At ANNAI, we often work directly with the corporate development and/or marketing divisions of Japanese industries, on the creation of their new business ventures. To keep these projects progressing smoothly and without delay, we have found that our style makes us better suited to some types of projects more than others.
In determining the best way to provide quality service, we have identified which types of projects we are able to respond to most effectively. We look forward to working with clients that can understand our position on the below items. We endeavor to be the best partner we can for our clients, so that both the client and the end users are satisfied with ANNAI systems and service.
Projects to which we are not well suited
We don’t do well with subcontracts
ANNAI’s best successes have come from direct communication with our clients. We are able to directly take in the business needs of our clients, and consider the most efficient solution for these needs. In the Japanese IT industry, subcontracting often runs two or three layers deep, resulting in miscommunication, budget blowouts, slow response times, a lack of clarity as to where responsibility lies. As such, we do not take on projects through intermediaries, and seek to partner on projects where we are able to interact directly with the project’s key stakeholders. In this we can work together towards the success of the project.
We don’t do well with fixed costs, scope and schedules
Modern day requirements for websites are increasingly growing in complexity, resulting in a constantly evolving technical infrastructure required to develop and maintain these systems. Plans made a year ago for the optimal solution at the time may be obsolete now, resulting in sub-performing systems. We feel Waterfall projects, requiring the scope, cost, and schedule to be fixed at an early stage, and not allowing for adaptation to the ever-changing landscape in real time, can result in frustration for all parties, ultimately failing to maximize the ROI for the system.
We’re not always the best solution for every project
In the web development industry, no agency is a perfect fit for every project. Each agency will be more suited towards some types of projects than others. At ANNAI, we work with clients on projects we feel add to our ‘company story’, so we can consistently improve our game and provide better and better service to our current and future clients. Our goal is to focus on what we do right, and where we need to improve. Projects that are a good fit for our company make for productive case studies, allowing us to reflect, revise, and progress. We particularly like projects that show off the power of Drupal, increasing its profile both domestically and worldwide. We’re happy to discuss any of your needs, and if we feel that you’d get a better solution from another agency, we’ll be open and honest so you can find the solution that best fits you.
Our value is in our agility
We believe the ability to quickly and effectively respond to a rapidly changing world and technology is the key to success in business. In that regards, our development processes need to be able to respond to those changes as quickly as they arise. To do so, ANNAI works using an Agile development process. Below is a comparison of Agile development with the more conventional Waterfall development process.
- Allows the site to evolve at any stage in response to changing business needs
- Consistent releases provide quick ROI
- Agency and the client work together as a team
- Delays in any feature do not prevent development of other features
- Changing business needs are difficult to respond to, requiring revisiting previous steps
- Releases of new features are infrequent
- Communication between the agency and the client is infrequent
- A delay in any feature holds up the entire project
The traditional process of building websites has been the Waterfall method, in which the development proceeds in an ordered set of steps: idea → design → build → release. Each step of the process is signed off before moving on to the next. Waterfall development projects tend to get slowed or halted at one or more steps due to the realities of the development process, and evolution or alteration of the original idea is difficult, as it requires returning to an earlier step.
The Agile method of development used at ANNAI breaks development into features. ANNAI and the client work together on each feature, to build, test, and approve the feature in its own cycle. If a feature is held up, it does not halt progress of development on other features. New features can be added, and existing features can be tweaked, ensuring that your system is meeting the needs of your business today, not the needs of your business yesterday.
