Most people think of web development work as if it were a college term paper. You get all the requirements for the assignment squared away. You do your research, plan ahead, and carefully write, revise and submit the most complete and flawless term paper.

And who could blame people for thinking this way? That’s what we were all trained to do: look at projects like important classroom assignments that, once handed in and graded, are done for good–for better or worse.

But that’s not the real world, and nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to web app development.

Development is a lot more like the entirety of an academic career. Some essays are written an hour before they are due because of the five other essays you had to do the day before. Completely guessing at ambiguous test questions for the subject matter you didn’t even realize you needed to know. Unexpected snafus and running up to deadlines are the rule, not the exception.

But fear not! There is a far better way to work with–and not against–those contingencies, and that’s why Codacity’s unique Work Sessions work so well coupled with our ACHIEVE process.

Using popular Agile software development principles, we concentrate first on what your objectives are for your tech product. That means precisely what people really need from your business or non-profit and how we are going to employ technology to get it to them. And we’re not talking about the pie-in-the-sky wish list, but rather just the essentials at first.

Then, we find out exactly what your time and budget constraints are, which is the exact opposite of what many people have experienced from web development and consulting services. Whether that means you have $500 or $5,000 in your budget, or a week or three months to get the job done, we work with you to devise solutions that adequately fit within those constraints while giving you all of the best essentials for today’s online products.

We’ve worked on a lot of products, so there’s a good chance we know right away what we would have to do for you within your time and budget constraints.

But if we don’t, not a problem! We prototype solutions fitting your time and budget constraints–whether completely from scratch or using a selection of pre-made products–on our own time. We only offer our services to you once we know what we can implement for you within the constraints set.

When we do work with you as the product owner (the team member most accountable for the day-to-day operation and management of the product we’re working on), we do it through real-time Work Sessions, either in-person or remotely.

We agree on a set of features or tasks that need to be completed per Work Session, and we do the implementation, testing, and revisions right there on the spot.

That means no two-week email feedback loops. No misunderstood communications about a problem that needlessly forces deadlines to be pushed back. Everything is implemented, tested and reviewed in real time, in-person. We work our schedule around you and your business, not the other way around. That also gives you complete control over how well we are employing your resources.

But that’s not the end of the story. No vision comes to fruition without reality checks along the way, post-launch. Because we have made assumptions about people’s needs, technology can tell us exactly how well or how poorly we’re addressing them. Using data smartly, through ongoing subsequent Work Sessions, we work with you to assess how well your current implementation of technology is meeting both people’s needs and your objectives.

Depending on what is learned, either we leave what’s good enough alone or we strive towards another round of improvements to get your technological solution closer to what people are looking for.

Throughout this ongoing relationship with you, we help you get your product closer to being codacious, and that pushes your business or non-profit closer to realizing the vision that inspired you to begin with.