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Business Questions
- How long your company has been in business?
- Are you certified as an M/WBE (Minority or Woman Owned Business Enterprise)?
- Can you provide an annual report for your most recently completed fiscal year?
- Are all your software development resources located in St. Petersburg, or is there also a group located in Canada? Can you provide an organizational chart that covers not only corporate structure, but also the responsible division for new orders, quotes, and service?
- Please could you quote me for an e-commerce website? You will need to build the site around my design that I will send to you in html. The site needs to allow customers to click on an item, enter their delivery details and then pay by credit card. I will need to be able to add products myself. This is urgent so I would appreciate a speedy reply.
- Do you provide fixed bid pricing for your projects?
- Since I believe this is a fairly well defined task, I think a project-based bid would be appropriate, with the expectation that after the initial implementation, there would be a time-based support contract for further improvements. Please let me know if you believe you have staff with the required skills, and what the next steps might be.
- I am currently researching viable options for offshore Internet Development. Please let me know what information I would need to provide you with to receive a proposal?
- What are the typical project milestones that Humasys governs an outsourced project by?
- Do you have any software developed that could be applied to a broad market?
- Does Humasys have a policy with regards to project-specific expenses such as software licenses, specific hardware etc?
- Can you provide an on-site Project Manager / Business Analyst to meet with the Business Unit to gather information in order to write Software Requirements? Please quote hourly rates for this resource. Additionally, please propose how expenses will be handled for the onsite project manager / BA.
- Project needs to start in January 2007. How quick my development team can be arranged?
Technical Questions
- Do you guys follow the development life cycle?
- Can you describe your Testing Methodology?
- Can you describe your Implementation Methodology?
- Does Humasys have an Issue tracking process? Describe the escalation process for issue resolution.
- All activites relating to this RFP will need to be executed on client's development environments. How can you do it?
- Delivered source and object code needs to be unit tested and regression tested to the point that the code is defect free based on test data provided. How will you ensure this?
- What are your testing & development environment requirements?
- All code changes must be documented. How will you ensure this?
- All code changes must be easily maintainable. How will you ensure this?
- Do you provide details of any tools and / or purchased processes used to make the code changes?
- How will you demonstrate that the integrity of the programs is not affected?
- Run-times should be at least equal to or less than current run-times. How will you demonstrate this?
- There should be no defects introduced by the changes. Who and how is this verified?
- Will your company provide a comprehensive work plan for review?
- Does your company have a process in place to manage overall quality?
- Will any level of application regression testing be performed prior to transition to a client?
- What resource commitment is expected to be provided by a client?
- What training needs are required to be provided to you to complete my project?
- Do you have experienced Java developers?
- How do you make your estimates? What are they based on?
- Please tell me what kind of developers you guys have. I would be interested in engineers with experience of a minimum of 3 years in their associated technology areas.
- Do you have any brilliant Flash programmers?
How long your company has been in business?
HUMASYS has been incorporated in Canada since Feb 2004. Until then it was a partnership operating under the same name. WHOIS record for HUMASYS.CA gives 01/17/2002 as the registration date. However - the core group of partners and developers has been working together since 2001.
Are you certified as an M/WBE (Minority or Woman Owned Business Enterprise)?
No and no.
Can you provide an annual report for your most recently completed fiscal year?
As a privately held corporation, HUMASYS does not release financial statements. HUMASYS has continued significant growth over the last couple of years. In 2006, HUMASYS has grown its revenues by more than 35 percent. At the same time, we have managed an even more impressive growth in net income, up nearly 100 percent compared to the last year. The company is generating positive net income and cash flow, and we anticipate the increased profitability trend to continue. Should HUMASYS be the vendor of your choice we would then may be in a position to share this information with you.
Are all your software development resources located in St. Petersburg, or is there also a group located in Canada? Can you provide an organizational chart that covers not only corporate structure, but also the responsible division for new orders, quotes, and service.
