Overview | Project Phases

The BHW Group approaches solution development from a business perspective. By working closely with clients, we can identify goals, problems, and opportunities.  Our solution designs consider target user groups, impact on the internal organization, workflow processes, and technology infrastructure.

The BHW Group uses industry best practices for managing software projects.  A project methodolgy is chosen on a per client basis considering factors such as budget, timeframe, and team composition.

One methodology BHW uses is the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF), which describes a high-level sequence of activities for building and deploying IT solutions.  MSF combines two industry standard models: the waterfall model, which emphasizes the achievement of milestones, and the spiral model, which focuses on the continual need to refine the requirements and estimates for a project. An innovative aspect of the MSF process model is that it covers the life cycle of a solution from project inception to live deployment. This helps project teams focus on customer business value, because no value is realized until the solution is deployed and in operation.

Project Phases

1. Envisioning Phase - In the Envisioning Phase, the team identifies the vision and scope of the project by preparing a vision and scope document.
2. Planning Phase - During this phase, the existing environment is assessed to form a solution design. The main activity of this phase is to do a detailed planning to ensure success of the project. In this phase, a master project plan deliverable is created that consists of all sub-plans, such as the test plan, and development plan.
3. Developing Phase - During this phase, the application components undergo transformation based on the development plans.
4. Stabilizing Phase - During this phase, all the components are tested collectively to ensure that the entire solution operates properly.
5. Deploying Phase - In this phase, the team deploys the solution and ensures that it is stable and can be used. The tested solution is moved into production and transferred to operations.