FAST

Go4ITFast

Go4IT Fast is a tool that applies the industrial revolution concept to software development, deploying true factories of software. Thanks to its flexibility and high degree of customization, software production lines in Fast are linked to the requirements of each IT department. Unlike other 4GL tools, everything in Fast can be customized: the syntax of the input language, code generation templates, even productivity tools for the developers integrated in it (compilers, help and collaboration tools, version control...).

One of the main benefits of Fast is that it can be used to generate any programing language (Java, C, COBOL...) in any target platform (Windows, Linux or even Mainframe). In addition, Fast increases the productivity of the programmers between a 30 and a 50%, reducing the number of compilation errors by 60%.

Fast deployment process

As with the installation of an industrial production line, Fast deployment requires a consultancy process with two phases:

  1. Software factory design. During this phase the source code templates and the syntax of the input language are developed together with the software architecture team. This process requires the technical knowledge of the architects of each system to ensure that the most important bottlenecks and error prone activities are correctly located. This phase has mean duration of 2 to 4 months.
  2. Deployment. When the factory is ready, the deployment process is done by providing training to the development team, with a mean duration of 2-3 workdays. Also during this phase, Fast is integrated with the production environment, to ensure the programmers become more productive from the very first day.
software fast

Fast benefits

One of the main benefits of Fast is that it increases the productivity of the developers between 30 and 50%, as it enforces systematic code reuse in the most repetitive and error prone parts of the applications, for example, data base access, reading/writing to files, error management... This way the code written by the developers is reduced to 40% of the total application code.

In addition, Fast can be easily integrated with the production environment, which makes available to the programmers different tools and validation engines inside the development environment (context help, code completion, access to support tools of the system, etc.).

As source code is generated from templates that have been validated and tested by the main software architects of the installation, Fast reduces the amount of programing errors by 30%. In addition, Fast includes several tools to validate the source code before it reaches production.

Fast cuts down the overall costs of Mainframe environments, reducing substantially the expenses generated by the hardware in the maintenance and programing processes. The savings come, mainly, from the reduction in the compilation errors in the Mainframe. Taking these savings into account, along with the improved productivity of the developers, Fast makes for a rapid return on investment, reaching ROI in less than a year in this kind of systems.