changes to the custom functionality. Substantial productivity gains are realized during the iterative portion of our development process. These result from our ability continually create, deploy, and get feedback on a series of software revisions. FileMaker Pro s deployment model also contributes significantly to these gains. Once the iterative part of the process is done, deployment of the completed application into full production use takes place: 10. Follow-On User Training This ensures that all users are trained in the final state of the application. 11. Full Production Use All users are now operating the completed application on a daily basis. This is not necessarily the end of the spiral portion of the process. When the system is in full production use, additional feedback from the users can still occur. This information can result in further follow-on requirements, which are handled by this same process.
Implementation Process www.facilitywizards.com Page 5 Active Project Management When tailoring your application to your unique needs, our implementation consultants have the depth of project management experience and skills, and support tools, to be successful. We refer to this as active project management, and it is a key ingredient in our ability to deliver functional, usable, reliable, and high performance software on time according to a defined schedule. At Facility Wizard Software, customization projects going through our spiral process are managed using a project database that provides us with the visibility to ensure that your requirements are fully and accurately implemented, and that the development effort is proceeding on-track. (Our project database is of course implemented in FileMaker Pro.) Our project database is instrumental in ensuring both functional and schedule project success. Projects are tracked as they proceed through the various defined process steps. The database includes a set of stored schedule milestones and task dates, which correspond to the process steps. Schedule output is integrated with Microsoft Project for creating and viewing graphical Gantt and Pert charts. These tools provide the ability define, and then continually monitor and, if necessary, adjust a project s schedule. In addition to a project s schedule, we also use our project database to track project requirements. Each requirement item is stored as a record in this database, and can be mapped to written requirements specifications to provide additional detail. Our project database also provides a repository for these requirements documents (requirements specifications can be written by our consultants, by our customers, or as a team effort). Progress on the definition, review, and implementation of project requirements is continually monitored for each project. Another key part of our active project management approach and our project database is tracking of potential project risks and contingency plans. For each project, a set of risks is pre-defined, and then can be supplemented as the project proceeds. Then, for each defined project risk, a contingency is also defined. If the probability of a risk item occurring increases to a standardized, pre-defined level, then its corresponding contingency plan goes into effect. In our project database, risks and contingencies are mapped to each process step, and a different series of risks is tracked when a project graduates from one process step to the next. The risk and contingency planning part of our active project management gives us the visibility and flexibility necessary to responsively adjust to customization projects that are often complex and dynamic.
Implementation Process www.facilitywizards.com Page 6 The Facility Wizard Difference At Facility Wizard Software, and our development process and technology platform, coupled with our staff s skills and experience will allow us to rapidly and accurately implement your customization needs. Whether your requirements involve additional functionality, reports, or external system integration, our staff has the knowledge and tools get the job done right. You can be confident that your new facility management or real estate administration solution will be delivered on-time with the required functionality, usability, reliability, and performance. About Facility Wizard Software Facility Wizard Software develops and markets simple, intuitive, yet powerful software tools and web-based solutions for facility management and real estate professionals. Facility Wizard s application products are: Easy to learn and use, because they are simple and intuitive. Powerful, because they are comprehensive, flexible, and high performance. Available software solutions include work order and preventive maintenance, asset management, facilities capital project management, and lease administration. Facility Wizard Software is known for customer satisfaction. Facility Wizard Software is a privately held corporation, with the home office in Chicago Illinois, and with branch offices in Akron, Ohio, Austin, Texas, and San Francisco, California. The company has been in-business and profitable since 1992, and has served over 600 customers worldwide. SIMPLE : : POWERFUL : : FLEXIBLE 4147 North Ravenswood Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60613 773.832.0200 773.832.0202 P F www.facilitywizard.com info@facilitywizard.com 2007 Facility Wizard Software