Agile Delivery Network Service Definition
The Agile Delivery Network was formed by small boutique software development consultancies, with
similar values and practices. We are experienced in web-based development and deploying to cloud
infrastructures and platforms.
For example the UK Government e-petitions web site was very successfully developed by the Agile
Delivery Network, and deployed on cloud infrastructure on time and on budget. See “Track Record” for
more information about this project.
Software Development
Services
Some of our capabilities include:
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Initial project scoping and planning
Continual re-scoping and planning throughout the project, responding to new information or
requirements
Overall architectural design
Web application development, typically using open source frameworks and libraries such as Ruby
on Rails.
Integrating existing services
Deploying to cloud or other platforms
Writing scripts to migrate data from legacy services
Automated unit, functional, and acceptance test writing - always done as part of our normal
software development practices but can also be retrofitted to legacy code
Supporting and continuing development on deployed applications
Technologies
We primarily work with open source technologies including:
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Ruby on Rails
Linux
Amazon Web Services Cloud Infrastructure
Heroku
AJAX/Javascript frameworks
Practices
We find that minimal highly disciplined practices help us deliver software quickly, cheaply, and effectively
to our private sector clients, and are committed to making these practices more common in the public
sector. These practices include:
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Lightweight planning with User Stories
Incremental Development and small releases
Iterative Development
Pair Programming
Test Driven Development
Sustainable Pace
Continuous improvement
Track Record
Both as individual companies and as a unit, the Agile Delivery Network has an impressive track record.
Here are some examples:
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HM Government e-petitions
The Agile Delivery Network delivered the Government's e-petitions website for £86,000, with a principal
development period of less than two months. The ongoing estimated cost of the website is of 0.5p per
transaction, which represents huge value-for-money for the Government.
Despite traffic that was orders of magnitude higher than that scoped, the site was rapidly scaled to cope
with the new demand within hours.
Peter Herlihy of the Government Digital Service said of this project, "The Agile Delivery Network SMEs
delivered beyond all our expectations. The flexibility of team and the quality of the service delivered by the
team at ADN gives us real hope - and evidence of a successful model for delivery of digital services."
Summit County, Ohio, Fleet Management System
Member company, EdgeCase, completed a 8 week project to develop a fleet management and
accounting application specific to replace the County Engineer’s commercial off-the-shelf application. This
project produced an investment recapture less than 24 months and an expected ROI of 5 times the initial
investment for a projected savings of $500,000 (US) over 10 years.
Five.tv for Channel 5
Unboxed Consulting, a member company, rebuilt Five.tv in Ruby on Rails. This included integration with
the programme scheduling application that they had previously built for Channel 5 as well as integration
with Brightcove's online video platform. The project was launched in Beta on 21 September after 8 twoweek sprints and successfully went live on 1 November and was voted site of the week by New Media
Age in Nov 2010
Size
Through its members, we have the following operational software development staff
Role
Project Managers & Scrum Masters
Designers
Developers
Count
19
5
53
Agile Coaching
The ADN contains several experienced Agile Coaches that can help teams on their journey to Agility. We
offer Agile Coaching in the following areas:
- Agile Planning and Tracking
- Behaviour/Test Driven Development
- Acceptance Test Driven Development
- Agile Retrospectives
Our people have coached in many different environments, ranging from small startups to large
enterprises. They have presented and run workshops on Agile matters at influential conferences such the
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annual Britich Computer Society’s Software Practice Advancement conference and the international
Ruby Conf.
ADN coach Matt Wynne has recently co-authored a book on Acceptance Testing using Cucumber1 for the
prestigious Pragmatic Press.
1
http://pragprog.com/book/hwcuc/the-cucumber-book
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Section 12.1 from G-Cloud ITT v1.0 Document
Section 12.1 provides “the minimum set of information that is expected in a service definition (suppliers
may choose not to provide these aspects of a service, but do need to be clear in their service definition
that they don’t).” This section is to specifically address each point.
An overview of the G-Cloud Service (functional, non functional)
We provide software development for Cloud (and other) deployed services.
Information assurance – Impact Level (IL) at which the G-Cloud Service is
accredited to hold and process information
Once developed, each service will need to be accredited to the appropriate impact level. For example, the
HM Government ePetitions project was accredited at IL2.
Details of the level of backup/restore and disaster recovery that will be provided
Appropriate disaster recovery levels and strategies will be implemented as agreed for each project. The
ePetitions project, for example, backs up its database hourly onto a separate physical disk, and
redundancy tolerance is provided for the web instances.
On-boarding and Off-boarding processes/scope etc.
We develop incrementally and iteratively, fully documenting the code with programmer tests. This enables
the work to be handed over to appropriately skilled teams at short notice.
Pricing (including unit prices, volume discounts (if any), data extraction etc.)
Standard software delivery is priced as per submitted SFIA table.
Service management details
Appropriate service management interfaces may be defined and written, if required.
Service constraints (e.g. maintenance windows, level of customisation permitted,
schedule for deprecation of functionality/features etc.)
Appropriate service constraints may be defined by the customer.
Service Levels (e.g. performance, availability, support hours, severity definitions
etc.)
Service levels and support will be negotiated on a per-project basis.
Financial recompense model for not meeting service levels
Specific models may be negotiated for each project dependent on its risks, budget, and impact of failure.
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Training
Our developers are experienced in training customer developers in technology, and agile methods such
as test-driven development.
Ordering and invoicing process
Termination terms
By consumers (i.e. consumption)
We will not be providing any specific service, but writing services as defined by the customer.
By the Supplier (removal of the G-Cloud Service)
We will not be providing the service, simply writing it.
Data restoration / service migration
We can provide people who are able to help in restoration or migration projects.
Consumer responsibilities
Any consumer responsibilities for the software to be written must be provided by the customer
department.
Technical requirements (service dependencies and detailed technical interfaces,
e.g. client side requirements, bandwidth/latency requirements etc.)
We can help the customer department in defining these requirements for an services to be written.
Details of any trial service available
There are no trial services available.
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