At Fortech you will find a complete spectrum of expertise and engagement models that address new imperatives in the world of software outsourcing:
- Shortening the idea-to-market cycle, not just reducing costs.
- Teams that truly integrate, rather than remote teams.
- Continuous evolution of applications, instead of development followed by maintenance.
You will also find at Fortech a strong drive to to build long-term collaborations with your company and achieve seamless team extensions.
This can only happen with skilled and passionate people and solid processes, which are the two pillars on which we create value.
Achieving Team Extension
At the core of building successful team extensions for your company lies our particular focus on ramping up any new collaboration.
We select the core team not only based on technical skills and relevant experience, but also on cultural matching and the colleagues’ own interest and desire to work on your particular project(s).
Knowledge transfer is also critical. Once formed, the dedicated software development teams ensure the knowledge transfer from your teams through workshops and intense collaboration, either at your company site or on our premises. To do so, we establish together a remote process and communication, which ensures that the distributed team works seamlessly. All these lead to a self-managed team that can add new team members as needed, easy, and flexible.
Engineering Practice
While we have a high-level project management framework that follows mainstream practices and approaches, we will do the collaboration setup together with you and adapt to your company’s practices and tools or we can come with our recommendations.
All our projects follow an Agile (normally, adapted SCRUM) or a combined Agile – Waterfall model. The collaborative environment we set up together lead to the level of project control and the operational transparency that your company needs.
Minimized risk derived from production-ready code at the end of every sprint, integrated software testing teams throughout the entire development process and the flexibility to adapt and re-prioritize are just a few of the many benefits that your company would get by working with Fortech. Your outsource qa testing team can support you with upgrades or any other requests you might have.
Our focus on software quality comes from our inner drive towards mastery of software engineering. Our quality focused practices include, among others, source code versioning, continuous integration, code reviews, and refactoring. We constantly measure outcomes and process using metrics such as code coverage, code complexity, and dependency analysis.
Operational Excellence
As a software development company, we place great value on operational excellence.
Fortech’s Operations department is entrusted with continually improving our existing delivery capabilities and the overall level of excellence of our delivery services. They provide guidance and support to our projects’ delivery layer, leaning on global standards and various methodologies. In doing so, they build on existing skills and previous experiences.
Also, the operational excellence structure in Fortech is assisting the company with change management and decision-enabling support. These facilitate the smooth-running of operational processes across the company and ensure objectives are met.
Furthermore, in our operations, we rely on an organizational management framework structure. Its role is to support all our processes, from the client’s needs to the client’s satisfaction and from the company’s needs to the company’s satisfaction.
Achieving operational excellence brought many benefits for both our company and our clients. Fortech provides a healthy work culture, a driven team and strives to build mutual trust for authentic client relationships. Also, operational excellence empowers us with a strong leadership team and a secure work environment.
Quality Processes
Our ambition to strive for excellence is at the core of our quality processes. For us, quality is everyone’s responsibility and the basis for achieving mastery in software engineering.
We have a Quality Management System (QMS) certified against ISO 9001:2015 to ensure we deliver quality software to our clients. You can find the certification here.
At a project level, the Operations department in Fortech provides support and makes sure the work is compliant with the project management and software engineering processes. Also, they assure that the products and services delivered by Fortech meet the client’s specifications. All this while focusing on continuous improvement of the company’s ability to meet client needs.
In doing so, they run ongoing internal and external project audits that lead to corrective and preventive actions. Also, the operations department performs regular project health checks and ensures the implementation of the agreed follow-up actions.
Amongst our quality management principles, you will find a focus on clients, leadership, the engagement of people, and relationship management. Also, our approach is process-based, and decision making is evidence-based.
By following all these practices and the industry standards, we deliver high-quality code and services to our clients. Also, we help them reduce costs by spotting potential risks early and monitoring the quality of our deliverables.
Security Processes
For us, it is critical to keep all data received from our clients secure. Thus, we invest heavily in InfoSec measures designed to safeguard client information, comply with client security requirements, and provide reliable and compliant code.
At a company level, we develop policies and procedures and implement controls that meet legal, regulatory, and contractual requirements following industry standards and best practices.
Among these, you will find at Fortech an Information Security Management System (ISMS) certified against ISO 27001:2013. You can access the certification here. Also, in support of our clients from the healthcare industry, we are HIPAA compliant.
In our working process, we place an emphasis on security. While each department head manages the risk, keeping a secure environment is everyone’s duty. We all work together to create a reliable ecosystem for ourselves and our clients.
The fundamental principles on which we build our security are: confidentiality, integrity, availability, and resilience.
Moreover, ensuring the safety of our people and IT infrastructure is essential in our operations. We have network and power redundancy, access control system, monitored alarm system, CCTV, and other practices in place. These are all ISO 27001 compliant.
People Management Practice
Our team currently counts 900 software development and software testing engineers and is constantly growing. We employ a well-established process for human resources management, which enables us to build and scale-up teams easily and effectively.
Well Structured Selection
Our recruitment process follows a streamlined approach consisting of the following phases:
- CV selection;
- HR interview with an HR recruiter;
- Online technical exam (OPP, Databases, Algorithms, etc.) for engineers at the start of their careers;
- Technical interview with a technical recruiter and project manager;
- Final interview;
- 3 months trial period.
Educational Background
The academic profiles of our specialists have weighed significantly in our selection process. All of our technical people have strong backgrounds in Computer Science, some of them with graduate degrees. 50% of our engineers have Masters degrees in Computer Science and 10% have graduated from or are currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program.
Training & Certification
The knowledge acquisition process for a new team member starts early in the onboarding phase. While becoming familiar with the organization, processes, and confidentiality standards, a new colleague gets on the job training for specific tools and technologies.
Our continuous training program includes courses delivered both internally and externally, which address both technical and soft skills. A series of certification programs are in place for software development technologies, quality assurance, and IT support.
Knowledge Sharing
We employ a unified and centralized system for knowledge sharing, coaching, training, and internal communication, built on the Atlassian collaboration tools. A technical knowledge base is in place and constantly extended through members’ contributions.
Informal learning sessions and presentations are common practice within project or product teams and across projects. Many software developers from Fortech are engaged in technology or area-based company-wide communities. They meet monthly for knowledge sharing sessions, covering technology, and software practices topics.
Additionally, an internal network of coaches plays the role of knowledge transfer catalyst throughout the organization.
Performance Management
The individual performance management system we employ includes the 3-month trial period evaluation, yearly evaluations (360 degrees, self-appraisal, top-down appraisal, bottom-up appraisal), and continuous project performance measurement based on client feedback.
Team Building
Bonding in our teams is facilitated through a variety of activities such as team building programs organized outside the office, company events (parties, anniversaries, reunions, and so on), various sports activities and competitions, as well as informal ‘going out’ events.