Intraspective provides consulting services to the business and technical communities on a variety of levels from strategic/architectural through tactical/development. We can work directly with your company or through a preferred vendor. Contact us to learn more.

Intraspective is an innovative consulting firm focusing on Spring Framework, flexible enterprise architectures, and effective development strategies

We help clients look inside their development culture, gain new perspectives and make essential and tailored adjustments to achieve excellence in their products and with their teams.

Development projects perform a complex dance between direction, people and tools. Intraspective provides focus for teams to master/improve skills. It isn't magic, but the results are. We concentrate on processes to improve quality, increase agility and support proactive communication.

We can help your next system integration or development project achieve excellent results through scope management, accurate project planning, effective communication, utilization of standards-oriented tools and a focus on continuous improvement. These are the methods we employ.

 Focus

Effective architectures are a blend of art and science balanced by skill. Skills are developed through years of experience and exposure to many real-world challenges. Art comes from creative listening and imaginative approaches to maximize the objectives of the stakeholders.

Design and Frameworks

 Patterns centric development. Inversion of Control (IoC), Model View Controller (MVC) patterns based on Spring Framework is often a key component.

 Proven persistance strategies such as Object-to-Relational mapping tools such as iBatis and Hibernate.

 Platform neutrality through open standards, XML and avoidance of vendor specific options.

 Analysis and Design approach blending RUP and XP - agility with some structure, test driven, iterative.

Balanced Approach

 Targeted trade studies and cost/benefit analysis to quickly assess risks, rewards and technical options.

 Effective requirements gathering and analysis ensure fewer surprises.

 Experience with needs of business user AND data center operations.

 Team

As important to what you are doing is how you do it. Every software development project can achieve excellence. What is excellence? Intraspective defines excellence as a team that really clicks, setting new standards in quality, productivity and enjoyment. Producing software is a business and while profits and schedule must always be considered, they take care of themselves in an excellent team. One of our hallmarks is the projects we work on become more effective - producing better work in less time with less cost.

Management

 Extensive configuration management experience with SVN, CVS, ClearCase and PVCS. Tried-and-true SCM techniques that are easy to learn and highly effective.

 Software Development Folders to manage process rigor, improve visibility, and elevate and normalize skills in diverse teams.

 Effective metrics (derived from CMU's PSP and TSP processes) management. Easy to measure (tools do most of the work) and critical to planning and continuous improvement. If you don't know where you are, you probably can't move in the right direction...

 Comprehensive use of JUnit, HttpUnit for unit testing, mock object testing, and integrated testing. A test infected approach.

 Careful defect/issue and time tracking using simple and unobtrusive techniques.

Team Collaboration

 Peer Reviews and Inspection training. Use of simple tools such as Checkstyle and JDepend to ensure consistent development and balanced design.

 Promote and extend team intranets/wikis for more effective collaboration, information sharing and greater effectiveness.

 Integration of existing tools into XML/HTML framework. Often, the current management and analysis tools in use can be blended into the project portal with some simple XML/HTML techniques.

 Skills

Choosing the right tool or technology is very important. Intraspective has continued to support and develop in tools which maximize productivity, flexibility and client-value. We focus on Java and XML but remain neutral on development tools and platforms. Intraspective is focused on enterprise integration architectures such as thin client delivery via multi-tiered infrastructures. We don't focus on desktop or thick GUI frameworks.

Java

 Spring Framework and Acegi early adopter.

 Productive view technologies including JSP/JSTL, Velocity, SiteMesh and Tiles.

 Web 2.0 integrations including DWR and Scriptaculous.

 SSO via Siteminder and CAS. Extensive Acegi security framework user.

XML

 SAX and JDOM based Java use of XML.

 XSLT conversions to/from XML.

 Tool integrations from proprietary format to XML.

 SOAP and WebServices development using Apache AXIS.

 DTD and XSD experience.

Environments

 Extensive use of Apache ANT.

 JUnit and test driven development.

 Eclipse, Firefox and Emacs for everything else.