Iknow operates a software prototyping laboratory to enable and support its consulting service offerings.
Rapid Prototyping Environment
The foundation of Iknow’s prototyping lab is a library of complete and fully functional COTS software products. Iknow has approximately 45 COTS software packages installed and running in the prototyping lab. Iknow’s rapid prototyping environment includes software from Compuware, eBrahma, IBM, Inxight, KM Technologies, MAYA Viz, Mercury Interactive (recently acquired by HP), MetaMatrix, Microsoft, Oculus, Sigma Design, Spotfire, Stratify, The Brain, Thinkmap, and Vignette. The Company’s goal is to have over 100 software applications available in the lab by the end of 2007.
When a new prototype development is launched, the required COTS products are copied from the library to a new virtual server. Prototype development is then performed on this server instance. Software documentation is stored in a technical library and is readily accessible to our software developers. Our technical librarians ensure that the documentation matches the latest software version that is available in the lab.
Value to Clients and Potential Clients
Iknow’s prototyping lab is important to clients and potential clients because software prototypes can be easily and quickly constructed to investigate new solutions, processes, algorithms, and approaches. We have found that early software prototypes are highly effective at facilitating early and accurate end-user needs identification and requirements gathering.
The prototyping lab provides four categories of business capabilities:
- Decision Support. Decision support processes address initial business requirements collection and analysis, functional requirements definition, high-level software selection and evaluation, and project scoping for prototype development.
- Business Process Analysis. Business process analysis involves developing a detailed understanding of the business process(es), creating material flow and knowledge flow maps, developing process models and simulations (if required), and defining and collecting process metrics to enable the calculation of return on investment (ROI) or other cost justification approaches to support the investment in a full production system.
- Software Analysis. Software analysis processes cover a wide spectrum of detailed technical analyses, such as “head-to-head” product feature comparisons, load testing, stability testing, and ease of integration with other software applications and databases.
- Solution Development. Solution development processes involve refining and optimizing the overall system requirements, finalizing the solution design, building the prototype solution, testing the solution with representative use cases and datasets, and summarizing the findings/conclusions/recommendations for full production system development and deployment.
It is important to note that Iknow’s technology recommendations are truly unbiased and independent. Iknow maintains a policy of technology independence, so our software product recommendations are objective and in the best interests of our clients. The company is not a distributor or reseller of software or hardware products, so our technology recommendations will never be influenced by sales commissions or other incentives from software or hardware vendors.
Learn more about Iknow’s consulting methodology using pilots and prototypes.
