<.:::::Orient Information Technology Ltd.::::::.>




	Why Outsourcing

	Why Orient

	Technologies

	Process & Methodologies

Orient has developed distinctive strengths that allow it to design, develop, and implement software with high quality code and documentation, shorter development cycle times, and overall lower cost.

	Software development process

	Approach to defining project teams

	Commitment to our support infrastructure

Software Development Process

In general Orient follows the following three life cycle models:

	Standard Life Cycle Model

	Life Cycle for Web based applications

	Life Cycle Model for Maintenance projects

Depending on the type of project the methodology is followed. Whichever be the life cycle model, Orient lays particular emphasis on

	Software Engineering
	Requirements Engineering Design Construction Testing Process Technical Documentation
	Project Management
	Project Initiation Project Planning Project Tracking, Monitoring and Control Project Closure Project Maintenance Configuration Management Change Management
	Quality Assurance and Quality Control
	Orient pays particular attention to three core elements of the overall development process
	Requirements Management Project Planning and Management Quality Assurance/Quality Control

Requirements Management Process

A Project’s success depends on excellent and active requirements management. Requirements stage errors are the most common type and the most expensive to fix when they go undetected. A 'requirements defect' that manages to slip through to production can cost two orders of magnitude more to fix than one which is caught earlier in the lifecycle. For these reasons, Orient employs a rigorous approach to requirements management.

Orient takes a systematic approach to eliciting, organizing, and documenting all system requirements. We have a clearly defined process whereby we establish and maintain agreement on requirements, as they are refined throughout the development lifecycle. Our requirements management process is tightly integrated with all aspects of the development lifecycle from business modelling and business case development through testing and system documentation.

Orient's success in eliciting requirements is our knowledge of which techniques are likely to be most successful in any given situation. We then bring in practitioners, skilled in the chosen techniques, to drive and facilitate client requirement sessions.

To bring value to clients, Orient looks beyond readily apparent functional requirements. Functional requirements must be viewed and understood in the context of business requirements, quality requirements, and architectural requirements. Orient's requirements management process ensures that the broad spectrum of requirements are understood and documented so that its solutions reflect the true needs of its clients.
We also make sure to capture and categorize requirements that reflect future as well as current needs. In this way, we can design our solutions with future growth in mind. We also make sure that good ideas which surface during requirements analysis are not forgotten, even though they may not 'make the cut' for the first release of a product.

Project Planning and Management Processes

Orient employs a formal project planning process that involves developing detailed project plans, tracking actual against plan, and using sophisticated estimation techniques.

Planning: For each project, we develop formal project plans that detail tasks, milestones, resource assignments, and dependencies. An overall, high-level plan and a detailed plan for the project inception phase are developed at the beginning of the project. During each project phase, detailed project plans are developed and refined for subsequent phases.

Tracking: We formally track progress against the plan on a weekly basis to identify problem areas that require intervention.

Estimating: Orient employs parameter-driven estimating tools. These tools are continuously refined based on project heuristics. After each project, we enhance the accuracy of our estimating tools by updating them to reflect what we learned from our "estimate versus actual" analysis performed during post-completion project reviews.

Orient uses specific methodologies and tools to manage project scope, identify issues, and mitigate risk.

Scope Management: Orient practices rigorous and formal scope management. Project scope is clearly defined during the project inception phase. Any requested changes to scope are documented, challenged, measured to determine impact, and subjected to a formal approval process.

Issue Management: For each project, we maintain an issue-tracking database that is used throughout the life of the project to formally document project-related issues, prioritize issues, track progress against issues, and record issue resolution.

Risk Management: The identification of project risks begins during the project inception phase. All known risks are identified, documented, assessed, and ranked according to a combination of likelihood and degree of impact. Each risk is analyzed to determine how that risk might either be avoided or controlled. Risk mitigation strategies are documented. Risk reviews are performed periodically throughout the life of each project to ensure that known risks are actively controlled and that all new risks are identified and managed.

Quality Assurance/Quality Control Process
Quality management is an integral part of Orient's project management processes. We take the time, at project inception, to work with our clients to define what quality means to them. We elicit quality requirements along many dimensions, including performance, feature sets, usability, defect levels, and time-to-market, and make them explicit and measurable. We then develop a project quality plan designed to meet our clients' quality objectives. Throughout the life of each project, we measure our performance against the quality plan to ensure that we are taking all necessary steps to meet the stated objectives.

Our quality processes are reinforced by our quality practices. Our prominent achievements are SEI-CMM Level 4 and ISO 9001:2000. We, at Orient believe in quality processes and practices that strengthen our ability to meet or exceed our quality goals.

