Good software design should look effortless.
But we all know how difficult it can actually be.
A good designer and a developer are rarely the same person. Luckily we can have both.
Overpass is a hybrid of local and offshore developers working to give you personalised local service at offshore costs.
We make sure you have the talents you need for your project.
Whether its a calculation-intensive transactional finance application or a three-page brochure site, we believe our method of software delivery is superior to others you may have seen.
Overpass uses carefully vetted software developers, designers, and testers from locations around the world. We work together in virtual teams.
What we believe about software development
We've been doing this a long time. We've worked in large investment banks and small start-ups. We've seen things succeed and we've seen them fail. This has formed some beliefs we have about the best way to build software. Here are some of our beliefs:
- Software creation is not brain surgery!
- Project Management is necessary, but don't over-do it.
- Smaller is better.
- Developers are most productive on their own.
- Don't start from scratch unless absolutely necessary.
- We need to fit with out clients.
Tools for creating software projects get easier to use every day. There is no need to make a meal out of how long something will take.
Our main goal is to make working software. It must be maintainable and flexible. It must be thoroughly tested. But the more we talk about making software, the less time we have for making software.
A good project manager makes sure everyone is going in the right direction and stays out of the way, but frequently makes sure things are still on track. A daily 15-minute meeting is usually all that is required with developers. Too many meetings can kill a software project.
A small team can produce more than a big team. A small company can provide better personal service than a large one. Small companies don't need to tell you about company policies, because that's not why we are here. We don't need to look big, so we won't try.
People want to work where they feel comfortable. For designers and coders, nothing is more comfortable than working from home or wherever they are most at ease. We have had many jobs that required putting on a suit and commuting for several hours to work in an office building with someone else's computers to do something that could be done more quickly and efficiently from home.
We aren't formal. The goal is production. Execution is what is important.
It is more important that our products look professional than it is for us to look professional.
We should not be coding in 2010 as we were in 2005. Technology is growing and you can never take your eye off of emerging trends. There are too many existing frameworks in the world to start a project from scratch. If there is an open-source framework we can use to speed up your project, we'll use it.
We need to provide our clients with better service than they would expect from any of their own employees. Our relationship should be based on mutual satisfaction. A client should be able to stop a project immediately, take their code, and move onto another provider if they feel it is necessary.
Our Methodology
We use Agile development practices. Most notably, we are practitioners of Scrum.
Our Technologies
Within Overpass, our main skillset is with Microsoft technologies (C#, ASP.Net, SQL Server), but the nice thing about creating virtual teams, is that we can find developers from all backgrounds.
In the expansive Overpass network, we have developers specialises in every major development language, including;
- ASP.Net
- Java, J2EE
- HTML
- AJAX, Atlas
- C#, VB.Net
- SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Informix
- VB6
- . . . and any other development language you can think of.
