Fusebox Lifecycle Process

The Fusebox Lifecycle Process, or FLiP for short, is a set of stages in the development cycle of a web application which attempts to create a higher chance for project success by including clients in the development process early on when their input is the most important. Tools such as the Wireframe and the Prototype are important parts to this process, which actually has 8 named stages to it.

These stages are:

1. Persona and Goals
2. Wireframe
3. Prototype / Front End Architecting
4. Application Architecting
5. Fusecoding
6. Unit Testing
7. Application Integration
8. Deployment

An explanation of all of these phases is available at the official Fusebox website, http://www.fusebox.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=methodology.steps

FuseBuilder and FLiP

Three of the phases are handled within the FuseBuilder application, Wireframing, Prototyping and Architecting. Using FuseBuilder with FLiP you can create a Wireframe of the proposed web application. FuseBuilder also includes a note-keeping system, so a per-fuseaction discussion can be maintained by any viewers of the Wireframe, and as the fuseactions begin to meet the expectations of the client they can be set as Approved, a status which is visible in both the Wireframe and the project summary page.

Once all the fuseactions are approved you can assign layout locations to the XFAs with the FuseBuilder Layout Reader -- and use the Fusedocs in your form fuses to define and display the HTML forms using FuseBuilder's FuseForms -- to create and output a static HTML Prototype rendition of your application. Because most of the layout will have been worked out through FuseBuilder's interface, it's usually a simple matter to expand on the content of the generated Prototype and fill in the blanks. Because these definitions will be visible in the Wireframe presentation of the project in FuseBuilder, you can in essence turn your Wireframe into a sort of "Pre-Prototype".

You can use FuseBuilder's advanced tools to fully FuseDoc your fuses, by importing IO elements from other connected fuses. For example if a query fuse was expecting a series of form inputs, you could import the IO Out elements from the form fuse into the IO In section of the Fusedoc for the query fuse. You can use any recordsets defined in your query fuses to define your project's database tables and output the generated "create table" SQL. Likewise, once the tables are defined you can use these definitions to automatically create the recordsets for your query fuses.