Plan For Success

1) Innovation Sessions

Your business is unlike any other, and you deserve a development partner that recognizes that. Therefore, we start every project with an innovation session that helps us learn more about your business and industry, allowing us to create custom software that meets the precise needs of your customer, clients, employees, and stakeholders. We don’t stop there, however. This innovative mindset continues throughout the entire project to ensure that the end product is exactly what you envisioned and any obstacles are overcome in the best way possible. By engaging in our formulated innovation sessions, you’re guaranteed to save time and money throughout the process. In the end, you’ll have a quality application that satisfies your business goals.

2) Architect and Wireframe

Once we discuss your goals and expectations, the planning phase begins. Our skilled project managers will take everything we discussed during our initial innovation session and translate it into a working wireframe. This visual map will provide a first look into the logistics and flow of your future application.

Working with these rough draft, black and white wireframes is critical to lining up expectations between the client and the agency. Unfortunately, all too often, agencies rush through initial wireframing and planning efforts, creating miscommunications about the project scope, timeline, and expectations. To avoid unnecessary expenses or changes to the expected timeline, Custom Stacks collaborates closely with your team to create, revise, and pivot as necessary before we finalize a plan forward. We won’t move to the next phase until you’re completely satisfied.

3) Visual Design Prototype

After we’ve refined the wireframe and received your approval, we’ll start one of the most exciting parts of the development process: bringing the wireframe to life. Our team will design a set of interactive mockup screens that, like a storyboard, will provide a first glimpse of what users will see as they navigate from page to page. Like every other stage along the way, your team will be able to provide feedback, make requests, and work with our engineers to finalize a design that meets or exceeds your expectations.

At the end of stage 3, you’ll have a comprehensive idea of what your application will look like at the end of the development process. You can share this mockup with investors, colleagues, and customers throughout the entire development process. Only when we’ve completed these first three steps of our process and you’re satisfied with the interactive mockup does our team prepare to begin writing code. This saves us all time, money, and frustration.

Execute

4) Development

With a clear path forward, our team of industry-leading engineers will begin to build out your software. Our development process adheres to all the latest, proven industry best practices and security standards. During this time, the development team employs laser-sharp focus to create the foundational source code and documentation imperative for long-term viability and success. And, because of our high caliber engineering talent and strict process controls, you can rest easy knowing that your intellectual property is handled ethically and well protected. Throughout the entire development process, our Custom Stacks engineers work to ensure that the end result is an accurate, high-quality product that is scalable, secure, and well-documented.

5) Quality Assurance

One of the most critical parts of the development process is quality assurance. We’re not satisfied until your software is 100% ready for use, and we’ll never settle for anything less. That’s why we leverage skilled developers and project managers to test every aspect of your soon-to-be-completed software. As we complete this stage of the process, we’ll also work with your team to ensure that the result is a living replica of your vision. With our 5-star quality assurance procedures, you can be confident that future development updates and deployments won’t introduce new issues or result in unnecessary downtime. This is critical to the long-term success of your project and your reputation among customers and stakeholders alike.

Launch and Maintain

6) Go Live

Once we’ve completed our thorough quality assurance efforts and we’re confident that your software is ready for use, we’ll prepare for launch. You’ll have access to our white-glove deployment services to launch your software and confidently bring it to customers, clients, or members of your organization. During this stage, our team will work tirelessly to ensure that the end product goes live without a hitch and that it’s ready for use from day one. With our bug-fix guarantee, you’ll have the dedicated support of our engineering team, who are committed to your success and available to assist you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

7) Ongoing Maintenance

Our work isn’t done just because your software goes live. We consider ourselves an extension of your team, and we’re here for you every step of the way, including post-deployment. By partnering with Custom Stacks, you gain long-term support from a team that’s committed to maintaining client projects, allowing for long-term success, satisfaction, and scalability. In addition, our team of engineers is on-call to resolve potential bugs quickly and address any request for edits or other additions you may need.

As your engineering partner, Custom Stacks is fully invested in creating long-term opportunities together — our commitment to your project well after it goes live is what sets us apart from other agencies.