Software support is a functional need

Software tools have become a valuable commodity in any professional field and, more often than not, a necessity: they help improve productivity, safeguard data and confidentiality, simplify information sharing, define normalized behaviours; they are often the only way to ensure efficient processing of relevant information and pooling of resources, including business knowledge. But the fast increasing complexity of both processes and data, as well as the ever expanding offer of tools, platforms, frameworks and technologies require a structured and rational approach to any and all choices in the matter.

Use cases

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As an IT policy-maker, you will face multiple issues having trait with all components of the information processing chain, as well as software development itself:

• Your software environment must stay in sync with your business changing over time and may need to quickly embrace professional methods in order to support increased production, complex processes or corporate growth;
• as any ambitious endeavour, taking over or restructuring an existing software development project will require an in-depth understanding of your teams, available technical skills, methodologies, etc.;
• technological choices may have a long-term impact on your systems' efficiency, robustness and scalability;
• integrating new technological paradigms (big data, knowledge management, etc.) will entail a rigorous analysis of their relevance to your business, as well as the associated costs.

Each of these issues is, at its core, an opportunity to improve your methods, and consequently to generate added value: directly by better leveraging available data, or indirectly by increasing your productivity. On all these issues, Sycomor can help you understand and control the stakes.

Our offer

Sycomor wishes to support you and your company in every step toward a better integration and use of your IT and software environment. To this end, we provide two consulting packages: Methodology: a complete diagnosis of your existing environment (including all its relevant components : human resources, methodology, organisation, technology), detailed description of suggested improvements and change management support in order to reach a complete solution;
Expertise: targeted study of a topic of interest defined by you (e.g. transition toward the big data paradigm, data leveraging, knowledge management, sectoral analysis) and delivery of an extended report aimed at supporting your strategic decision-making.
All solutions are designed to perfectly fit your needs and goals by taking into account available resources and existing constraints, while meeting your designated markers for quality, productivity and cost.

Handling core issues

Our approach is based on a long-standing practice of multiple development environments; our well-established experience allows us to take into account from the start most of the recurring issues that can be encountered in project management and to integrate efficient solutions in our proposals. Of particular note:

Dependency complexity: professional software development is a complex activity, with numerous interacting components and a strong coupling between them and the human, business, and technical environment of your company. A proposal cannot therefore only focus on project management issues, nor can it be only comprised of improvements on your technological choices or computer science foundations.

Change management: Setting up new methods or technological paradigms is always a major event and can be perceived as intrusive by established teams. Moreover, while formal perfection can be seen as laudable theoretical goal, any improvement or optimization of the workflow will necessarily be subjected to diminishing returns, with the later steps bringing only minor gain for a prohibitively high cost.

Methodological guarantees

In light of the aforementioned guidelines, we will ensure that our solutions present two major characteristics:
Flexibility: rather than a "one size fits all" solution, all possible venues of improvements will be explored and evaluated with regards to your environment in order to properly define their relevance and possible impact and ultimately tailor a global solution to your exact needs and constraints.
Modularity: whenever possible, possible improvements will be bundled as self-contained groups with limited dependencies so as to help you define implementation priorities and consider an incremental approach to their application, thus ensuring continuity of operations and distribution of implementation costs over time.

After a short preliminary step aimed at defining your current needs, a given mission will usually be comprised of three major phases:

Diagnosis

The exact scope of this phase will depend on several variables, including the exact type of mission (methodology or expertise), the complexity of the underlying project and the relevant actors. This preliminary diagnosis will help us gather all elements necessary to an exhaustive evaluation of your current environment, possible axes of improvements, and specific goals of the mission. To do so, interviews will be conducted with all interested parties, who may include development teams (IT and IS managers, team members, IT members) but also representatives for the business and strategic facets of your company.

Analysis and Synthesis

Based on data collected during diagnosis, Sycomor will write up a complete review synthetising the mission goals and all actions to be taken in order to reach them. This document will be delivered to you in a pre-established timeframe. During its production, continuous access to your teams will be a big plus.

Change Management and Support

Depending on wishes expressed by your company, complementary actions can be undertaken in order to ensure that suggested improvements are implemented and validated. Some of these actions can be limited in time and follow up closely on report submission:

• Internal seminar presenting mission conclusions, actions to be undertaken and ways to integrate them into day-to-day practice;
• Recruitment and Training counseling if possible improvements to your skill portfolio have been identified;
• Contact with experts if specialized expertise (e.g. quality specialist if you wish to enforce ISO standards) was identified as a necessary complement to our general approach.

The core mission can also be extended by way of recurring interventions, so as to ensure continued support over time:. This may include:

• Training seminars for new technologies and methodologies;
• Scientific and technology watch;
• Help with recruitment and application filtering;
• Support during conception and modeling phases.

If you wish to discuss your needs or commercial proposition, please contact us.