DSB Consulting offers a wide range of services designed to move you toward your business goals. Although the precise nature of each client relationship determines how we proceed, here are some examples of services that we might provide.

	If you are planning to outsource a development project, particularly one using modern development tools, you have several potential problems.  How can you write your specification clearly enough to obtain realistic bids? Should you specify the toolsets, or allow the vendors latitude? Who will decide if statements made by vendors during the selection process are valid? Once the contract is awarded, who will represent you and ensure that the actions taken by the vendor are reasonable? We can provide consulting services to address each of these problems on your behalf.  Prior to the bids, we can assist you in preparing the specification.  During the bidding process, we can assist you in evaluating bids and meeting with prospective vendors for clarification of their proposals.  After the contract is awarded, we can help to ensure that the winning vendor remains on track by participating in the project on a part-time or full-time basis.  In all cases, since we work directly for you, you can rest assured that your interests are fairly represented.
	Startup can be the most difficult and potentially dangerous phase of a development project.  Decisions must be made regarding project process, analysis and design methodology, analysis and design toolsets, development toolsets, staffing levels and staff training.  A misstep here can significantly affect the productivity of the development team and hence the delivery dates.  We can help by assisting your project manager with these all important decisions based on our years of systems delivery experience.  We can also lead proof of concept efforts to select toolsets prior to actual project startup.  This will enable a small sub-team to gain valuable experience while determining the suitability of the various tools to your situation.
	If your development project is already underway, congratulations!  Are you sure that the team will be able to deliver the expected results given the project process and  methodology in use?  How about your configuration management system?  We can help to ensure success by conducting periodic project reviews.  These can identify small problems early, before they become BIG problems.  An objective opinion from outside is often needed to see that improvements should be made to make the project run more smoothly.
	When you are busy managing the functional deliverables of your  project, it's all too easy to let design and coding go unreviewed.  Typically this results in a large body of code that functions, but is unmaintainable.  We can help by periodically reviewing your project deliverables and assisting your developers in improving overall quality.
	The application of the right combination of the best available technologies is the key to delivering a system that exceeds your user's requirements.  We can assist your project team in evaluating technological choices in light of the application requirements.  Some of the technologies that you should be considering are:  Object-oriented development environments (Smalltalk, Java) Active object databases, a.k.a. application servers (GemStone) Standards-based legacy interfaces (CORBA, EDI) Peer to peer comunications (CORBA, RMI, DST) Browser-based thin client deployment Additionally, the following more traditional architectural issues continue to play an important role in today's systems.  Synchronization with relational databases File-based legacy interfaces Proprietary system interfaces
	Whether your project has been under way for several months, or is about to commence, it's all too easy to find yourself short of resources with the correct skill mix.  We can help solve this problem is two ways.  First, we can provide on-site mentoring of your staff so that they can complete their assigned tasks on schedule.  Second, we can participate as a team member on your project team.  Our consultants are often assigned the most technically challenging portions of  a system, with excellent results.  A mixture of these two roles is also possible.

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