Humasys is owned by four founding and managing partners.
We have two Sales / Consulting offices: one is based in Toronto, Canada and one based in Leipzig, Germany. Several people in these offices provide services of business analysis, quality assurance, development of specifications, project management, help with deployment and obviously overall outsourcing coordination.
We also have the Development Center located in St.Petersburg, Russia. In the fall of 2006 we had over 20 full-time highly qualified developers plus several part-time contractors working there.
The position of the head of development center in Russia is rotating. One of the partners is always located in Russia where he or she assumes responsibilities of the Center Operations Manager and interacts with offshore BA, PM, Developers and QA representatives directly.
A Client can contact any one of the partners in any office for quotes and/or service.
Please could you quote me for an e-commerce website? You will need to build the site around my design that I will send to you in html. The site needs to allow customers to click on an item, enter their delivery details and then pay by credit card. I will need to be able to add products myself. This is urgent so I would appreciate a speedy reply.
We strongly suggest considering one of the existing shrink-wrapped e-commerce solutions, such as VPASP, OS Commerce, Zend Shopping Cart etc. because they provide most common e-commerce functionality for a very reasonable price.
We can also build an e-commerce site ourselves. We have done many before and I am sure we would have most of the necessary code components already developed and readily available. We've also done much integration with various payment gateways too, such as PayPal, Verisign, Authorize.net etc.
Based on our experience, successful, custom made and unique e-commerce systems require at least half a year development timeframe and development budget starting from $20,000. We would be happy to assist you with such a project starting immediately.
Do you provide fixed bid pricing for your projects?
We do have vast experience with fixed bid pricing. In fact, some of our most valuable relationships started out with a fixed bid. However - these very relationships have grown into T&M model over time.
That's because the fixed bid pricing is never a good solution for anyone. -It actually takes extra time and effort to come up with a precise estimate.
-It often turns out to be more expensive for the customer because we add extra premium on top of our estimate to cover for risk management.
-It requires continuous involvement of management on both sides to work around scope change issues that always exist in all projects.
-Fixed bid is inappropriate for Research & Development or routine code maintenance projects with unpredictable outcomes;
-Fixed bid often becomes a competition between the client's and supplier's management teams: each trying to argue their outlook at the change and/or overrun issues is the truest one. As we believe in win-win relationships we don't want to compete with our clients.
Because of all that we no longer work on fixed bid basis.
Our T&M model is simple and easy to remember:
We provide our clients with a dedicated resource of required skill level at a fixed monthly rate. We still always provide precise and detailed estimates at all stages of a project and carefully manage effort and timeframe spent on every pre-approved task.
We provide our clients with regular weekly detailed resource utilization reports, which gives you complete transparency and full control over costs.
Since I believe this is a fairly well defined task, I think a project-based bid would be appropriate, with the expectation that after the initial implementation, there would be a time-based support contract for further improvements. Please let me know if you believe you have staff with the required skills, and what the next steps might be.
Our standard rate is $25US per hour somewhat negotiable based on project's size and term and other ad-hoc factors. Unfortunately we do not work of fixed bid basis (please see f.a.q. above).
We do have developers with required skill sets. The best way to start would seem to be for us to have a look at the materials/requirements that you have to date (database schemas and PowerPoint slides for sure, existing code desirable). We are ready to enter into a NDA and/or NC (non-compete) as required. We would then analyze your code, estimate effort and get back to you with our proposal.
I am currently researching viable options for offshore Internet Development. Please let me know what information I would need to provide you with to receive a proposal?
We suggest that you have a look at our development process described here. This process defines several project roles. One of these roles, specifically a BA/PM role must be assigned locally, i.e. on your side. This resource should be able to articulate business (and sometimes technical) requirements to us and should be able to resolve various business related questions, such as required vs proposed timeframes, budgets, goals and task priorities. Once the business requirements are formalized you can send it to us for our evaluation and we'll take it from there.
What are the typical project milestones that Humasys governs an outsourced project?
