10Pearls

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Innovation Manager of an educational company. 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are a unique educational institution in the world dedicated to the training of healthcare professionals. Our goal is to accompany them throughout their career and provide them with the tools to advance and boost their professional lives, helping them achieve all their growth goals and contributing to the development of an excellent, diverse, and adaptable healthcare sector that meets the needs and realities of the modern world.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire 10Pearls to accomplish?

• Revolutionize healthcare education, making it adaptable to individual students' unique learning objectives
• Transition to a cutting-edge, state-of-the-art educational platform
• This platform will not only retain the existing functionalities but also introduce innovative features to foster a dynamic and engaging learning environment.

SOLUTION

How did you find 10Pearls?

Forbes Magazine

Why did you select 10Pearls over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from 10Pearls were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

The project's scope encompasses the development and deployment of a modern healthcare education software platform. Some key deliverables include: 

• Updated System Architecture Plan and Implementation
• Core Functionality Implementation
• Content Migration Plan
• Integration and Interoperability Enhancement
• Innovative Features Implementation
• Improved User Interface and Experience

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Clear milestones
• Periodic meetings
• Close contact
• Punctuality
• Good interation between teams
• Talented team
• Stong commitment
• Succesful deliverables
• Innovative designs
• Frameworks and solutions

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

• Yes, professional commited team. 
• Items delivered on time. 
• Flexibility with our availability and requirements. 
• Project Management organized, well-structured and clear. 
• The PM tools (Jira and Confluence) very optimized. 
• The team responds to 100% of our needs.

What was your primary form of communication with 10Pearls?

Virtual Meeting

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

• 100% the team allocated for this project. 
• A very talented and cohesived team. 
• Comprehensive, flexible and professionals. 
• It´s a pleasure to work with them. 

Are there any areas for improvement or something 10Pearls could have done differently?

Face-to-face meetings at some point

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and co-founder of a digital business platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with 10Pearls?

We needed help with augmenting our software development team with new resources, including engineers for testing and software architecture. We used to work with a different service provider abroad. Still, due to challenges related to new resource onboarding, we decided to find a partner with a deeper pool of resources and a solid onboarding process that could provide us with the skills we needed. Thus, we hired 10Pearls.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

10Pearls’ resources help us with the development tasks of a custom software solution that we offer to our customers, focusing on addressing our customers’ specific requirements. These resources have been onboarded and embedded into our internal team, so they’re constantly getting knowledge on how our technology works.

10Pearls has also provided us with additional resources to support our deployment, testing, and software architecture efforts — we’ve created a hybrid team. Moreover, software design has been part of our projects, so they’ve also helped us in that regard. As for the technology stack, we’ve used Starlette, Java, CSS, HTML, Oracle, and Azure DevOps Services, among others.

What was the team composition?

My main points of contact from 10Pearls are Zeeshan (Co-Founder & Managing Director) and Rumi (Principal of Digital Transformation). I’m also in contact with a lead developer who manages all 10Pearls’ resources on the ground.

How did you come to work with 10Pearls?

We found 10Pearls through a global network organization we’re part of.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent between $200,000–$300,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2022, and it’s an ongoing collaboration.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Since working with 10Pearls, we’ve seen great improvements in the way we approach our platform’s development. Their resources have brought new ideas and processes, as well as a better analysis of how to approach development requirements. Their team has a deep-thinking capability.

How did 10Pearls perform from a project management standpoint?

10Pearls has stayed on budget, and their communication is excellent. As for collaboration tools, they use Slack to communicate between different teams and Jira to manage the projects. Moreover, I engage with the stakeholders via in-person meetings and email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

10Pearls understands how to engage with an organization like ours, and they have very good processes in place to achieve better results.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t point out anything 10Pearls could improve on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear about where you’re heading as an organization to understand what resources and capabilities you need. Currently, there’s a lot of alignment between our needs and 10Pearls’ offering. In order to achieve that, we had to be crystal clear about where we were at.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a product manager at a 23-year-old financial company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with 10Pearls?

We needed to develop a custom software solution to transition from a traditional credit card payment service provider to a software fintech provider company. We initially worked with a development company that built our software’s framework and beta version; however, their service quality went poor. We worked with that company for two years and then looked for a new development company.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

10Pearls started working with an existing code base that a previous company had created. We had little documentation about our product and 10Pearls product’s documentation, as well as our onboarding and training documents. 

For development, 10Pearls uses the MEAN stack, including MongoDB, Express.js, React.js, and JavaScript. The software works as a virtual terminal, and its main functionalities are creating invoices to send as recurring billing texts and emails with payment links attached. 10Pearls has also helped us with third-party integrations and customization of the software. They offer DevOps services, and we use AWS for hosting. 

What is the team composition?

Dan (SVP Solutions & Sales) was my initial point of contact. I work with a team of 14 specialists from 10Pearls, including Rafay (Project Lead), six full stack developers, a QA engineer, a QA architect, two DevOps engineers, a software architect, and an associate developer. 

How did you come to work with 10Pearls?

I searched for development companies at Cluthc and read several reviews. I found 10Pearls’ profile, visited their website, and filled out a contact form. Dan then contacted me to find out more about my project. We had a first conversation, and we then met again with my boss and our systems architect, who liked 10Pearls’ proposal. We considered different companies, and 10Pearls was the best choice in terms of pricing, performance, and delivery time. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spend an average of $25,000 monthly with 10Pearls, around $550,000 for our total engagement. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with 10Pearls in March 2022, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We’ve had a great experience working with 10Pearls — they meet our project’s KPIs. When we started working together, 10Pearls ensured we had a good transition process from our previous vendor. All of the 10Pearls team are communicative and ask many questions, which is important to effectively achieve the job. I like this because our previous vendor didn’t ask many questions. 

