Frequently Asked Question

We have been developing solutions for clients since 2009 and since then has been a successful venture delivering high quality services, cost effective pricing, reliable and result-oriented web and e-commerce solutions to an international clientele. We have worked with over 400+ clients globally and counting.

After delivering the product that meets the agreed-to requirements and you sign off on the project we: 1)Proceed with the hand over to your technical team ; 2)Validate any ongoing requirements such as support, maintenance, phase 2 development, and ; 3)Poll you for “did well – do better” feedback so that we may better serve you the next time we work together.

Yes. The SRS document along with the code and added comments is supplied to the client at the end of the project.

Yes. All our clients are assigned a liaison officer that serves as their guide and information source throughout our whole project life cycle. In the event that it is outside working hours or the person is not contactable our 24 hour support line and our case management system are there to keep everyone informed and the project moving along by capturing and acting on project change requests (PCR’s) and issues.

Depending on the project management methodology’s you select, the type of development, the rigor you want to put into the testing regime and frequency, we aim to create operating software as soon as possible and where appropriate, we will develop testing/prototype modules as your project evolves and/or if necessary.

We provide the SRS documentation to the client. The code will have comments to facilitate easy comprehension. Our documentation is comprehensive and self-explanatory.

Yes. We aim to keep you current and competitive. We want our clients to feel as though we are an extension of their own development teams charged with the responsibly to manage product lifecycles.

FTC teams get incredible leverage from open source tools, libraries, frameworks, being accountable for their own projects and our own proprietary library. We never reinvent the wheel and where there is a tool that is suitable for problem solving, we research and use it. We clean sheet programming for only the part of the product that will make it valuable and unique. This ensures your IP remains yours and we keep costs and development time down while surpassing your expectation for quality.

We will provide end-user documentation if the clause is included in the work contract and quoted by FTC.

Yes. All our clients are assigned a liaison officer that serves as their guide and information source throughout our whole project life cycle. In the event that it is outside working hours or the person is not contactable our 24 hour support line and our case management system are there to keep everyone informed and the project moving along by capturing and acting on project change requests (PCR’s) and issues.

If you haven’t elected to use our local project management professional service, all communication is channeled directly to the team abroad and is performed within those hours available (7:00am until 7:00pm local time which is GMT +5:30). We use Skype, Go To Meeting, Google Hangouts or telephone calls for scheduling and facilitating meetings. Outside of these hours a 24 hour live contact is available for escalations and emergencies. If you can’t get us live we commit to responding within 30 minutes. If our clients require defined hours outside our normal hours of operation (such as a managed service, or production meetings that align with your teams) this can be scoped and will be priced accordingly

Yes, of course. All of the methodologies we use ensure we are able to iterate the project during its development and include your feedback to improve the product as it is being created.

Our project management practices are centered on a “no surprises” philosophy – not being shy to share bad news early internally and with clients. This keeps everyone informed at all times and attacks risks as they emerge . Projects fail for one major reason – poor communications. Establishing communication and planning rhythms in our work environment is a key aspect of software development project management framework. These rhythms include ; ▪ Weekly internal meetings to review success, failures and future plans – 1 hour ● Team members demonstrate what they got done the week prior ; ● Everyone discusses how they can improve the processes/techniques on projects using real life examples, and ; ● a detailed plan of the upcoming week is agreed to in advance. ▪ Daily standup to create team momentum – 15 minutes max.

A Peer Review practice is a part of our standard development process. Any code developed by an application resource is always verified by another application resource. Only after verification is the software released for testing. If you wish to have a 3rd party review code this service is also available to you and we would be happy to pay 50% of whatever fee they may charge.

We have never had a breach in our security that protects your confidentiality and we intend to keep it this way – our future depends on it. Maintaining an ISO 27001 (information security) and 9001 (quality assurance) certifications compels us to ensure we adhere to strict protocols that manages this. As for guaranteeing, in the very unlikely event that a breach occurs we would manage the incident with speed, determination, aggressively and professionally to limit the harm the breach could cause. The clauses and the process to address a breach is covered in our agreement with you.

We boast a 96.5% success rate in an industry where 42% is the norm. Clear consistent communication, tight regular feedback loops, complying with our ISO standards and staying lean have attributed to our high degree of “on time – on budget – to spec” success

Frankly, yes, we have failed a handful of projects. No one is perfect but we have learnt from it has assured us to never make the samemisakes twice. In every case the failure was attributed tocommunication issues that include: ▪ Not fully defiing the scope of the project ▪ Not listening to and understanding the business requirementsthat the development supports ▪ Misaliginment with what was being built versus what was needed, and ▪ A lack of client and team communication througout the project. In the event of each failure, we ate the full cost of the project until itwas back on track. We know this was the right thing to do. After taking stock, we improved our QA processes by taking actionssuch as ; 1) Creation of our highly successful QA development policies and procedures 2) Multipoint estimation mehods that place emphasis on risk mitigation and avoidance ; 3) A more thorough 60 day on boarding process with new employees ; 4) Formalised employee skill set mapping and peronal.

We evaluate the progress after key milestones defined in the work plan. We conduct tests such as stress and user acceptance tests and present it to you for feedback. Using your comments and direction we then proceed to the next stage in the plan and do the same at the end of that milestone.

We use Fog Creek Kiln source code and version control repository. In addition, we are experienced with Visual Source Safe, Team Foundation Server, and other popular version control systems.

Yes. Please submit your request via our contact form or e-mail and we'll send you complete info regarding our team members' certifications and qualifications. These will be anonymized for privacy purposes but they will be the primary members of our growing team that we will assign to the project.

We will answer this in two ways. We can provide a general “time to complete” estimate based on the information you provide. The more information the more accurate it will be. However we will not be able to commit to the deadline because it will be based on multiple assumptions. To commit to a precise timeline we would work with you to prepare a formal project scope of work, timeline and corresponding budget. If after two weeks you are not confident that we can deliver the product you require, on time and on budget you can withdraw from the project with no penalties, this is our trial period and we believe that any reliable software development house should give you one.

While we feel that providing comments for all public methods is a good habit, we comment only when it is "truly required". For instance, we avoid commenting on codes that have the correct method name. Through this practice, we avoid over-commenting and create codes that are easy on the eyes.

We have a standard procedure of handling change requests from our client use Teamwork projects to facilitate this process. Firstly, we clearly define the change request and any impact it may have on cost and delivery time if any. Next, we seek your approval for any change request. After you approve the request, we do an impact analysis to validate the impact and proceed with the project.

We thoroughly monitor our developers and control how much time they spend on each task down to the exact minute and share this with you. We use Teamwork Projects and Hubstaff to track time spent on your project. Results from this are collated and then a report is generated for you to see the current accumulated and forecasted project activity.

The number of resources employed for a project depends entirely upon the scale and complexity of the project. For example - we allocate two developers, one tester and a part-time UI designer for a small project. In addition, each project will have a Technical Architect, Business Analyst and Project Manager. We can increase the number of resources depending upon the client/project requirements at any time.