Summa

Summa is proud of our history of consistently delivering successful outcomes for our customers. Our reputation is built on being a trusted business partner that can be counted to “get it right the first time. “ Our track record of delivering success is illustrated by the fact that 90% of our customers have done repeat business with us. But this level of consistency and achievement does not just happen by itself, so how does Summa do it? There are three main factors that contribute to our strategy for success: having the right people, using the right technology, and utilizing the right methodologies.

The Right People

The foundation of our success is built on the quality of the people that make up the organization. This starts with hiring the best and brightest talent that is available. Summa has a rigorous screening process to ensure that we are recruiting new team members with a combination of extensive technology and business experience plus soft-skills. Summa then empowers team members with the tools, training, and support needed to deliver successful projects for our clients.

This focus on the having the right people also extends to how we approach and execute projects. Successful projects begin with establishing a relationship between the project team and project stakeholders, creating a common understanding of the business objectives that are driving the project and a common definition of how success will be measured so that there are no unmet expectations at the end of the project. Creating an environment where everyone involved is communicating openly and frequently is crucial to the success of any project.

During the assessment or elaboration phase of the project, we use a combination of group workshops and individual interviews to meet with the project stakeholders in order to understand the business environment and business goals of the project. This is an in-depth and dynamic process that is used to develop detailed business and function requirements for the application, as well as the design of the application architecture and the user interface. An important part of this process is utilizing not only experienced business analysts and application architects, but also engaging user experience experts very early in the process. This ensures that the application is not only functional, but also intuitive and user friendly, which can be critical for driving user adoption, increasing user productivity, and, ultimately, user satisfaction. The common thread throughout this process is that we stay focused on the most important part of the any business application – the people that will be using it every day.

The Right Technology

A critical component of designing and implementing the application is choosing the right technology platform, both hardware and software, to support the business requirements. Summa application architects have deep experience designing systems across a wide range of technologies and methodologies

Summa consultants have extensive experience architecting applications within each customer’s unique existing technology infrastructure. Summa also fosters and encourages a culture of continual improvement and learning in order to stay abreast of the latest emerging technologies. Clients often turn to Summa when they want to upgrade their current platform, implement new technology, or create cutting-edge applications.
A prime concern, whether an application is implemented in the customer’s existing technology stack or on the newest platform, is ensuring that the system is easy for the customer to maintain after the project is over. There are three components to ensuring the long term maintainability.

• Architect the system for scalability and maintainability. Maintainability must be designed for. The design team must not focus solely on the short term goals of the project, but also recognize that the software product will have a life cycle after the project.
• Use software development and testing best practices. Having documented software development guidelines and developing easily understood, well documented, and bug free code make future maintainability much easier.
• Foster Knowledge Transfer. Ensuring a smooth handoff from the project development team to the team that will be doing the long term maintenance and enhancement is critical. Unfortunately, this activity is often thought of as only a minor task for the last couple days of project. Knowledge transfer, especially for large software development projects, should be started early in the project and be a regular part of the development process.

The Right Methodology

Binding the right people and right technology together is the right project methodology, which provides the process, structure, and tools to ensure consistent success from project to project. Summa’s Project Management Methodology is based on industry best practices, and many years of the experience successfully delivering projects from small web application projects to very large mission critical systems. We combine elements of the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), IBM’s Rational Unified Process (RUP), and Agile software development best practices to create a process that is “right-sized” to the individual project situation, including project type, size, and client requirements. This creates an iterative, collaborative approach focused on producing a high quality, well documented product, while reducing delivery timeframes and costs. Adjusting the process based on the size and complexity of the project ensures that only those elements that will add value to a specific project are utilized.

Conclusion

By putting together a team of the right people, ensuring they have the training and experience in today’s most important business and emmerging technologies, and giving them the right tools and process to excel, Summa has created a system that consistently delivers successful results to our customers.