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During the software discovery phase, we gain a deeper understanding of your business, challenges, and objectives to provide the best software solution recommendations possible.

What we do is more than the traditional requirements gathering process. We’re not order-takers. We are your partner in this endeavor and want to do everything we can to ensure you see consistent value by investing in a custom software solution.

After our discovery process, you will walk away with a written report describing the project in-depth, how it matches your business needs, our plan to build your project, an established build timeline, and the proposed budget.

‍In other words, you will get everything you need to feel confident and motivated about moving forward with building your custom software solution.

Our software design process builds upon the discovery phase. Following software design best practices ensures a sound plan that addresses your top priorities and challenges.

It’s important to understand that software design is more than just how it looks. It’s also about how it works and whether it will work well for your business.

We use a customer-centric software design strategy. Unlike pre-made software solution vendors that force you to fit into their products, we make solutions that fit how you do business. The value of getting a custom software solution is getting exactly what you need.

Designing software involves studying your business, including observing and documenting your daily operations. This helps us identify any hurdles and gain a better grasp of what needs attention.

We bring you into the design process so that you can confirm what will work and provide feedback on what won’t.

By the end of the design phase, you'll receive a report detailing the project's appearance, what will be built, why certain choices were made, proof of concept information, and a full description of the technologies and platforms we plan to use during development. This deliverable also includes visual and user interaction designs that reflect what the finished product will look like.

Building software solutions is a team effort, and you’re a vital part of our team. 

During the discovery and design phases, we set software development milestones to keep the project within budget and on schedule. We value transparency, so we will meet with you every two weeks, which we call a “sprint review.”

Think of our sprint reviews as a ‘show-and-tell’ session. We’ll show off our progress through live demos of your product. You can tell us what you think about the progress, and we’ll use that feedback immediately in our next sprint.

It's worth noting that our United States-based team of engineers responsible for the software coding and development of your project will be at these sprint reviews.

This direct line of communication ensures that your feedback and requests get to the people responsible for making it all happen.

While showing off the project progress is fun, we don’t forget about the practical aspects. 

We want to give you peace of mind during every update so you feel confident you’re getting a good return on your investment. To deliver that peace of mind, we'll provide you with updates on the project's budget and timeline during every sprint review.

We aim to deliver value to you on time and within the agreed budget, and we'll promptly notify you if there are any potential risks to project completion. You have our word.

Throughout the build process, we will ask you to participate in user acceptance testing (UAT), which is when you will get hands-on with your product. 

We make sure to follow the best practices for UAT. In each sprint, which is a segment of our work timeline, we'll ask you to test the software by using it to complete some of your actual business processes. We'll provide you with step-by-step instructions to ensure a complete UAT for each part of the build.

During UAT, we want you to run through the software solution to find the issues and any places where it doesn’t feel right. UAT is the time to be the squeaky wheel! 

It's important to note that UAT happens in nearly every sprint of the build process. This way, if anything isn't working as expected, we can address it immediately.

Your feedback from UAT helps us tweak and shine up the product bit by bit every sprint. Remember, you are a part of this process. Your feedback helps transform the project from the software you’re buying into a solution you’ve built and refined with us. We want you to be proud of this software solution because you worked with us to make it happen and fit your exact needs. 

In parallel to UAT, our engineers conduct thorough quality assurance (QA) tests on every feature and line of software code. They do this every sprint to ensure the software stays on track and works well.

After each UAT phase, we have a UAT sign-off and approval process. This means we review the work together and make sure everything is meeting the agreed-upon benchmarks. By doing the UAT sign-off throughout the build process, we reduce risks, avoid delays, and keep the project within the budget.

One great thing about UAT is that it allows you to experience the software firsthand before it officially launches. This way, you'll be ready to use it confidently when it goes live.

Your client expectations at launch should be that you know it will work because you’ve been in the UAT trenches with us, so there should be no surprises. 

Our communication with you will be constant throughout the build and UAT phases. As part of our software product launch process, we'll prepare a tailored rollout strategy and launch day preparation plan.

Our tailored rollout strategy involves introducing the new solution while keeping your existing processes in place. This way, we can minimize any disruptions to your business. We can also adapt our approach for each department, making it easier for everyone to adopt.

Remember, launch day preparation plans start way before the actual launch date. 

We work together to develop your software launch strategy. Often, we start by picking your custom software release date. From there, we work backward to plan everything that needs to happen for a smooth launch. The strategy can also cover post-launch support and plans for continuous improvement post-launch.

Going live is just the beginning. We're committed to helping your software grow with your business.

Continuous improvement in software development can include such maintenance tasks as monitoring software, making bug fixes, and performing regular updates. But those are just the basics.

As your technology partner, we understand your business. We want to help you discover more ways to use technology to scale your company.

‍We are here to support your software development journey as it aligns with your business goals. Likewise, we can suggest innovative ideas for new software solutions and features that will meet the changing needs of your market. 

At Steelhead Software, we believe continuous improvement is a strategy that sets you ahead of your competitors. While they’re building random solutions, you’re investing in your software, turning it into an asset that drives long-term success and growth.