Mindsystems Amode Project

What value does an expert development partner like Program-Ace have to a leading software provider like Mindsystems? Well, if you take the word of Mindsystems ITS Manager, Alex England, the answer is:

"Program-Ace is an absolutely indispensible and vital partner for Mindsystems. Their flexibility and expertise has proven critical to our business operations and will continue to do so well into the future. In short, Mindsystems could not ask for a better outsourcing partner.

Program-Ace fulfill a variety of development and operational outsourcing activities, for Mindsystems, which enable us to extend our current capacity. As ITS Manager they enable me to extend the reach of my development and testing team without incurring the excessive overheads associated with expanding my in-house development team.

Australia and Ukraine are about as far away as you can get from each other, yet their resources have blended seamlessly into my development environment... often providing a level of cost efficiency and quality that I do not believe we could obtain from either the Australian or US based partners."

Alex England, ITS Operations Manager of Mindsystems Pty Ltd

Recent Project Summary

Having a profound experience in development of large-scale projects Program-Ace has played a vital role in Mindsystems expansion, including providing extended resource capacity during the recent development of the Mindsystems Amode project.

History

Program-Ace started cooperation with Mindsystems Pty Ltd (Australia) back in 2004. The partnership resulted in joint development of several high-level products. The Amode project was definitely the most comprehensive and challenging one.

One of the key reasons for choosing Program-Ace as strategic technological partner was the necessary knowledge and profile experience in developing of the software dedicated to the planning and information management.

For instance, since 1999 company has developed and constantly updated AceRemoteProject™. It is high-end web-based tool for managing software projects dispersed over several remote teams. The major advantage of this system is fully automated project tracking and data exchange that helps to keep distant teams closely connected throughout the whole project. The product makes it easy to monitor tasks, assign developers, exchange files, schedule important events, perform wise man-power planning for multiple projects and generate automatic reports. More details about the product you can find at www.AceRemoteProject.com.

The cooperation has started with extensive consultations and defining of the project scope, which gradually lead both team to the common vision of the future product.

Mindsystems Project Scope:

The joint Mindsystems Program-Ace team was tasked with the objective of “developing the world’s most flexible information manager”. This was to build upon Mindsystems existing product KnowledgeLink.

Main tasks of the project:

1. Combine visual planning, information handling and project management functionality in one application.
2. Cover coordination of both working tasks and personal time management features.
3. Unite visual and linear presentation of all necessary information – and make it easy and comfortable to work with.
4. Enable simultaneous management of multiple projects in one system.
5. Implement 60+ new features.

Resources

The project included both software development and advanced technological consulting. Both companies exchanged ideas in a most intensive way during the whole development cycle — in order to find the best solution for each production issue on the way to the product release.

Program-Ace added to the Mindsystems development team not only a group of C/C++ developers and managers, but also targeted participation of analysts and quality assurance department. Daily communication between both project teams (in Australia and Ukraine) was supported by dedicated CRM manager. General coordination and supervision of the process was performed by the top-managers of both participating companies.

The product was created in a working environment coordinated according to the rules of the best Agile development practice.

Achievements

1. Comprehensive integration of all necessary functionality.
2. Successful combination of visual tools with business logics of the product.
3. Mix-tech approach practically implemented (in several product modules).
4. Guaranteed compatibility with all leading profile applications (for instance, Microsoft Office Suite, OpenOffice.org, Adobe PDF Reader, Mind Manager, etc.).

Difficulties

Conclusions

Program-Ace has confirmed its core competencies and proven the ability to handle large-scale and long-term projects. The profile expertise in development of high-end planning and information management applications enabled the continued progress on all key stages of project’s implementation and the final success in reaching of the goal.

References and comments

"Revolutionary ideas show everyone the real power of technologies and gradually changing the way we work and live every day. Our team is always glad to help our partners and customers to make the impossible happen. Development of Mindsystems Amode was a challenge, an adventure and inspiration at the same time!" — says Dmitry Sverdlik, Managing Director of Enterprise Solutions Business Unit at Program-Ace.

"In case of Mindsystems Amode the technological task was closely connected to the business functionality and overall appearance of the system. And there was a long way from vision to the final product!" — adds Vitaliy Yaremenko, senior developer assisting Mindsystems Development. "Our task was to make everything look and work exactly in the way as application was expected to perform."

"To find a competent and reliable partner to assist in the development of such large-scale and innovative application as Amode was certainly not an easy task. Now I can surely say that Program-Ace was the right choice for us! The offer a professional team with the necessary experience, transparent project management and most active communication on a daily basis — and these are the key factors for successful project outcomes." — concludes Alex England, ITS Operations Manager of Mindsystems Pty Ltd.