A critical business application lives on long after it goes into production. It has to keep pace with changing needs, remain operable and fit into an information system that keeps changing around it. Decisions made at the outset, on specifications as much as on architecture, weigh on the rest of its lifecycle.
What this covers
Application engineering covers that entire lifecycle: defining the need, design, development, testing, deployment, then operation and enhancements. You call on it to launch a new application, to rebuild a tool that has become hard to maintain, or to evolve an application in production without disrupting its users.
Difficulties most often appear where one stage hands over to the next. A vague specification surfaces during acceptance testing; an undersized architecture, once in operation. We take on the whole chain to limit these breaks.
What we take on
- Specifications: gathering and analysing business needs, writing functional and technical specifications, in liaison with your business owners.
- Architecture: breaking the application down, choosing its components and integrating it into your existing information system.
- Development: web and desktop applications, from front-end to back-end, with the technical documentation needed to take them over.
- Tests & UAT: testing throughout development, then preparing and supporting user acceptance testing with your users.
- DevOps deployment: continuous integration and delivery pipelines, containerisation, infrastructure as code.
After go-live, our consultants handle corrective and evolutionary maintenance of the applications they have built or taken over. When that maintenance becomes recurring, it can move to our managed services.
How we work
Every project follows the four stages of our method. Listen first: understand your context, the existing landscape and your constraints before proposing a solution. Then frame: formalise the objectives and success criteria, which also serve as the reference for acceptance testing. Deliver: iterate, ship, measure, and share technical trade-offs with you release after release. Finally, support: go-live, application maintenance and enhancements.
On every engagement, a lead / consultant pair oversees the work. A monthly check-in brings your contacts and our consultants together, and we gather your feedback on the engagement.
Technologies
Originally Microsoft experts (IQ 2.0 was awarded Microsoft Partners certification when it was founded, in 2013), we now work across the whole chain, without dogma and according to each project’s needs:
- Front-end: TypeScript, React, Angular, Next.js, Vue;
- Back-end: Node.js, .NET / .NET Core, C#, Java, Python;
- Platform & DevOps: Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Azure, AWS, CI/CD.
Who we work with
Our consultants support major accounts across a wide range of sectors: banking and insurance, the music business, hospitality, automotive and major public administrations.