About Lateral

Lateral Solutions is a boutique software development provider located in Perth and Melbourne. We deliver a flexible, creative and cost-effective range of development services, focusing on the iSeries, web applications using the Microsoft .NET stack, and the Apple iOS mobile platform.

Lateral's goal is to deliver software that the customer needs, on time, with a minimum of fuss. In order to accomplish this, we:

  • Only hire the best developers we can find. We firmly believe that the best developers deliver the highest quality solution for the lowest overall cost.
  • Focus on the speed of delivery — projects that take longer tend to cost more to deliver the same level of functionality.
  • Invest heavily in build, test & deployment automation processes to maximise developer productivity.
  • Develop in a open & transparent manner. We ensure clients always have access to the latest version of the system for testing and give us frequent feedback, and we deliver clear, concise project reporting that communicates actual progress.
  • Keep our knowledge of new skills and technologies up-to-date. We’re always on the lookout for new tools or frameworks that might deliver better client outcomes, and our internal training sessions are a staff favourite.

The Lateral Process

  1. Initial Consultation

    Every project has to start somewhere! You’re an expert in your business domain, we’re experts at software; let’s catch up and have a talk about what you want to accomplish. One of our core areas of competence is our ability to rapidly understand and assess complex business domains — we can help you refine your idea and give you an indication of ballpark development time & cost.

  2. The Greenprint™

    In most cases, we’ll need to spend a few days analysing the software requirements and formulating a comprehensive solution design. This culminates in a handy document we call the 'Greenprint', which encompasses the aforementioned requirements & design, as well as a long-term product roadmap and strategy, quotes/estimates and a clear timeframe.

    While we’d love to provide this service for free, we also need to pay the bills - we typically charge 5-10% of the ballpark project cost to produce the Greenprint. If you go ahead with the project, then we’ll rebate this cost.

  3. Development

    Our teams run software development projects using an an iterative process — typically we operate a 1 week cycle, then deploy/gather feedback, review and reprioritise. We do need clients to commit to a weekly progress meeting to support this process and make sure everything stays on track.

    The latest version of the system is always available for testing, and we try to ensure all functionality we demonstrate is ‘finished’ (ie ready to deploy). You’re free to halt the project at any stage — we’ll hand over what we've done and you pay only the costs incurred up to that point.

  4. Support

    We deliver full source code as part of the package - we’d much prefer you come back to us for changes because you loved our fast & expert service, not because we’re holding the keys to the software.

    All of our software includes a standard 30 day warranty, and we have options available for ad hoc hourly or retainer-based support arrangements following that. We’re also able to monitor your production cloud application to rapidly identify and fix service issues.