NetStar-1’s application development and integration approach centers on the following principles to balance innovation and risk:

1. Iterative Development
2. Managed Requirements
3. Component-based Architectures
4. Integrated Quality Assessment
5. Managed Change

Our Application Development Practice supports an iterative approach to development that addresses the highest risk items at every stage in the lifecycle, significantly reducing a project's risk profile. This iterative approach helps you attack risk through demonstrable progress—frequent, executable releases that enable continuous end user involvement and feedback. An iterative approach also makes it easier to accommodate tactical changes in requirements, features or schedule.

We elicit, organize, and document required functionality and constraints; track and document tradeoffs and decisions; and easily capture and communicate business requirements. This has proven to be an excellent way to capture functional requirements and to ensure that these drive the design, implementation and testing of software, making it more likely that the final system fulfills the end user needs.

We focus on early development and baselining of a robust executable architecture, prior to committing resources for full-scale development. Our goal is to design a resilient architecture that is flexible, accommodates change, is intuitively understandable, and promotes more effective software reuse. NetStar-1 follows a systematic approach to defining an architecture using new and existing components. These are assembled in a well-defined architecture, either ad hoc, or in a component infrastructure such as .NET or CORBA.

To avoid poor application performance and poor reliability, which dramatically inhibit the acceptability of many software applications, we include quality assessment as part of every step of the development life cycle. Quality assessment is built into the process, in all activities, involving all participants, using objective measurements and criteria, and not treated as an afterthought or a separate activity performed by a separate group in a discrete phase.

A proper balance of agility (the ability to respond to change quickly) and stability (the ability to maintain a solid architecture and well-performing application) necessitates managed change. Managed change makes certain that each change is tracked, assessed, and applied with minimal risk to both stakeholders’ needs and system quality. This is essential in an environment in which change is inevitable and it enables iterative development.

These five fundamental approach elements - Iterative Development, Managed Requirements, Component-based Architectures, Integrated Quality Assessment and Managed Change – make up the cornerstone of NetStar-1’s Application Integration success.