Data System Development

Partner with our software delivery team to design, build, and implement your new data system.

Our extensive experience building software ensures we can help you improve your workflow and capture the critical data necessary to help inform your organizational goals. Our team has experience working with philanthropy, state and local government, nonprofit and community-based organizations, and more.

Get a clear picture of the investment range, features, and schedule necessary to build your data system
Improve service delivery by automating workflow, streamlining operations, and expanding reporting
Expand the utility of your data system: add new features, modules, reports, and more

How you can work with us

Building a new data system is an exciting opportunity to invest time and resources in improving the way that you collaborate and work. It can be daunting and we’ve put a lot of thought into how we can make this process easier. Whether you’re in the early stages of planning or are ready to roll up your sleeves and build your system, we offer solutions to meet you where you’re at. Here’s how we can work together:

Consulting

Not ready to build a system but want support to ensure you’re building a strong foundation? Looking for support to assess if an existing solution will meet your needs? Our team is happy to support your efforts in an advisory capacity.

Roadmap Services

Ready to get started, but need to establish clearer goals and objectives or get a better sense for budget and timeline? Working with us to develop your roadmap not only helps you understand the investment in time, energy, and dollars to move forward, but can also be a valuable tool in same-shaping vision across stakeholders.

Build Project

Did you just complete a roadmap project and are ready to get started? Time to add a new module to your existing system? Our build projects are designed to help you achieve your data system improvement goals.

Support

Our support services help you maintain and grow the investment in your data system. For all of your system maintenance, training, and enhancement needs, our support team is here to ensure that you have the help you need when you need it.

Our Approach

As we work together to build a data system that supports your work, we follow an approach designed to ensure we are continually collaborating on the right set of features and functionality.

Understanding Your Needs

Before a line of code is written, we engage with you in designing a roadmap. Our process includes planning tools and techniques that scale to fit your project.

Vision – We identify your north star, goals, priorities, and long-term vision to help guide the system you plan to build.
Define – We sketch the outline of the system through a user story mapping activity. The features that emerge in this process are prioritized and sequenced in a roadmap for development.
Design – We identify the software solution path and systems architecture that supports the features on the roadmap.
Plan – We share a final report that summarizes the vision, scope, budget and timeline estimate, and recommendations for next steps.

Building The System

When development begins, our delivery team will facilitate an ongoing and collaborative process that ensures the most efficient and effective work is prioritized at the top of the worklist. We develop software incrementally, relying on feedback from the last iteration to ensure we continually build the highest priority features. Our process is anchored on cycles of discovery and delivery.

Key Practices:

Pair programming & code reviews: Software developers work together in pairs trading control of the keyboard and mouse, coaching and assisting each other.
Continuous integration & delivery: Our CI/CD pipelines add value by improving the quality, velocity, and productivity of our software development teams work. Code changes are integrated through source control frequently, prompting automated regression tests and automated deployment of passing code to staging environments for exploratory testing.
Automated tests: Tests built into the code are continually re-executed to verify that the functionality meets quality standards. Automated tests help with earlier identification and prevention of defects and unforeseen scenarios.
Cross-functional teams: The value of cross-functional teams is increased collaboration, communication, quality, and focus on client experience. This fuels creativity and enables the team to move, problem solve, and iterate more quickly.

Supporting Production Software

We know that sometimes you need help once you’ve started using your new system. That’s why we’re set up to support you after you’ve launched your new data system.

Our ticketing system is available 24/7 and our team is ready to help you with small updates, training requests, and other questions you may have.

We also know that sometimes you need to make bigger changes. Our development practices and tooling were chosen specifically so that we can easily build upon what’s already there

Looking to design a new data system?