Get ready to get busy
Those who know us soon realize that Q is more than just a letter, while our activities strongly surpass those of a traditional software agency. The Q brand is separated into 3 entities: Q Software, Q Experience, and Q Genesis. While Q software is focused on forming teams of dedicated IT professionals and Q experience provides its partners with premium customer support, Q genesis is a story of its own. It’s a riveting story, why not give it a read?
To start with why
Q Genesis, as our methodology for working with startups, came to be as a direct consequence of our long term experience in the field. The reasons we saw the necessity for its development are that when executed properly, an optimal way of working can save time and money, make the project easier to maintain, achieve the same or better results with a cleaner code base and increase the overall team productivity.
Everything starts with a round of Q-uestioning
Before the process of project delivery can go any further, some basic outlines must be drawn. That’s why we’ve devised a set of questions that will clear out any possible uncertainties in the later stages. The questions cover both the business and technological aspects of the project, from defining the competitors, key audiences, the added value, project timeframe and deadlines, user stories & visitor interactions, functionalities, tech stack preferences, usage of third-party solutions, the look and feel of the product, etc.
We don’t skip workshops (or: Never skip workshop day)
If you want to have an amazing product built from scratch, odds are, you will need guidance from multiple experts with different skill sets, such as UX & UI designers, developers, business analysts, etc. When a lot of smart people sit down together, good things tend to happen. In the case of workshops at Q, you can count on having your idea taken to the stage where the project phases, technical specifications, involved dedicated experts, rough timeline and tech stack recommendations are defined.
Why it’s important to define everything at the very beginning of the project can be summed up in a simple graph.
Discovery phase
After the workshop, it’s time to dive into discovery. Even smart people trip over the discovery phase because they are often times overconfident, enthusiastic or just don’t understand the industry best practices properly. Out of all the reasons people try to skip this phase, the main one is undoubtedly — you guessed it — its impact on the price and timeline. Microsoft stated that by fixing the top 20% of the most reported bugs, 80% of the related errors and crashes in a given system would be eliminated. Furthermore, if this doesn’t convince you, please feel free to read up on the FoxMeyer Drugs’ Bankruptcy.
This phase can last from 2 weeks to a few months, depending on the project scope and complexity. On the other hand, it is crucial if you want to hit a home run since it will always bring forth the answers regarding the technical specifications, product architecture, the timeframe of development and many more. We can let another graph tell the story of how expensive it can be to skip this “most underrated” stage of development.
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
After everything is defined and the workload, as well as the objectives, are crystal clear, it’s time to create low-fidelity wireframes. They are a useful tool because they create an opportunity to test solutions with end users early and inexpensively. This part of the process always includes back-and-forth exchanges of ideas between the expert team and the client, so our practice has shown that it’s always better to come up with an initial concept and show it to our clients asap. Otherwise, you can end up wasting a lot of time, pursuing a wrong path. It’s also easier to execute changes in wireframes then in the hi-fi designs or development.
Hi-Fidelity Wireframes
The next logical step towards creating a final product is the design of hi-fidelity wireframes. They should have the same content, graphics, and interactivity as the live product is expected to have. This stage is pivotal since it allows designers to focus on testing the details and bring the idea one step closer to its completion. As well as the previous step, hi-fi wireframing is an iterative process where all involved parties must participate with their unique visions and directions. To be on the safe side though, it might be a good idea to let the designers have some freedom at this stage, you may already know the joke below.
Development
Finally comes our sweet spot and the core of our work, the development. This topic is and will be elaborated much further in the rest of our articles, but at this point, we can provide a holistic overview. We divide the development phase into sub-stages of concepting (proof of concept, POC), prototyping, MVP stage, and the final product. But, in the reality of software development, is there really such a thing as a final product?
