Design Thinking
Design Thinking is a cornerstone of our creative process. We believe that understanding the real problem the user faces, ideating around solutions, and iterating on designs is the only way to build a product that addresses the needs of the user.
We apply Design Thinking processes early in the conceptual phase of our work with customers. These efforts pay dividends later in the DevSecOps process.
We believe IDEO explains the process better than we ever could.
Agile Development
Agile is a commonly misunderstood approach to software development. This is especially true in more standardized industries like the Federal Government and Department of Defense. Often, we see teams attempting to apply a strict process or requiring specific steps to ensure “we are being Agile.” In fact, these rigid requirements tend to stifle creativity and flexibility in the development cycle. While the core values and principles are great, we opt for a more adaptable process for software development that is still in line with the spirit of Agile.
Shaping our Products
Rather than mandate specific rituals, timelines, and development requirements, we focus on Shaping our product development through an overarching roadmap to guide our development, a project plan to break the roadmap into phases, and phases to define workloads based on backlogs. Our method allows for smoother workflows by limiting distracting meetings, calculating development work based on available man hours, and providing flexible timelines based on roadblocks encountered.
This is not an Arama Federal concept, unfortunately. It’s an approach developed and refined by Basecamp’s former Head of Strategy – Ryan Singer. We’ll defer to him to explain the concept in detail.