This is a popular cost effective approach to maintaining custom built internal software systems.
BrightBean’s less-than-fulltime service offers a fixed number of hours per week to fix bugs and enhance your custom built systems.
Scenario:
Your company has an in-house application system that was built by a developer that is no longer available. You have a list of bugs that need to be fixed as well as numerous enhancements to keep up with changing business requirements. It’s hard to justify the cost of a fulltime developer.
Solution:
You’d contact us at BrightBean and we’d have a few online conversations to establish details on the application(s) as well as any buy vs build opportunities. If it seems as if there’s chemistry, we’d agree on a contract duration (usually 3-6 mos initially). For each week, we’d have a weekly “cadence” to define, prioritize, and choose from a list of bugs/tasks to tackle. These can include initial tasks such as securing the code assets, bug fixes, or new long awaited features.
As these items are completed and tested, new versions of your software are released to production. Ideally, this release cycle would be about 2-4 weeks based up the size of the effort.
Benefits:
For less than a full time mid-level engineer, you get the combined skills of a project manager, front-end developer, back-end/api developer, and a dev ops person. With more than one set of eyes on the application the single-point-of-failure risk is reduced.
Questions
What if I have a big initiative that requires more than my fixed set of hours?
A: If needed, we can temporarily increase the hours to allow for additional resources. Ideally, the more notification time, the better as it’s custom software and it takes some time to ramp-up.
I brought BrightBean in to maintain my web applications but I have a desktop app that needs attention. Can I use BrightBean on these apps too?
A: Yes. We have folks to tackle your cloud, web, mobile, and desktop app needs.
How long are your agreements normally?
A: We usually start with 6 months and if there are no burning issues, we suggest 15-20 hours per week. This allows us the time we need to stabilize the code line (if needed), gain familiarity and begin to fix issues as well as tackle new features.
Associated Services
- Cloud Hosting Setup and Continued Support
- Ongoing Development (new features, bug fixes, enhancements)
- ETL and Reporting services.
- Project Manger / Weekly Cadence
- UI/UX Design/Mockups
- Testing / Documentation
- Optimization / Operations Research (OR)