The good news for software and website development companies everywhere is the iRise™ business visualization software, out of El Segundo, in Southern California. Intended to reduce development costs and speed time to market, iRise™ allows business units to materially and visually participate in software development – including business requirements, functionality and design – before the application build process is started.

No longer does the engineering department have the difficult task of creating mockup screen captures, specifications and preliminary coding from initial business requirements, getting more business requirements, amending specifications, more coding, ad nauseum. Not to mention what is perhaps the most frustrating part of software development - the late requirements that cannot be adopted without significant code re-writes, which are then either pushed off to later versions, or permanently parked on a “wish list.”

Now, the end state of the application can actually be visually designed and conceptualized at the start of a project, not midway or later. And no coding knowledge is needed to use the design tools included in the iRise™ application.

So we took a tour to see how iRise™ visualizes the development process. The application is clean and looks easy to use, and may remind users of office applications they are accustomed to using (I think this familiarity is a good thing).

Using a whiteboard feature that can include masters and templates, stakeholders and business analysts can sketch out the application with needed dependencies, including back-end processes. Use-case paths and layout widgets allow features to be easily added, and web pages can be visualized, from headers and logos down to forms, such as adaptive drop-down menus, and rollover effects.

But that’s not all. Business designers can also include data sheets and other elements, and spreadsheet data can be imported. The data part of the application functions similarly to database applications, allowing you to visualize data relationships and dependencies.

When the design simulation is ready for review, it can be emailed as a standalone file. Reviewers can see guidance notes and post comments using a standard web browser, and remote users can utilize a free iRise™ viewer with a standard web browser. Reviewer comments are mailed back to the analyst for inclusion in the next development session. Also included is a business requirements manager function, to keep track of functional elements to be included.

iRise™ makes it easy to find out more, offering the narrated product tour we took, as well as a 30-day trial, and a number of free online learning courses. And pricing is affordable (by my calculation, the standalone version is equivalent in cost to about two weeks of a software developer’s time) , including mid-market pricing for smaller companies.

With a client list that reads like a who’s who of government, media, manufacturers and hi-tech companies, visualizing through iRise™ looks to be a boon. Take an iRise™ tour.