In an environment where IT delivery is becoming less and less flexible and responsive to business needs, OCS continues to help its clients maintain their market position by delivering IT solutions rapidly using up to date Rapid Application Development (RAD) methods.

Since it was established in 1984, OCS has been delivering small to medium sized fully managed projects for clients and has adopted and adapted the latest methods and techniques in support of rapid application development, including the use of the tools and techniques collectively described under the term “Agile Development“.

In essence, OCS understands that although the rigors of very prescriptive waterfall methodologies for large projects or the cost reduction drivers of major off-shoring or outsourcing are compelling in general terms, both approaches suffer from their inability to deliver rapid, local solutions to departmental business needs. OCS has been at the forefront of provision of bespoke development services that are based around delivering to focused requirements in short timeframes to satisfy urgent business needs and hence deliver the benefits of:

• Exploiting business opportunities
  Re-establishing responsive IT services to the business
• Improving productivity
• Reducing time stealers, costs, elapsed time, delivery
• And creating real business IT synergy.

As an original member of the DSDM Consortium in 1994, OCS initially developed its own propriety RAD methodology which has evolved over the years, most recently through the advent of Agile techniques such as those advocated in SCRUM and XP. OCS has sought to improve its approach by selecting the most appropriate thinking from these schools of development and has adapted its own method into a fully updated RAD (feat. Agile) Methodology, which is proven through the delivery of numerous projects.

The major components of OCS’ RAD (feat. Agile) Methodology continue to lever the structure defined by the original DSDM Consortium including:

• Formal scoping and requirements analysis (to ensure focus remains on business objectives and outcomes)
• High level analysis and design (to ensure technical integrity of the solution with underlying environment)
• RAD Team (including highly skilled multi-disciplined personnel from all required functional and technical areas)
• Structured iterations and timeboxes driven by prioritised requirements (to maintain control and delivery management)
• Pro-active management and escalation (to remove time-stealers, delays and road blocks).

which have been supplemented by:

• Test driven programming: to improve quality and deliverable compliance during build
• Peer review: multi-pairing approach using architectural design and data owner to ensure technical integrity
• Daily check-ins: ensuring on-going quality product delivery and forward acceleration to target deliverables
• Constant code refactoring: ensuring simplicity of design to reduce cost of maintenance and future enhancements.

In order to provide a modern, flexible and responsive delivery methodology ready to deliver to your business needs.