Edit

Aspire Systems

http://www.aspiresys.com/

We believe that building great software involves creativity, vision and engineering discipline.

While aesthetics and design are very important, there are common underlying principles – or in other words, basic engineering ground rules – that should be followed to ensure that software is neither ‘under’ nor ‘over-engineered’.

Not everyone endorses software as an “engineering” discipline. But, no matter how beautiful the Golden Gate Bridge is – can anyone deny that it is anything but an engineering marvel?

Similarly, when building software products, it’s important to keep in mind the core practices related to requirements development, functional design, code construction, integration, project estimation and so on.

Having built enterprise and consumer software for several years – succeeding in many cases and failing in a few – we’ve evolved an approach to software development that we are passionate about, and we call it “Producteering”.

When applied judiciously, Producteering helps build software better and faster. The four key tenets of Producteering are Principles, Practices, People and Platforms. Customers find this approach of ours very relevant and useful to them.

PRINCIPLES
These are the core doctrines used by our leaders/managers to navigate the team through the software engineering lifecycle. Sample a few:

Manage the key variables: Time, Budget and Scope
Deliver working software frequently
Strive for ‘whole product’ instead of perfect product
Be Result-Oriented as against Process-Oriented

PRACTICES
These are the everyday habits of our home-grown ‘Producteers’. We have a set of recommended practices that we instill in all new recruits and generally adopt for:

Architecture & Engineering
Software Usability
Performance Engineering
Software Testing

PEOPLE
Surprisingly, the software industry tends to overlook the differences between engineering run-of-the-mill IT applications and software products (or product-class applications). This has driven us to mould and create our own team of “Producteers”, with a product development mindset.

High standards in our recruitment process, “Impact training” for all new employees on Producteering principles and best practices, one-on-one associations with mentors for the first few projects, hands-on exposure to development through the creation of software for internal organizational use, and familiarity with the use of our core platforms help groom our people to become world-class software engineers.

PLATFORM
The ability to leverage existing technology frameworks and tools to reduce the product engineering cycle is a vital ingredient of Producteering. Aspire’s development framework, ‘PROPEL’ – a suite of foundational and infrastructural components/services, and ‘PRISM’ – an integrated platform for collaboration, communication and project management, will enhance the productivity of engineering teams and eliminate redundancy.

Propel has helped save development time by 20-50% (based on the size and requirements of your product/project) and comes in various flavors: PropelJ, Propel .NET, PropelQ and Propel.SaaS. Built on open-source foundations, PRISM can become a vital tool to help manage everything from requirements and defects to release and support.

WHY PRODUCTEERING = BETTER SOFTWARE
So, while on the one hand, we see great software built by talented firms in various corners of the world, the vast majority of companies are still addicted to avoiding simple-yet-hygienic ways of building software and are constantly re-inventing the wheel.

Producteering is our attempt at avoiding these pitfalls. Looked at individually, these tenets and practices may seem straight-forward; but in our experience, the SUM is much greater than the PARTS.