Learning meet Prototyping. Prototyping meet Learning.
Your new project needs a team of experts. You've got a team of experts. But... in a different technology.
You need to convert your team of experts into new experts. Overnight.
But, no matter how smart the team, how good the instructor, or how customized the program, you know a single week-long learning event isn't going to cut it. Your team is going to need multiple weeks of in-depth, hands-on learning to become the new experts. But like so many projects, the schedule can't support multiple weeks of training.
We get it. You have two diametrically opposed forces working against each other. You need the team to be the experts while building the software.
We can make that happen.
Learn While Building
In a unique learning program we call Mentored Prototype Development (MPD), your team can learn while they build.
Drawing on our experiences building software through rapid prototyping efforts, and combining those with our experiences delivering educational workshops, MPD blends mentoring, hands-on-training, and rapid prototyping together in one learning solution. Throughout the mentored-prototype effort, our instructor will function as an educator, a resident-expert, and a doer. In other words, he or she will impart knowledge and help you code. In the end, the MPD approach will convert your existing experts into new experts, while developing the first iteration of your project.
The MPD approach works best when you are transitioning an existing team to a greenfield project to be developed in a new technology set. For example, when migrating COBOL developers to Java Web Developers. But, it also works well when you need to "up level" the competency of a team within the technology set rapidly. For example, when adopting a new web development framework like Spring MVC.
Mentored-Prototype Development Success Story
Like many financial services organizations, our Client, with a household name in the Mutual Fund space, was faced with an languishing application that no longer met their business needs. A once valuable critical business application began to hinder the organization due to its dated technology and functionality. As a result, our client needed a solution that: leveraged the intellectual property of the existing team; provided a productive environment to explore emerging technologies; and did not significantly impact the project schedule. They needed a solution to a complex problem that fell outside of the traditional training offerings. A solution that allowed the team to learn while building.
Based on the business drivers and individuals involved, DevelopIntelligence created a Mentored-Prototype-Development program that spread across the software development effort, allowing the development team to build their skills while they were building a functional prototype. The effectiveness of the program allowed the software development team to deliver a functional prototype on time, which has since replaced the languishing product.
Due the proprietary nature of work, we can't openly disclose who our Client with a household name in the Mutual Fund space is. But, we can tell you that today, our Client has successfully transitioned the prototype created during the MPD program into a production system built using JSF and JPA. No longer is the languishing technology holding back this internal app!
