At Reflexion
we believe we need to win your business every day, not just once.
We know that not every client understands what they need to protect
themselves from shoddy workmanship, so we make sure you get everything
you need. Our experience is that our clients stay with us for many
years, but if you decide you want to work with another software
development firm, you don’t want to find out a couple years
from now that you’re missing certain key parts of the system
that you thought you paid for. We provide the following:
Analysis
documentation — either
use cases that describe how the system will be used,
or a requirements
document that specifies what the system must do.
In addition we provide a data model that describes
how your data fits
together, and we go over this model with you to make
sure everyone has the same understanding. If changes
are needed
to the system in the future, a developer can read
the specification for the current system and know
where to begin.
Development
documentation — we provide
a Programmer’s Manual, something that almost no custom
software firm provides unless required to by the client.
This is a document that tells the programmers in technical
terms how the application is built, including what software
tools such as third party libraries are required to maintain
the system. At Reflexion we believe it is an indispensable
tool, not only for a programmer unfamiliar with the system,
but to refresh the memory of the original developers years
later.
Source
Code — one
very important component that we deliver to our clients is
the source code, the human readable code that tells the computer
what to do. This is generally different from the code that
actually runs on the computer, and many clients don’t
realize that they don’t actually have the source code
that they paid for. If changes are required in the future,
the programmers must have the original source code to work
with. We maintain copies of your source code backed up on
our servers, but we also insist for your protection that
you keep a copy as well.
But isn’t
all that documentation expensive to produce? First, you need
the documentation that we provide, and we don’t provide
unnecessary documentation. What’s needed for a team of
200 people working on a multi-million dollar project over 10
years is very different from the documentation needed for the
kinds of projects that we typically do. So we don’t produce
excessive documentation that’s not needed. Secondly, we
are very efficient and your documentation is produced as quickly
and inexpensively as possible as part of our development process.
We simply don’t think documentation can be produced any
less expensively than it can using our Reflexion Application
Development methodology.
So why do
we do this? First, it’s the right thing to do. We’ve
been writing custom software applications for more than 20 years,
and we know what best practices are in our industry. More than
that, though, it tells you that if you decide you want to work
with another software development firm in the future, that you’ll
be able to easily move to another vendor. However, we’re
so confident, based on our long track record with clients, that
once you use Reflexion for your custom software application needs,
that you’ll never go anywhere else. This is our way of
doing the right thing, and making sure that we earn your trust
and loyalty every day.
