IDesign: Excellence. Professional Growth. Leadership.

IDesign architecture consulting engagements are short, dedicated, effective and very intense. The goal is to produce some 40-60 design diagrams depicting the various design aspects of the system, including definition of services and logical tiers, allocation to assemblies, run-time processes, identity management, security authentication and authorization, transaction management, and thread synchronization. Developers can then simply use these diagrams as the system’s blueprint and continue to construct the system.
Our engagements are typically 2 to 5 days in duration, where we review the product requirements and architecture, provide feedback or a new design, and work with the lead developer or architect on a vertical slice implementation of the architecture. We either use .NET 4.0 (in particular WCF) in the vertical slice or provide a forward-looking architecture that is compatible with it.
In a 2 days consulting engagement, we spend about half a day understanding the product and the requirements and half a day on the current architecture. In the second day we either provide feedback on the current design (if it is adequate), or propose an alternative design, using the IDesign Method™. This analysis method is unmatched in its mechanized-like ability to derive design out of use cases.
In a longer engagement (5 days), we spend the third and fourth day implementing a vertical slice of the architecture. A vertical slice is a stubbed-out implementation of one or two services in each architecture segment or layer. A vertical slice is the best way to validate the architecture and to ensure the customer understands it and can take it from there. The vertical slice represents most if not all of the ‘plumbing’ issues that are the Achilles’ heel of most applications, where developers spend the bulk of the effort, both in initial development time and in long-term maintenance. The fifth day is spent testing and even stress-testing the vertical slice. Having the design done and prototyped in a few days is a huge productivity and quality boost, as well as overall upfront risk reduction.
We have successfully applied our architecture method at companies large and small, from the Fortune 100 to the startup.

Click here to ask for a sample architecture report and additional information.

Our company was developing a very large service-oriented, WCF-based distributed banking management application. The week spent with IDesign was a very valuable experience for our team. In an intense and focused engagement we managed to tackle the important issues for our project, to leverage the new Microsoft technologies and to apply a number of architectural patterns to our concrete requirements. The amount of knowledge and insight we gained during this week is something we are going to remember for the rest of our professional careers.

Aleksandar Milošević
Product Line Manager
Pexim
Beograd, Serbia and Montenegro

Through IDesign’s mentorship and specifically that of Juval Lowy, I was armed with an elaborate arsenal of resources, tools and techniques that have added a tremendous value to the quality and sophistication of my work. My professional and career development, both in management and technical proficiency has SKYROCKETED in the last year since I began to follow the principles of the IDesign Method and adhering to the tenets of service-oriented development. I have ushered my career- and that of those I lead- beyond mere craftsmanship and into software engineering. To this end, IDesign’s abounding influence in this disciple does not stop in the classroom. Regularly published articles, interviews, books, lectures and countless resources generously offered through the IDesign website continue to empower the enlightened and help to maintain a razor sharp heartbeat on relevant technique; pacing them significantly ahead of the pack.

Rick G. Garibay
Lead, Distributed Application Technologies
DriveTime Sales & Finance Company
Phoenix, AZ

IDesign’s week long Architectural Consulting engagement was an incredibly productive exercise for Emportal. From a business stand point, the process gave our architecture an enormous leap forward. We, literally, could have spent years learning from trial and error how to properly put together a large WCF-based system. Instead we spent a week being guided by IDesign, the experts in the field. That kind of opportunity is priceless for any company.

Geoff Heeren
Software Engineer
Emportal
Walnut Creek, California

The Actuarials Exchange was attempting to build a smart client trading application. We had gone through many iterations of connecting the distributed clients to the server but we were not getting appropriate results or achieving any service levels. We got Juval and the IDesign team involved. Within two hours Juval was able to locate the defect with our current solution. Within two days, he recommended both a tactical and strategic solution for client connectivity and he also identified other potential problem areas. Together we began the implementation of the tactical solution. We have now completely implemented the solution and everything is working satisfactorily with all service levels being met. I firmly believe that we would not be in the position that we are today without the help of the IDesign team. I would not hesitate to use their services going forward and would highly recommend their services for anyone building distributed, highly responsive .NET applications.

Gary Pollreis
Chief Architect
The Actuarials Exchange
Chicago Illinois

In just two days, Juval explained about and helped me set up a fully scalable, completely secure architecture for our application. Juval introduced concepts that I would have never been able to learn about by reading your basic .NET application textbooks, and he provided me with knowledge that I would have had to study for months to figure out. Thanks to his consultation, I now have a solid .NET model that I can use to complete my development in record time. His help was invaluable, and I highly recommend him to any other developer, or development team that does not have the expertise to develop such a slick .NET application.

Matt Schwartz
Software Engineer
Vital Link Business Systems
San Francisco, California

At Kinitos we required validation of our .NET architecture and audit of our security mechanisms. IDesign provided us with world-class expertise in .NET and .NET based security issues, and were not only great consultants, but also great mentors as well. IDesign helped us design world-class security architecture in a matter of days and left us with the expertise to continue on our own afterwards.

Steven Woods
CEO
Kinitos
Palo Alto, California

At n&k Technology we faced a tough challenge of training a new crew of recent CS graduates for sustaining engineering of a large code base, while at the same time setting up an infrastructure to support CMM key process areas for level 2 and 3. Juval Lowy of IDesign proved to be worth his weight in gold when he provided consulting and mentoring precisely targeted at our needs, which were:

Object oriented design and coding standards
Multi-threaded programming
Synchronization classes that enhance programmer productivity
Object oriented design patterns
Enterprise Services
.NET technology and the future of windows based programming

In addition to maintenance of our existing product line, our software team must create a new generation of software using interface-based modules to allow us to respond quickly to market demands by creating many variations and configurations of our products. As we go forward with the next generation design, it is good to know that we can rely on Juval for world-class expertise as a consultant to help us formulate our architecture and design.

D. Christopher Pinkard
Manager, Software Engineering
n&k Technology
Santa Clara, California

I just want to take a moment to say thank you. We are in the process of converting our application to services using the IDesign Methodologies. While it hasn't gone perfectly, it has been very successful. We've almost completed our third release using your architecture. We're definitely starting to see many of the benefits you described. This is a US Air Force Application in use across most of the AF. In addition to the many internal benefits we feel very prepared for the future. Our customers are very happy with our progress. Thank you for all of the information, mentoring, articles and presentations. We could not have done it without you.

Greg Sharp
USAF