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Providing Professional And Creative Software zenHackers are dedicated to writing beautiful, high-quality software using the latest reliable technologies. We incorporate the following principles into every software solution that we provide: System Correctness and Reliability Our top priority in developing any software solution is that the system MUST function 100% correctly and that the system is 100% reliable. Optimized for Speed and Efficiency All our software solutions are optimized for speed and efficiency. We still believe that even though hardware is cheap, source code still needs to be optimized. Professional, Clean, and Organized We take care to create professional software that is well-organized and clean. Every aspect of the software solution is carefully designed to make sure that the entire system is structurally sound and that no unnecessary features / code resides in the system. This results in a software solution that is very easy to maintain and expand. We don't just pile feature on top of feature; we carefully design each feature to integrate into the system as smooth and cleanly as possible, redesigning existing features where necessary. This results in very stable software solutions that are of high-quality. Beautiful, Smart, and Creative We believe that a software solution must be beautiful, from a user-perspective, but also from a developer-perspecitve. We take care to write code that very easy to understand (code that is easy to understand is beautiful code). We create software solutions that are smart, that utilizes all your business rules to empower and enable your business. We do not create solutions that restrict their users, but rather empowers them. Now you can start working smarter. We use the input from all our members to create solutions that are creative, using technology in creative ways to give you the edge in your business. Fun We also value the fun-factor of our solutions. This means that we design our software solutions to be fun and intuitive to use. We strongly believe that if it is not fun to use a software solution, it is not a good solution. Long Life All our software solutions are designed to run as long as possible. We make sure to think about the life of our solutions after development has been completed. We design all our software solutions so that they can run for as long as possible without an upgrade / maintenance, minimizing cost and risk to our clients. Our Development Model Reduces Risk Because we know that developing a custom software solution for your business is a big risk for any company, we have created a development model to minimize the risk for our clients. We believe that the client must be in control of certain aspects of a software development project, specifically the financial side. With our development model, the client enjoys the following benefits: the client can decide the priority of the features that must be implemented at each stage of development. This lets us write the most important parts of the system first. Getting to a usable product faster. the client can pause/stop the development after any phase is complete. This has many benefits, but the primary benefit is that the client can manage cost. If a phase is complete, the client can wait until he has enough money to continue with the next phase. Also the client only pays for the work done in each phase, so there is no large sum of money that needs to be paid at once, the client pays in small increments for the work done so far. If the client feels that the system doesn't need any further phases to be completed, he/she is free to stop the development of the project, only incurring the cost of the work done so far. the client gets to see parts of the system very early, allowing him to approve the work done so far and test the functionality as soon as possible. This lets us catch errors in the design / functionality very early in development and allows us to fix them before going on to the rest of the system. the client can change his mind about implemented features / functionliaty after each phase. Our development model supports change, because some client environments are subject to regular change, our development model is structured to embrace change. This means that if some business process changed while we were incorporating it into the system, we can simply change it after the phase is complete. The client is not met with the inability to change his system. the client has direct access to the development team. This means that the client will be working directly with the people doing the work. There is no complicated communication channel that allows for a message or idea to get lost in the translation. Our Development Model Protects Our Clients But our development model does not only give the power to the client, it also protects our clients throughout the development process, keeping your investment safe. BEFORE DEVELOPMENT Before starting the development, we can provide the client with a paper/mock-screen prototype so that we can show the client what his system will look like and how it will work BEFORE starting any development work. This helps us finalize ideas and features before starting any development work. At this stage of development, it is very easy and cheap to make big changes to the system as no code will need to be modified, only screen-shots. DURING DEVELOPMENT We use a custom-built project management system to keep track of the changes that should be made during a phase and to track bugs reported by our clients. The project management system allows us to provide detailed information to the client of what development was done during a phase, what bugs were fixed, etc. We use a revision control system (Bazaar/Git) for ALL our projects. This means it is easy to track changes made to the source code. We can move backward to any point in time and retrieve the source code for that time. We can also manage changes to source code securely, allowing multiple people to make changes to the source code safely, without losing any source code or support files. We have multiple copies of the entire project on multiple PCs, so if any of our PCs are stolen or fails, we have up-to-date copies on other machines. We also create regular backups of the project that we burn to DVD. Upon the completion of a phase, the entire project source code with full revision history and support files are handed to the client so the client has a copy of the full source code for his project. AFTER DEVELOPMENT We recognize that sometimes a client will have his own competent staff that may want to make changes to the system themselves. No problem. We incorporate detailed inline source code documentation, as well as external documentation about the system. Our code is written in such a way that it is easy to understand and change. We also provide support for clients modifying their own system. This means the client's developers can contact our development team to get any information needed to make a change to the system safely. We also recognize that people are going to be using the system. To even further reduce the risk, after a phase is complete we can provide training to the people using the system, providing competent people that have an in-depth knowledge of the system to train your employees.