Please contact us with any questions you may have, or when you're ready to bring in our experts! Also please let us know if you don't see what you're looking for--we can customize our solutions to just about any of your software development needs, and we have the network to make it happen.

Agile Transitions

Are you transitioning your team to an agile process? There are many approaches, and we've been through and helped many teams in their efforts to become agile. There are also many ways to get it wrong, and we know how to help you avoid the pitfalls.

Whether you're transitioning to Scrum, XP, or some other custom implementation of agile, we have the experience needed to help you succeed.

Assessments

An assessment is a short-term engagement. Langr Software Solutions will monitor some aspect of your software development organization and provide a comprehensive assessment upon completion of the engagement. The assessment includes a summary of the current state, a recommendation on short and long term goals to improve the capabilities of your shop, and gap analysis as the basis for a plan to achieve those goals.

An assessment engagement requires an initial on-site consultation, and from one to three additional days for preparing the assessment. Typical on-site consultations will range from two or three days to two weeks.

Process Assessments

We monitor your development organization's implementation of a process, whether it be RUP, XP, or some other process (or lack of a process). These assessments can include information on process, practices, skill sets, or organizational structure.

Software Assessments

A software assessment involves comprehensive reviews of existing software. The software is analyzed for maintainability, flexibility, and extensibility. This analysis incorporates design, system and code organization, and adherence to best practices and standards.

A software engagement can be as long as the software is wide; however, returns on the effort diminish rapidly over time. Based on an initial consultation, the proposal for the assessment will include a projected duration to cover the time required to map out the code. Recommendations will range from very specific code issues to broader issues of design adherence.

Coding Assistance

We can provide "near-shore" outsourcing of code development at reasonable rates. You'll get well-tested solutions that exhibit high quality design and code.

Development Mentoring

Most development organizations have a broad mix of capabilities and attitudes, from absolute novice to expert, from blase to passionate. This wide range often prevents a development team from being able to truly work together well. Weaker software developers stay weak, and impassionate software developers bring down the morale of the entire team.

We have significant experience in working with developers in this range. We can bring the overall ability of your development team up to par, by coaching and mentoring on an individual and team basis.

Using our expert technical skills, we will sit with your development team and show them better ways to produce high quality software. We will pinpoint weaknesses in their methods and demonstrate improved techniques. We will bring out the passion in your development team and turn them into a well-honed software development machine.

Organizational Planning

Even the best software development teams will fail without the support of the entire organization. To succeed, individuals and teams must be aligned with the common goal of producing quality software. Management, customers, analysts, testers, salespeople, marketers, developers, and technicians need to be working in concert. Everyone needs to understand the common vision as well as how to communicate project needs and goals with everyone else involved.

Langr Software Solutions will work with your leadership and their teams to help you create a cohesive, productive organization. We will provide organizational recommendations by using tactics that may include assessments and staff interviewing. We can execute the plan, as well as remain during the transition to ensure that the reorganization runs smoothly.

Process Coaching

Running any successful team requires an experienced coach. The best coach is impartial, technically skilled, and capable of providing leadership by example. A coach helps out in the execution of the process, and is responsible for imparting the essence of the process to the development team. The ultimate goal of a coaching engagement is for the customer to determine sooner than later that a coach is no longer needed by the development team. The coach matures the development team to the point where it is fully capable of functioning on its own. To do so, the development team learns how to continually recognize and correct problems with the process.

Every new process you embark on, whether it is Scrum, RUP, XP, DSDM, or something other than agile, deserves to be administered through a coach. Langr Software Solutions provides coaching engagements for durations that fit your needs. A coaching engagement can last anywhere from a few days to a few months or longer.

Actively coaching a team requires that the coach establish a relationship of trust with the development team. Instilling the core values into the development team requires time, partially since the negative effects of poor decisions are not always immediately visible. While coaching can provide some value for shorter durations, we recommend that you consider an assessment engagement if you are interested in a very short term.

A coaching engagement is by definition on-site. The duration of the engagement is at your discretion.

Staffing Assistance

Hiring the right candidates is extremely difficult, even today when dozens or hundreds of possibly qualified candidates apply for each open position. Getting a candidate on board means screening stacks of resumes, making dozens of calls, and spending countless hours on interviews. Even after all that effort, you often end up with team members that just aren't contributing like you expected.

While hiring is not an exact science, we have a large amount of experience and success in screening and interviewing candidates. Using a combination of criteria you designate and our expertise, we can identify the high-probability candidates for your further consideration. We will weed out the apathetic, oversold candidates and leave you with the passionate, skilled gems.