Monthly resources allocations.
All offshore roles (as described in our engagement model here) will require a minimum of one fulltime dedicated resource. Considering ongoing nature of many project as well as inevitable switching costs when allocating developers between projects the minimum billable block of time that we will be able to accommodate to any project is 1 man-month.
Do you have any software developed that could be applied to a broad market?
No, we don't have any proprietary code. All developed code belongs to our clients. Most of our work is custom software development when all the source code and all IP in general remains sole property of our clients.
Does Humasys have a policy with regards to project-specific expenses such as software licenses, specific hardware etc.
We provide all hardware, major software licensing and all office infrastructures. If your project requires some specific rare software package or unique hardware equipment we could either procure it on your behalf or will ask you to supply it.
Can you provide an on-site Project Manager / Business Analyst to meet with the Business Unit to gather information in order to write Software Requirements? Please quote hourly rates for this resource. Additionally, please propose how expenses will be handled for the onsite project manager / BA.
According to our development process Humasys will require some onsite resource that will be the primary liaison with the offshore team. We usually assign an offshore project manager/BA to work directly with this onsite resource. These two resources handle most of the project planning, project reporting, QA activities and overall project communications.
Humasys's preference is to have clients provide their own resource for this role. Alternatively, Humasys can provide its own BA/PM resource that will initially travel from Canada. HUMASYS hourly rate for this type of work is $100 US. Travel, lodging, per diem and other similar expenses must be paid for by client at cost. However - if this position is more or less full time we are willing to negotiate the rate and/or waive expense requirements.
Project needs to start in January 2007. How quick my development team can be arranged?
We usually require not more than a month of lead time for most of our projects. Our experience shows that the time required to finalize the requirements to appropriate level of detail and resolve various business issues is usually greater than time required to assemble dedicated development team.
Do you guys follow the development life cycle?
Yes. HUMASYS embraces the guidelines of IBM Rational Unified Process (RUP), which is one of the best proven practices for building and deploying software.
Please read more about our process here
We do have other processes in place too. It is standard for us to provide you with a full visibility into your project status through standard regular email, IM communications with your assigned project manager, direct online access to your project files in our version control system (usually VSS), bug and issue tracking system (usually Rational ClearQuest). It's needless to say that we have sophisticated QA procedures in place, including rigorous testing.
Can you describe your Testing Methodology?
We usually define testing Methodology during initial phase of the project based on business and system requirements. Then we document testing methodology in the Test Plan and approve it with the client.
Can you describe your Implementation Methodology?
We usually follow client's existing process/methodology in order to seamlessly integrate into client's business process. When the client doesn't have a well established development process we suggest using our own, which is described here
Does Humasys have an Issue tracking process? Describe the escalation process for issue resolution?
Yes, we do have issues tracking process in place. The complete process can have several iterations and/or deviations, is fully manageable and traceable online. Below is a sample basic workflow:
- Client (or our QA representative, or any authorized person) submits an issue into our web-based issue tracking system;
- Responsible person (usually PM) reviews the issue and after it passes validation it is assigned to appropriate resource (usually a developer);
- Developer investigates and fixes the issue and notifies his/her project manager about progress and status;
- Once the issue is resolved the developer (or a PM) notifies QA representative that the solution must be tested;
- Once the issue is resolved the responsible person (usually PM) notifies client about issue resolution.
All activites relating to this RFP will need to be executed on client's development environments. How can you do it?
We have ongoing experience working over VPN channels at client's servers and/or creating required environments in offshore office using dedicated hardware and/or VMWare GSX and/or Microsoft virtual servers.
Our internal policy is to checkin code into our internal system (or client's source control) only when it's passed required tests (depending on the project:smoke tests/unit tests/etc)
We would prefer to use client's source control system and procedures in order to make development process more effective and intuitive for the client. However we could offer using our own source control system with dedicated branch for our changes. These changes could be synchronized with client's sources on a weekly basis.
