Outsourcing is a challenging field. It is tempting to jump at every project you are given and to let your services be defined by the work you find. But, doing that means seldom having the opportunity to build a reservoir of knowledge that sets your services apart.

At Scio, we made a conscious decision to define our field. We specialize in the development of applications that support on-demand businesses and Software as a Service (SaaS). We have taken the time to understand software applications as products and the product lifecycle that an on-demand market dictates. The decision has lead us to consider the aspects of business strategies that lead to a strong product launch, the kind of user experience that is natural and assures user “stickiness,” the feature-led release approach that constantly delights customers, and the platforms that will continue to grow profitably and reliably over time. Understanding these things doesn’t improve our ability to write a line of code, but it does greatly enhance our ability to assure our customers will be successful.  

Our Approach? Know our customers and align our work every way we can to make them successful. Making that happen has brought us to a core group of methodologies and practices that support our work:

From Concept to Launch (V.0 to V1.0) This is the combination of all of our product lifecycle services as a package. From the Idea Lab's early idea exploration of a vision through requirements development to the continuing development iterations that incrementally build up the product and ready it for final public release.

Agile Development Over time, the way products have been released on the Internet has changed dramatically. Instead of a product manager's vision of the perfect offering on day one, products now are released with basic features that are then enhanced and enlarged based on user feedback. Scio uses Agile development practices because they return higher value to both our client and the end user. Features are focused on user needs. Development cycles are kept short and focused. Teams are small and disciplined. The result is a continuous cycle of innovation that constantly delights the end user, returns growing value to our clients and makes it hard for their competition to jump ahead.

Team Augmentation Most of our clients have existing business operations and products. Taking on a new product or converting an existing product to SaaS is not a light undertaking. Scio provides outsourcing of the skills and elements of the project that would otherwise require the addition and training of new resources or would take existing resources from valuable on-going operations. Our ability to operate as a development partner for these clients is one of our most valuable business assets.