About Isthmus
March 2009
Andy Hilliard
Co-Founder & Chief Business Development Officer
IsThmus, Inc.The Costa Rican IT Outsourcing Company
www.isthmusit.com
San Jose, Costa Rica, Charlotte, NC, Sunnyvale, CA
ahilliard@isthmusit.com
704.649.1087
Skype: ahilliard2

 Founded: 1998 as Lidersoft, providing software development to the
regional financial services industry. Spinoff in 2003 as IsThmus Costa
Rica. Actually 140 employees.
 Business: to provide nearshore software development services to the
North American Market
 Legal Status: a Costa Rican S.A, Isthmus de Costa Rica, S.A. with an
U.S. subsidiary, Isthmus Inc., incorporated in North Carolina
 Headquarters: San Jose, Costa Rica. 12,000 sqf Software
Development Campus
 Sales and Business Development: offices in Charlotte, North Carolina
covering and Silicon Valley, California, covering the West Coast.
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To offer a service model that has:
 the quality, knowledge, skills, response time
and flexibility associated with domestic
suppliers
 the cost savings associated with offshore
development centers
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Contract Model:
 Fix Price
 Time and Materials
Models and Methodologies:
 Agile Programming
 Waterfall life cycle
 RUP
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The Outsourcing experience involves challenges that
are faced on a day to day basis. The most relevant
are:
1. Communication.
2. Time zone and travel distance.
3. Cultural differences.
4. The difficulty of participating collaboratively, as
in-house developers do.
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If the client doesn’t have any particular methodology, or
prefer to work with the any of the methodologies Isthmus
3-Propose has defined, we will propose the best approach for the
project and will implement it.
If after understanding and validating the client’s methodology,
there are gaps that Isthmus consider can put the project under
2-Adapt risks, Isthmus will propose to adapt the methodology to the
project conditions to assure the best perfomance and quality.
If the client has its own methodology and wants to use it for the
project with Isthmus, we will understand it and validate it according
1-Adopt to our practices. If it complies with all the project goals, Client
goals, and Isthmus goals in terms of quality assurance,
measurement, and best practices, Isthmus will adopt the
methodology with no problem.
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Fixed: Requirements Resources Time
Value
Driven
Plan
Driven
Estimated: Resources Time Features
The plan is the base for Release themes and
Cost/Schedule estimates features drive estimates
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Engagement process
Scope envisioning
Requirements envisioning.
Architecture envisioning
Initial set up and General
Planning review

Iteration Planning.
 Collaborative Development.
 Unit Testing and Code Review.
 Test Driven Development *
Active stakeholder participation
Testing.
Evolve documentation.
Internally deploy software

Peer Reviews
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Code Review

•Testing Strategy
•Testing tools and techniques
selection.
•Test Plan
•Test cases design
•Test case creation/
validation.
•Test case update
•Peer reviews.
•Test plan execution.
• Test cases execution.
• Issues management
•Metrics report/Status reports.

 Manual Testing  Automated Testing

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Andy Hilliard
Co-Founder & Chief Business Development Officer
IsThmus, Inc.The Costa Rican IT Outsourcing Company
www.isthmusit.com
San Jose, Costa Rica, Charlotte, NC, Sunnyvale, CA
ahilliard@isthmusit.com
704.649.1087
Skype: ahilliard2
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