Holbi's osCommerce Development Methodology

 

osCommerce Development Methodology is a product of Holbi's continuous strive for high quality of all its business solutions based on osCommerce technology. Since the year 2002 Holbi has been involved into creation of efficient Ecommerce solutions for businesses. We participated in creation of more than 650 osCommerce online stores, and the number is still growing. Same as our team of osCommerce Development Experts, which has recently reached the number of 30.

 

Holbi's osCommerce Development Methodology is very simple but efficient and consists of just several steps. It has been proven to be working on an osCommerce project of any size, from just a several hours job to relatively big osCommerce projects that last up to 12 months.

 

Our osCommerce Development Methodology constantly improves and changes as change business requirements of our customers. Always being on the edge of osCommerce Development Holbi's osCommerce Development Team is always ready to provide osCommerce store owners with the most efficient high-quality osCommerce solutions.

 

osCommerce Development Methodology Step 1: Approach and Preliminary Analysis

osCommerce Projects with Holbi usually start when an osCommerce store owner approaches our company with a set of preliminary requirements. In the matter of fact you do not have to already have an online store to approach us with your business requirements - over 50% of our time we help businesses to create their new online stores based on osCommerce. Those preliminary requirements (received either as an email, or a message sent via our own web site, or discussed during the initial telephone conversation) then get assigned to one of our qualified osCommerce Sales Managers. Each member of our osCommerce Sales Team is an expert in osCommerce Development industry and has been working with the company for more than 3 years.

 

Your requirements are then analyzed and draft of a preliminary osCommerce solution is prepared taking into account all your current business needs, and allowing for certain flexibility to grow along with your business in the future.

 

We aim to process all enquiries of our customers in 2 business days time, but due to high workload sometimes it may take a bit longer - you will be notified about the delay in such case.

 

osCommerce Development Methodology Step 2: Analysis and Negotiations

osCommerce solution draft is ready and your assigned Sales Manager contacts you again to discuss the prepared draft. We prefer to call our customers as we believe it makes the communication process faster and more efficient. Although we can also use emails and instant messengers (such as MSN, AOL, Google Talk, Skype, etc).

 

Dependently on the complexity of the project we may require to contact you several times to discuss different parts of the proposed solution.

 

At the end we prepare Holbi's osCommerce Development Proposal. osCommerce Development Proposal is an official and confidential document that contains your business requirements and Holbi's proposed business solution based on osCommerce. Where possible we will recommend you our already existing modules and services. Or, just bespoke osCommerce design and development services if we do not have an existing module yet to address your particular business needs.

 

Holbi's osCommerce Development Proposal also contains our price quote, estimated project completion time, terms and conditions of service. We would normally send you a PDF copy of the proposal unless you require a hard copy too. This is where the Negotiations process is started. We never quote our customers anything extra trying to oversell our osCommerce products and services. We quote a fair price and provide our customers with realistic time frames.

 

PLEASE NOTE: for smaller projects (less than 3 days of work) we require 100% prepayment. For medium projects - from 3 days to 10 daysof work - we require 50% prepayment. For relatively large projects - from 10 days to 30 days - our terms require 35% prepayment. Terms for larger projects are negotiable, but would always include prepayment. We need to fund our development and your prepayment is used to actually start the works in time.

 

As soon as both parties are happy with the scope of the project and all figures, we can proceed to the next step.

 

osCommerce Development Methodology Step 3: Contract

Your osCommerce Development project with Holbi will be more likely covered by a special agreement with Holbi - our Custom osCommerce Development Contract. The Contract defines the scope of the project, responsibilities of the two parties - Customer (yourself) and Developer (Holbi team). It is a pretty standard document and its aim is to ensure that the two parties can work together in the most efficient manner, being legally protected from any possible misunderstanding and confusion.

 

For smaller projects (less than 1 day of work) we would sometimes skip this step for the sake of speed and efficiency.

 

osCommerce Development Methodology Step 4: Project Planning and Management

As soon as the contract is signed, you will be introduced to your osCommerce Project Development team. The team would normally consist of your osCommerce Project Manager, osCommerce Test and Quality Control Engineer, osCommerce Web Designer, and sufficient number of osCommerce Development Experts.

