AP Benson extends its "traditional" business consultancy practice by retaining a team that is expert in the planning and implementation of creative e-business solutions (including e-healthcare and e-government).

We have considerable in-house expertise and experience in on-line provision of services and in management of software companies, including the ownership and management of subsidiary businesses in mathematical modelling and in clinical systems.

The team have experience of the full project cycle from inception to support of products in service including needs assessment, specification, design and architecture, development and testing, implementation and in-service support. Many of our projects have included the production of systems that coordinate the efforts of several groups and agencies.

The APB team is lead by individuals with strong informatics backgrounds, with successful projects completed in Medical- and Bio- informatics, on-line travel sales and electronic payment systems. Our IT team has worked in both the public and private sectors in the UK, Europe and in the USA.

The APB team have strong project management, software architecture, software development and customer support skills. Our IT projects are governed by methodologies covering four key project stages:

1. Needs Assessment Based on a process developed by leading companies to manage the early stages of IT projects and to ensure a fit between the eventual solution and the needs of the target business. The needs assessment process involves detailed interview and workshop interactions with the project sponsors, managers and customers ("domain experts"). The outcome is a Statement of Needs (a more detailed and complete version of a "Requirements" document).
2. Software Design This includes documentation of the information (data) needs of the target users, the information flows and transformations that the software must support, the creation of a detailed analysis model of the proposed software solution, detailed systems architecture and designed sample user interface elements. These are used to validate the understanding of needs with the project sponsors and the target users. A detailed, iterative software development project plan and product prospectus is developed and agreed with the project sponsors and domain experts.
3. Development, Documentation and Validation The software is developed in iterative phases with frequent opportunities for target user and sponsor feedback.
4. Acceptance, Deployment and Support The software completes development and is accepted by the client. Deployment and integration into the production environment is undertaken. The product is supported in accordance with the support requirements identified in the Needs Assessment.

The team use object orientated development methodologies, often in an Enterprise Java Beans or Microsoft .net environment. These are environments with which the lead programmers are familiar and in which the software architects and the lead programmers have already delivered successful applications.

The team follow a methodology in which each component is developed alongside an existing unit-testing component that, in effect, represents the final statement of the requirements/design for each object. The unit testing component is run against the production component to ensure correct performance of the tasks required of the production component.

Code walkthrough methodologies and pair programming (two people sharing responsibility for the coding and testing of each component) are also used. Regular, semi-automated builds of the software and automated completion of unit and integration testing is also undertaken. Code and test results are fully documented.

These disciplines ensure rapid identification of new bugs and, overall, speed the development process and allow it to be managed more predictably.

The Company follows a programming methodology of short periods of software development followed by field-testing and reappraisal of the overall design. Early structured feedback is elicited from users. The aim is to fit the final outputs of the project more closely to the needs of the target user group. It is also possible that earlier iterations of this project plan may produce software that already has a sufficient degree of completeness to enable practical use to be made of the growing system.

The approach allows for flexibility and adaptation to events, an important feature of a successful IT project.