Liveagility Launched
On Nov 25th we cracked open several bottles of champagne to take the edge off the real pain of bringing a new product to market in 100 days. Back in June we ran a hothouse to come up with a proposal for a BPM as a Service product – effectively a brand new client, delivered across the web, for our existing SPP platform. The hothouse was great fun – 3 days of alternating between staring at the ceiling, brainstorming, and frantically cranking out code or PowerPoint, all in a very competitive environment. The output was the concept of LiveAgility; a Silverlight-based BPM design and run-time environment with a radically different look and feel, and a commitment from the company execs to fund the development and bring it to market by the fall. Development started for real in August after the holiday season was over, and followed Singularity’s standard agile model: 3×4-week iterations and a 2 week regression, but with an extended alpha trial tacked on the end. The hard part was to ensure a radical break with the past – we’ve built several process design environments over the years and there was a danger we would just build another version of the same thing. We decided to give UI design control to someone who hadn’t worked with the previous process builder. The response to the results suggest we’ve achieved our goal – at Gartner events in the US and London, and in other sessions with analysts and prospects, we’ve had a very positive response and we believe we genuinely have something different to offer. It’s still early days of course – I’m amazed at how much we’ve been able to deliver in the first release: you really can put useful processes together in minutes and run them. But there is so much more we plan to add: support for persistent data, integration with SharePoint online, tabular and graphical reports, real-time collaboration, desk-top integration. One of the advantages of the SaaS model is that we can bring these features through very quickly – after all there is only system to update. Currently the product is completely free – you can sign up for a trial at www.liveagility.com We’ll introduce charging some time in 2010 but there will still be a 30 day trial period for existing and new customers. We’re tired but pleased – we hope you like it.
And btw, you can pronounce it l-i-veagility or l-ae-veagility as you wish; we don’t care just as long as you give it a go and let us know what you think.
Paul Moorhead
Head of Product Management
Singularity
Nisoft House
Ravenhill Business Park
Ravenhill Road
Belfast BT6 8AW
Northern Ireland
Email: paul.moorhead@singularity.co.uk
Tel: +44 7866 4876
