Software Development at Meijering en van Sterkenburg (MEVS)

About MEVS

MEVS is a small software company that was founded in the beginning of 2000 by Rogier van Sterkenburg and Martijn Meijering. We develop software and give courses on software development.

Our Mission

Our mission is to create high-quality software and to teach others how to create high-quality software by lecturing, coaching and collaborating with people on their projects.

We believe quality software requires having very frequent and direct contact with our customers, who help us define early and frequent production-quality releases that maximise business value and minimise overall project risk.

We believe quality software requires a cohesive team of highly qualified professionals who share a philosophy of quality and continuous improvement.

We believe quality software requires a disciplined way of working using modern software engineering techniques such as object oriented programming, design patterns, refactoring, automated testing and version control.

The way we work

Naturally it is important to decide how much functionality a system needs. This depends on both costs and benefits and it is hard to take complete and definitive decisions up front. We consider changing requirements to be a fact of life. A customer cannot know in advance exactly what kind of a system he wants. We want to avoid building a system that does what the customer asked for at the beginning of the project but is not what he wants at the end of the project.

Therefore, we deliver software in frequent releases. Each of these releases is a working version of the system, not just a prototype. We attach great importance to having end users who are using the system for real operations in its natural environment. Seeing a working system makes it much easier to decide what is needed next. Our customers can change their minds about further functionality after each release and are not bound by earlier plans.

The first few releases will not do much, but they will do the things they do correctly. Moreover they will do these things very early on. Usually it is possible to have something like 60% of the desired functionality in 40% of the allotted time. It is possible to deliver a first working version in two to three months at most.

After the first release we want our customers to be happy that they already have the most important bits up and running even though what the system does then is much less than what it will do eventually. As time progresses we will eventually reach a point where our customer is satisfied with what the system does.

We only work with senior programmers, people who have a high level of relevant education and practical experience.