A lot of people over the past six months have asked us, how a small team like ours can build so many substantial applications? How can we do both Mobile and Web applications so well? Does the team ever sleep? Aren’t we stretching ourselves too thin? and so on. This curiosity and skepticism is well founded after all story of a typical software project as outlined below (source) is not a pretty picture.

At MangoSpring we are acutely aware of the story of a typical software project. This pathetic ROI on software projects was the primary driver behind us creating and adopting AgileApps model at a business level not just at a development level at MangoSpring.

This AgileApps model  is based on 3 corner stone’s that have come out of years of personal experiences working at ThumbSpeed, AOL, Infospace, Telcordia, TCS and others. These corner stone’s are – Total Agility (developing and delivering software uses agile methodologies best practices), Greater Efficiency ( agile open source technology/framework stack and aligning it with SOA/Web Services standards across a consumer and enterprise domains for) , and high degree of responsiveness on daily basis throughout the project.

At MangoSpring we create multi-dimensional, fully functional, teams and each team is focused on one problem at a time.  So, although at company level it may seem we are doing too many things, at team level we are always laser focused (how do  we weave these focused teams together so that 1+1 > 2 is a topic of a separate post that I plan to do some day).

So, how do we ensure that we have this laser focus on each project that are underway? At MangoSpring we have been practicing what we call AgileApps. It’s an extension of Agile software development principles that allows us to build Agile Businesses- sort of like startup within a startup.

Agile wire-framing and full prototyping of applications: The traditional prototyping approach is to mock-up some screens in Photoshop or similar tools (even HTML). MangoSpring on the other hand takes the approach of going with complete wire-framing and working prototype making it a focused effort and investment, in order to better understand and refine the requirements prior to building the system. We have found that capturing the detailed user experiences by doing a fully working prototype results in a much lower overall project time and significantly higher product quality. So this 1st step plays a very important role in the MangoSpring’s AgileApps model of building and delivering software.

Agile development and automated testing of applications: MangoSpring’s AgileApps model of building and delivering software uses the 4 key tenets of Agile Manifesto on a daily basis – Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools, Working Software over comprehensive documentation, Customer Collaboration over contract negotiation and Responding to Change over following a plan. Because of the flexibility, developer friendliness and sustainable productivity provided by agile methodologies & tools, significant productivity is realized on a daily basis. Testing early and often ensures that end product quality exceeds expectations.

Greater efficiency  and effectiveness with Lower TCO – Functionality & Infrastructure: Since the AgileApps model of developing and delivering software results in continuous integration it provides for an always available WYSIWYG setup reducing the gap in user requirements understanding, which helps in early correction and lowers the rework costs as compared to projects where the user gets to see the system only at specific intervals of time.

On the infrastructure side,  we have developed a 1-click, web-based, setup and deployment to a clustered environment for all the applications and hence there are no related desktop, deployment personnel, release management costs.  Also, since the platform is multi-tenant in nature, it further adds to the infrastructure savings since multiple applications are being deployed using the same platform instance running behind the company’s firewall with adequate security.

High responsiveness with faster time to market: MangoSpring’s AgileApps model of developing and delivering software enables the enterprise get to market faster with launch of new products or modifications to the existing ones. By using the Agile version of SDLC which compresses the overall development cycle and helps the enterprise get to the market faster. Since the same principles apply during the maintenance phase of the project, customers get the similar time-to-market benefits in this phase too. According to a Gartner estimate for every $1 spent on developing a business application, $2.4 is spent on maintaining it over its life-cycle.

In a nutshell, AgileApps model revolves around creating small, well-rounded agile teams, giving them the vision for the product, and empowering them to execute on that vision.

Ironing out ‘expectation mismatch’ and thereby cutting rework cost, lowering TCO, increasing ROI,  guaranteeing at least 40% faster time to market than traditional SDLC, offering quick & easy customization, and ensuring superior quality – the MangoSpring’s AgileApps model of developing and delivering software is a disruptive innovation that can bring order of magnitude benefits to business.

MangoSpring’s AgileApps model of building and delivering business software enables our customers to deploy Software products, solutions and services that are delivered with the highest degree of quality, on or before time and come with 100% satisfaction guarantee.

Email us at info at mangospring.com or call us for more information on how we can help.