Finally, we are developing an independent, external organization to assist in our offshore quality assurance and monitoring activities.

Project Team
A second differentiator is our approach to defining software development project teams. Orient's approach brings together experienced project managers, developers, graphic designers, and subject matter experts from within our organization. We truly "custom build" project teams based on the individual requirements of each client assignment.

Orient's project managers and technical staff are experienced professionals. Our project managers have a minimum of ten years of IT project experience and a proven track record of managing the full software development lifecycle. Orient's technical staff has been selected based on their mastery of specific technical domains.

Orient's project managers provide the following core skills on project teams:

Relationship management
Project management
Business knowledge (industry and / or functional expertise)
User requirements
Initial application design

User Interface Designers
Orient involves experienced graphic and user interface designers to create an optimal user experience for its software development. Historically, we have found that the entire user experience has been given little attention by software developers, and most development companies do not maintain graphic design as a core skill.

Orient's graphic design team provide the following core skills on project teams:

User experience and human factor engineering
User interface design
Internet and intranet website design and development
User documentation

Our Technical Resources
Orient uses a network of over 250 professionals which are available for eliciting user requirements, initial application design, and final system deployment and customer acceptance testing. The use of our staffing policy provides several advantages. Because we tap a large number of sources, we usually identify much more experienced and higher quality personnel than can be found within a single IT consulting firm. This "staffing on demand" approach saves our clients money because our costs are lower, since we are not carrying the overhead associated with paying the personnel between projects. In almost all cases, we find these resources locally, so our clients are not saddled with lodging, airfare, and other travel expenses.

Finally, we are developing an independent, external organization to assist in our offshore quality assurance and monitoring activities.

Orient's project managers provide the following core skills on project teams:

Relationship management
Project management
Business knowledge (industry and / or functional expertise)
User requirements
Initial application design

Orient's graphic design team provide the following core skills on project teams:

User experience and human factor engineering
User interface design
Internet and intranet website design and development
User documentation

Support Infrastructure
A third differentiator is our commitment to creating and maintaining a leading edge infrastructure to support our global software development with a development center of over 100,000 Sq. Ft. and state-of-art technology with the latest in communication and security.

At Orient, we strive to enhance the productivity and efficiency of our project teams through the use of knowledge management and communication technologies.

Orients Intellectual Resources includes:
Team Facilitation Tools

Project Management: Monitors timelines, deliverables, responsibilities, and schedule adherence of all software development processes and activities. Along with “MS Project” & “Project Central”, we use a specialized tool “Project By Net” which enables our customer to monitor the development online over Internet with the ongoing progress on their projects.
Shared Calendar: Tracks team and individual meetings and events. The team calendar allows all team members to schedule upcoming meetings and identify schedule conflicts.
Performance Metrics/Balanced Scorecard: Presents project related financial and non-financial metrics.

Document Management Repositories
Document Repository: Stores a variety of project team-related documents, including project plans, minutes of meeting, internal presentations, correspondences, contracts, and working papers. Stores documents in a variety of formats; searches and retrieves documents; allows check in/check out and versioning; allows mark-up and other collaborative editing, and other capabilities. Security features are in place to limit access to and editing of all documents and folders.

Communication and Collaboration Tools
Communication: Orient uses a wide variety of communication technologies for the regular exchange of information between geographically distributed team members. Telephone, e-mail, instant messaging, audio and video conferencing, and interactive tools are used for informal interactions. Formal communications are written and include status reports, status reviews, and all exception reporting.

Collaboration: Orient's project teams have access to a variety of web-based tools for collaboration like Project By Net, Internet meeting tools such as Webex, and NetMeeting, and Orient's shared repositories.

Reference Materials and Educational Resources
Orient's philosophy is to leverage its talent by having its team members' focus only on value-added work. There is no value-addition in 're-inventing the wheel.' Accordingly, we have invested in the development of several resources that address various activities and outputs that are common in the range of activities we typically undertake during our projects.

Templates Library: Stores our set of proprietary templates, which are associated with the tasks and deliverables in our project methodology. Project team members can readily identify which project artifacts are applicable at each step of a project and have a standard, well-constructed format to capture information and develop project deliverables. Our templates library provides consistency to our project approach and is a mechanism to support our quality assurance activities.
Each template comes complete with guidelines for completion as well as a section for change / version control and approval. Additionally, we actively work to incorporate improvements into our templates. Template usability reviews are a standard part of our post-project review process.
Software Module Library: Stores Orient-owned software modules for reuse
Best Practices Repository: Provides access to lessons learned, best practices and case studies, process descriptions, SOPs, process and information flow maps, checklists, and more
Distance Learning: Provides access to on-line training courses and links to learning related content and resources.