 

Your osCommerce Project Manager is your main point of contact with Holbi. You will be given Project Manager's direct phone number, email address, and instant messaging account details.

 

osCommerce Project Manager would usually start with making an introductory telephone call to you to say Hello and discuss project matters. Unless you prefer communication via email.

 

After that your assigned osCommerce Project Manager will prepare a Project Plan for you. The Plan will contain all project-related tasks, will identify milestones (if more than one) and will demonstrate when our osCommerce Development Team plans to complete the whole project or its parts. Holbi's osCommerce Project Plan will help you to plan your own workload, marketing campaigns, etc. The Plan needs to be signed off by the Customer (yourself) first before the developments can be commenced.

 

Along with the Project Plan we would normally provide you with the proposed osCommerce Test Plan. This is prepared by your assigned osCommerce Test and Quality Control Expert. Our Test Plan describes the test methodology that we are going to use to ensure that your new (or existing) online store fully matches your requirements. It also contains series of Test Cases that describe how exactly we are going to test this or that feature of your online store. You can use our osCommerce Test Plan yourself to test the online store later on, but it is essential that you give us your approval so that our Test and Quality Control Expert could proceed further according to the Test Plan.

 

osCommerce Development Methodology Step 5: osCommerce Development and Quality Control

Once the osCommerce Project Plan has been approved, we will commence with osCommerce Development on your project. This step will require almost no involvement from your side.

 

All development is performed in our development office. We do not outsource projects to other companies or individuals, neither do we employ any part-time osCommerce Developers. All our osCommerce Developers are qualified full time experts, who have been already involved into development of a number of osCommerce online stores.

 

Holbi's osCommerce Development Experts follow the development technology according to the Open Source nature of osCommerce. This means that all our online stores are Open Source, and the source code can be viewed and edited at any time later on by yourself or another qualified osCommerce Developer. Development is being held on our own development web servers.

 

We kindly ask that development on your side (if any at all) is ceased while we work on the project on our server to ensure no changes will be overwritten once we are finished. This requirements is related to the existing osCommerce online stores only.

 

Your Project Manager controls the whole process and communicates with the team members. osCommerce Test and Quality Assurance Engineer is involved on every step of the osCommerce Development process to ensure everything is designed and implemented according to your requirements.

 

From time to time (according to the Milestone Schedule) your osCommerce Project Manager will ask you to review certain parts of the online store on our development server and let us know your comments, if any. This is required especially on larger projects to ensure that the project is moving in the right direction, and that we can proceed with implementation of further features and design elements.

 

osCommerce Development Methodology Step 6: Project Acceptance

 

When the osCommerce development process is completed, our Test and Quality Assurance Engineer will thoroughly test the online store according to previously confirmed osCommerce Test Plan.

 

Once the online store has passed our tests, we will ask you to review it on our demonstration web server and confirm all your requirements have been addressed according to the osCommerce Proposal and osCommerce Project Plan.

 

We will then upload the osCommerce online store to your web server and configure it properly. We are always happy to host online stores of our customers on our web servers, please do not hesitate to let us know if you'd like to use all benefits of our professional osCommerce Hosting.

 

After that we will ask for a formal confirmation and acceptance of the project. It should be sent in writing, as an email or a printed and signed document.

 

osCommerce Development Methodology Step 7: Maintenance and new projects

The project is then over, but not our business relationships with you as our Customer.

 

First of all you are entitled to all benefits of our osCommerce Maintenance service. It is not limited by time, and we promise to fix anything that could have been caused by our programming free of charge and in timely manner during business hours according to our workload.

 

Secondly, should you have any new ideas or requirements - just let your Holbi's osCommerce Project Manager know. We will be glad to work with you on new projects at any time. Many of those osCommerce online stores that we developed several years ago still send us their new requirements once in several months. And quite often our osCommerce Business Analysts come back to our customers with new business improvement ideas too. Long term mutually beneficial relationships with our customers is our goal!

 

We are looking forward to working with you on your new osCommerce project!