What are your testing & development environment requirements?
This is to be determined once the functional requirements are known.
All code changes must be documented. How will you ensure this?
We ensure quality and documentation of code changes by creation of appropriate standards, training and peer reviews of the code being changed. Depending on client's requirements it can be just comments in source code and notes during file check in or more complex solutions utilizing requirements (issues) traceability matrix providing visibility from issue to architecture and to appropriate source code piece.
All code changes must be easily maintainable. How will you ensure this?
Code maintainability usually depends on the system architecture chosen and coding standard used.
Do you provide details of any tools and / or purchased processes used to make the code changes?
This will be mandated by functional requirements and is project specific.
How will you demonstrate that the integrity of the programs is not affected?
Regression Tests, Existing unit tests.
Run-times should be at least equal to or less than current run-times. How will you demonstrate this?
This is not possible in general case when new functionality is being added. However, if performance tests exist for the given module we can strive to reduce added processing time to a minimum. We can also try to optimize existing code and/or algorithms but this should be considered and evaluated as a separate stand alone task.
There should be no defects introduced by the changes. Who and how is this verified?
Based on project specifics, we develop Quality plan that outlines exact process to be used. Usually, when we do testing, its results are being reviewed by QA manager and then reviewed by PM.
Will your company provide a comprehensive work plan for review?
During initial stage of a new development project, we usually create several documents (similar to RUP project artifacts). When the nature of the project is bug fixes/changes to existing functionality, the detailed work plans usually are not necessary and not required.
Does your company have a process in place to manage overall quality?
Because of the nature of our business we do have a process for managing project quality in accordance to client's requirements. All deviations from our standard process have to be documented in project Quality Plan. Project team follows Quality Plan instructions and QA representative audits team's adherence to this document.
Will any level of application regression testing be performed prior to transition to a client?
We usually use client supplied regression tests for testing of the changes we developed. However, regression test must exist before any changes (bug fixes) have been made.
What resource commitment is expected to be provided by a client?
We expect that BA/PM or some similar type of resource who will be the primary liaison and driver for the project will be available at client's site.
What training needs are required to be provided to you to complete my project?
We normally have qualified people in relevant technologies. We may need to review overall client's project management / QA process that will be deployed for the specific project.
Do you have experienced Java developers?
We are able to support Java but we have historical inclination to facilitate competitive solutions using alternative technologies (for instance C# based).
How do you make your estimates? What are they based on?
In a case where there's no new functionality, i.e. strict "re-engineering", we use a couple of industry known methods such as Functional Points Method adjusted to the speed and effectiveness of our people.
When there's new functionality we do top-down analysis, split functional points into smaller tasks that we then can either get individual commitments to or we can evaluate them based on similar/relevant experience. On top of that we always spend serious effort on controlling project's adherence to planned time and tasks priorities (doing most important things first reduces risks of potential time overruns).
Please tell me what kind of developers you guys have. I would be interested in engineers with experience of a minimum of 3 years in their associated technology areas.
Please keep in mind that being located in scientific capital of Russia we always have access to a large pool of highly qualified resources. The following is a breakdown of our current capabilities in terms of familiarity of our full-time developers with specific environments / technologies:
- C#, C++, VB, VB.NET - 18+ people, various levels of seniority from 3+ to 12+
years of experience;
- Clipper/xHarbour - 3 senior developers (10 + years of experience), 4+ developers;
- Cobol - 6 senior developers (10 + years of experience),
- Pascal/Delphi - 5 developers, various levels of seniority from 3+ to 8+
- PERL, PHP, ASP, IIS, Apache 10+ people, various levels of seniority;
- Java, JSP - 2+ senior developers with past experience in Java, JSP, J2EE.
Do you have any brilliant Flash programmers?
No. All experts in our Development Team have high level mathematical educations (Master's and PhDs) and years of professional programming experience. They don't like working with graphical packages. But they can write/enhance them if you need it.
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