Fixed Term Software Development

Fixed-term software development services with fixed-time and fixed-price

We provide fixed-term software development where a customer’s need is for a very self-contained piece of software with clearly defined requirements.

Our experience has shown us that fixed-term software development tends to match the needs of customers from large enterprises. Particularly where an organisation has to be incredibly clear about costs and timescales ahead of the software project. For projects that are more ambiguous, lengthy or complex we typically recommend our Team-as-a-Service (TaaS), or agile methodology, approach to software development.

Understanding Fixed-Term Software Development

If your business is considering a software development project and a fixed-term approach sounds ideal, here is what you need to know.

Fixed-term software development is ideal if you have a small, or several small phases, of a software development project. In order to quote for each phase, a great deal of pre-development work needs to be undertaken to gather and confirm project requirements.

However, fixed-term software development projects do carry some potential downsides. Our years of experience delivering fixed-term software development projects combined with our experience delivering agile, an alternative approach, allow us to work with you to identify the best project management approach to suit your particular business needs.

Benefits of fixed-term software development

The benefits of fixed-term software development are:

• This approach to software development is quite rigid, and therefore easy to understand.
• In this model phases are processed and completed one at a time. Phases do not overlap.
• Your software project will have a fixed cost.
• Your software project will be completed to a fixed timescale.

Downsides of fixed-term software development

The downsides of fixed-term software development are:

• A large amount of upfront work is required to allow requirements to be gathered to a level of detail that quotes can be provided.
• Once an application is in the testing stage, it is very difficult to go back and change something that was not well-thought out in the concept stage.
• Not a good model for complex and object-oriented projects.
• Poor model for long and ongoing projects.
• Not suitable for the projects where requirements are at a moderate to high risk of changing.

When to use fixed-term software development

The ideal software project to apply a fixed-term methodology to is:

• Requirements are very well known, clear and fixed.
• Technology is understood and conceptually straightforward.
• Ample resources with required expertise are freely available.
• The project is short term, measured in weeks rather than months or years.

How we approach fixed-term software development

After confirming that your project is suitable for a fixed-term approach to software development, we take you through our simple yet organised and defined process for gathering your requirements to move your software project forward. At a high level this includes:

• Enquiry – We take your initial enquiry via phone or email.
• Consultation Call – We gather more detailed information about your project and ensure we can meet your high level objectives.
• Consultation Meeting – We discuss your product needs and gain further more detailed understanding of your business objectives.
• Prototypes – If necessary we’ll build wireframes or HTML prototypes of our proposed solution.
• Workshop – A detailed workshop, usually a day or longer, to really delve down in to the detail of the requirements.
• Proposal – We provide a proposal for you to approve.

How Atlas Can Help You

If you’re interested in finding out how Atlas could help you with fixed-term software development, call us now on +44 (0)800 133 7948 for a free no-obligation consultation.

Our work

Two of our recent software projects, see Our Work for more Case Studies.