Fuery Solutions

For CrimeFreeze, Inc., Fuery Solutions provided all information technology infrastructure end-to-end. We took an idea and a few conversations and created an alpha release enterprise-class web based platform capable of storing hundreds of millions of records and well positioned in the marketplace. With Fuery Solutions as a partner, in six months, “a man with a plan” became a marketable product capable of producing high profile sales to the Fortune 500.

When Fuery Solutions was called upon, CrimeFreeze was assembling a team of industry leaders, but lacked the resources to meet their technology needs in-house. The vision allowed for a variety of revenue streams, but the initial business model and strategic approach were still in a state of flux. We initially provided the client with guidance regarding what the technology available could and could not provide readiliy, how these options and limitations effected their business, and proffered suggestions on how the vision could translate into business value the most quickly using the technology tools available.

CrimeFreeze ultimately seeks to be a centralized database of products, people, and places that offers services, both free and paid, to each leg of the supply chain, from manufacturing to the second-hand marketplace. Fuery Solutions was instrumental in fleshing out each of these points in the supply chain and presenting options for monetization at each step. This work fed directly into the development of Business Cases, which were actively documented in a custom, password-protected installation of MediaWiki, a tool allowing group collaboration and simplified publishing. MediaWiki also happens to be the platform used by wikipedia. This custom wiki was made available to CrimeFreeze as part of our proprietary project management methodology.

Along the way, of course, we took care of their infrastructure needs, providing network and technical support, establishing email accounts, a web presence, facilitated internal infrastructure requirements like phone and data services, and even installed a few copies of Thunderbird. End-to-end solutions, indeed.

As the company development progressed, it became clear that an alpha product was the next step. Fuery Solutions began our own Systems Development Life Cycle, beginning with the distillation of the aforementioned Business Cases into clear Functional Use Cases.

Defining Requirements: The First Half of the Development Cycle

In accordance with our product management methodology, we developed documentation for each of the high-level features dictated by the Business Cases and completed Functional Use Cases for each of the specific user interactions. By combining an abbreviated Use Case and thorough Functional Specification within the same step in the SDLC, we not only shortened the entire life cycle, but increased participation by all interested parties.

Using A Customized MediaWiki Installation as a Collaboration Tool

Managing High Level Tasks

High Level Technical Architecture

These functional use cases were designed to include everything necessary for any member of the CrimeFreeze team to easily digest and understand:

• For less technical members of the team, our “Day in the Life” narratives described our Actors and how each of them would work with the system to reach their desired outcomes.

• For those interested in reviewing how the goals of the business matched up against the planned application functionality, a series of specific “Use Case Drivers” was presented for each narrative. In addition to these specific drivers, a Mind Map was supplied for every Use Case, illustrating both the major user navigation patterns and how the functionality described fit into the bigger picture.
• Finally, for the engineering-friendly portion of the audience, our specifications included wire frame (and/or photoshop mock-ups where available) drawings of each interface, a descriptive “Guided Tour” where each and every user interface control was documented, and appropriate links to other Functional Specifications where applicable. From these details, a Software Architect designed the database schema, identified business logic needs, and developed base classes for the platform. Our Quality Assurance team simultanesouly used these specifications to define unit test plans. Taken as a whole, these Functional Specifications would later be distilled into qualitative end-to-end test plans.

The Development Phase

Once the functionality was defined in detail, the Fuery Solutions engineering team stepped in. Staff engineers worked with Creative to generate the Style Guide that dictated the site-wide look and feel. This team spun up the required development servers and brought industry standard developer tools online as needed — mature tools like bugzilla for managing tasks and subversion for version control. Our crack team also quickly laid out the common libraries and framework-based controls used in every project, using proven architectural approaches to developing maintainable software.

While the core team was busy laying out the Model-View-Controller pattern (a common approach to web development that basically describes the separation of database connectivity, business logic, and user interface into separate application “tiers”), an architect carefully reviewed the functional specifications and defined specific technical specifications around the database schema and business logic. Development had begun and was proceeding full speed ahead.

The database definitions and every required function was laid out within the first couple of weeks of the development cycle. Beginning in this second week, a Product Manager and Quality Assurance engineer worked hand-in-hand, managing engineering tasks on a detailed level through Bugzilla. Both referred back to our well-documented Functional Specifications, addressing Engineering questions in near real-time when applicable. As with many complex applications, the business logic required a great deal of innovation to code for in a scalable, maintainable, and intelligible way. Understanding the business requirements behind the functional use cases was paramount for our Software Architect. This involved understanding not just software and information systems, but an intimate level of empathy with CrimeFreeze’s future customers.