Application development

When we develop applications, we aim to deliver useful services to your customers as soon as possible. And then we keep adding features until the project is complete.

We believe you should start reaping a return on your investment as soon as possible. That’s why we adopt a flexible development approach that allows us to get a subset of features live as soon as possible, based on your requirements. It also lets us accommodate any worthwhile new ideas that arise. To achieve this, our experienced developers and project managers agree customised processes and development cycles for every new project.

This iterative approach may seem risky to those who are used to completing a project before anything goes live. We appreciate that. So we promise we’ll never advise launching anything until it is fully tested and you agree it offers value.

We also believe in using the most appropriate tools for what we’re building. Ruby on Rails, for example, is particularly good for business applications, whereas Drupal excels where content is involved.

Ultimately, we take great pride in everything we build, whether they are public-facing web services or internal applications and processes. And we love that many of our customers retain us so we can keep adding more value to apps that we’ve developed. That’s what lies behind our approach to application development from the minute you first contact us.

Gathering requirements and planning

Planning is as important as day-to-day development, if not more so. Because each app is different, we’ll spend time with you to fully understand your requirements. We’ll also ask you about your existing systems and ways of working, and your business as a whole.

These will inform our recommendations about which platforms we use as a foundation for your project, and the processes and development cycle.

(Requirements can change and grow over time. So if you want us to keep developing your application after the project has gone live, we’ll make ‘gathering requirements’ a regular part of the process.)

Discovery and KPIs

From the beginning, we’ll work with you to understand how you measure success, including how it will be measured for this application:

We’ll need to know the outcomes you want and your key performance indicators (KPIs).
If you’re extending or updating an app, we like to analyse any statistics you have about its performance to see how we can tune things better for your new version.

We’ll raise other aspects you may not have thought about yet or hadn’t realised were important to specify early on in the process. We don’t claim to know everything, but we’ve spent years asking questions to tease out this kind of information.

We’ll also look for opportunities you may not have spotted. In the past, we’ve identified significant potential wins for clients at this stage. Peer 1, for example, introduced an expanded self-service provision for customers, allowing their customer service team to provide a higher quality service with the same level of human resources.

Proactive from the start

This upfront discovery period is part of what makes us a good partner. We won’t wait until part way through a project to point out additional development requirements (with additional costs) which we noticed but weren’t identified by you upfront.

We are proactive with suggestions because we can’t wait to get involved. The brief we receive is just the beginning.

We’ll use all of these to help us confirm if proposals are realistically likely to meet your goals.

And at this stage we’ll also measure the KPIs on your existing platforms, where possible, to see how planned changes will improve results. Measuring against your KPIs also helps both of us prioritise those items on the roadmap.

Validation

We can carry out surveys of your existing products, interview customers and run user groups. We can even create a ‘product development council’ that includes user representatives.

This lets us interact with your current customers in a managed way to gain feedback on what is working well, what could be improved and what additional opportunities you have to serve your customers.

Which platform?

The Full Fat Things team works with a range of open source software. We pledge to always use the most appropriate platform to develop your application, taking into account every related factor.

We’ll often recommend using Ruby on Rails when we’re building business applications. But when your primary concern is enabling customers to access content, we suggest Drupal. We work with other platforms too, but whichever we use, our approach to setting up processes and delivery cycles is always exemplary.

Find out more about us and about the platforms we use.

Ruby on Rails application development

Ruby on Rails is, as one of our developers puts it, “a gem of a language”. Its structure is ideal for agile projects, letting us deliver new applications and features fast. The majority of the software libraries are open source, minimising or avoiding licencing costs. And its framework structure and capabilities mean we can focus on business outcomes rather than coding solutions.

Internet giants including Twitter, Shopify, Airbnb and Github have all used Ruby on Rails to build products that sit at the core of their businesses. That’s a huge thumbs-up for the platform. It also means we benefit from a vast resource of production-ready software when building your applications, including tried and tested solutions for user authentication and authorisation.

Drupal development

Drupal is a robust, flexible open source content management software that is ideal for developing websites and apps. It has thousands of modules and add-ons that expand its functionality and let us build almost anything you need.

When we’re developing new Drupal sites and apps, we always recommend using Drupal 8. Every Drupal 8 application we create is Drupal 9 ready, to make any future upgrade as straightforward as possible.

Delivery cycle

We usually work on a short cycle, planning and delivering working software every two to four weeks.

You’ll have access to our multiple test environments throughout. And you can even watch the development happen on Github if that takes your fancy. We are totally transparent in terms of how the build is going, as that fits into our goal of becoming part of your team.

Regular delivery to live

Our recommended approach with almost every app we build is to try to go live as soon as there is something valuable to offer to your customers. Then we’ll keep adding features until the agreed final product has been completed.

We love the iterative approach. It lets you extract value from the app as soon as possible. And it lets both of us learn from a live product as we continue to build it, which can result in amendments or exciting upgrades to the original plan.

It is, of course, your choice when to go live with the initial product and any iterations. We’ll explain when and why we recommend setting something live, but this is your app, not ours.

Adding value post-launch

Our iterative approach to application development fits well with our overall approach to working with clients, and that’s one of partnership.

Most of the apps we build have the potential to be developed even further even when we’ve ticked all the original boxes. And our natural desire to get maximum value from everything we build means we love nothing more than to continue working with our clients to achieve that.

Take Index Ventures, for example. Index is an international venture capital firm and that means the team needs a reliable decision support tool that enables them to move fast. Accuracy and availability are vital too.

However, the venture capital market is volatile and to be successful companies have to constantly reevaluate the applications they use. So we’ve continued to work with Index since building our first system for them in 2014. We make sure we keep up to date with their requirements and constantly iterate to help them stay on top of their game. It’s a great example of how agile development helps our customers stay agile.

Onwards and upwards

We can train an internal team to take over when we’ve finished a project. But we excel in helping to deliver outstanding business outcomes when we continue to partner with you after your application goes live.

We can tailor our relationship in many ways, providing any combination of the following:

constant iteration and innovation
help with hosting
maintaining the software
ongoing consulting and training.

Our most successful customers retain us to continue to innovate for their own customers every month. This allows us to constantly deliver value and grow products, including reacting quickly to competitive product innovations.

Get in touch

If you like the sound of how we do business or simply want to know more, get in touch. We’d love to sit down over a beverage of your choice and explain what makes Full Fat Things the ideal application development agency.

Application development

Flexible, transparent and efficient