We use a tool to grade the code 10Pearls creates, and the code’s quality has increased from a D grade to a B. Additionally, the code’s security vulnerabilities and duplication score have decreased too. 

Moreover, we’ve created around 1,100 support tickets, and 10Pearls has completed around 800 of them. When 10Pearls modifies the code, they don’t add many lines and keep it optimized so our website pages load quicker and the site works faster. 

How did 10Pearls perform from a project management standpoint?

10Pearls’ company’s culture and organization are excellent. They’re effective communicators, and when a developer has left the team, 10Pearls notifies us 15–30 days in advance. They present new candidates to us, and we choose the right fit together. 10Pearls manages the onboarding and training process. 

10Pearls is good at setting expectations and uses Atlassian products for project management, including Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket. We also use Slack and Outlook email to communicate. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed with 10Pearls’ communication and transparency. We’ve worked closely with the administration team and let them know when something needs improvement. If we need to adjust the team, they’re open and help us find the best candidate. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

In the beginning, we had some code quality issues. However, I believe it was mainly due to our initial lack of documentation. 10Pearls has been transparent, and the code’s quality has increased over time. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend to provide all the documentation you have and, if possible, create your product’s documentation before contacting 10Pearls. After my experience, I believe it’s better for product owners to create their own documentation. 

Additionally, I recommend ensuring your team is available and responsive to 10Pearls. As a client, it is important to be available so 10Pearls can excel at their job.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of product engineering for Technysis. We provide a digital banking platform to financial institutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with 10Pearls?

We’re a leading company in Latin America and want to position ourselves as a leader in North America. To support our aggressive growth, we needed to scale our team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

10Pearls is our outsourced partner that adds talent to our team. They provide developers who mainly use open source technologies. Their team uses React and React Native as well as Java and Spring in the backend.

What is the team composition?

We work with nine full-time developers and QA automation engineers. We also work with one part-time team leader.

How did you come to work with 10Pearls?

At a previous company, I worked with 10Pearls. I knew them well but also assessed 20 different providers around the world. 10Pearls had the knowledge, skills, and reputation that we sought from an outsourced partner.

How much have you invested with them?

We currently spend around $50,000 a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began our partnership in April 2019, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

10Pearls provides talent with great technical skills. We measure the success of every team following each sprint. We’re satisfied with the results. Every time we encounter a challenge, their team quickly finds a solution. If we aren’t satisfied with a resource’s performance, they find a satisfactory replacement.

How did 10Pearls perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re part of our organization. 10Pearls works within our teams and follows a scrum methodology. Their team follows our processes and uses our tools including Slack and Google. We provide continuous feedback to their project manager about the team's performance They’re open and available.

What did you find most impressive about them?

10Pearls provides great talent at a suitable rate. They offer a lot of value based on their skills, talent, and rate.  Their team keeps their communication channels open, so I have a line to their CTO. They’re always transparent.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We all have room to grow, but I can’t think of any specific area for improvement. Anytime we encounter a challenge, we find a solution, which I expect from a provider.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Build a relationship with them. For example, we treat 10Pearls as part of our team. If you think of the engagement as a win-win, you’ll have the benefits of an effective relationship.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My company is a national nonprofit and I serve as the program director for the organization.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with 10Pearls?

We offer a Google map that displays whether or not pharmacies are open or closed in areas impacted by disaster. So the map is public-facing and refreshed or the data needs to be updated twice a day. We were looking to upgrade mapping service that we provide to the public

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We turned to 10Pearls to improve the existing process for the map refresh, but also to improve the look and feel and usability of the app. They also built the backend of the app out to be able to host and display more data. I know they used AWS and Google Maps. They finished the map in August 2019, but we also updated our website that hosts the map.

We had an initial conversation about what we needed, and they did a great job reviewing the existing map. We had some ideas surrounding the improvements and enhancements we could make, but it was 10Pearls who devised a mockup. They added some of their ideas as well. 10Pearls was able to provide recommendations on top of that.

What is the team composition?

We worked closely with one of their lead project managers, Ahmed (Senior Product Delivery Manager), and he liaised with the developers and creative team on the UI aspect. He did a fantastic job scheduling meetings between our team and the design team when needed. He also helped us communicate with backend developers.

How did you come to work with 10Pearls?

They were recommended to us by another company. They were highly regarded, so we conducted an interview and, after receiving their fee, decided to move forward.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $65,000–$70,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in March 2019 and the map was rolled out officially in January 2020.  

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

They finished everything on time and were just waiting for some inputs on our side before officially rolling it out. But now the app is live and is being used. It has actually been used extensively during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Originally, our platform reflected about 65,000 data points, which was reflective of all the pharmacies in the US. The product that 10Pearls built for us has the capacity of over 200,000 data points so it could support pharmacies, dialysis centers, and other healthcare facilities.

How did 10Pearls perform from a project management standpoint?

More anecdotally, they’re a very responsive team. When we had a question they couldn’t answer, they acknowledged it and gave us a timeline of when they would get back to us. They had a project plan for us to review within a week of project kickoff. It’s a true testament to their responsiveness and customer service.

All communication was done via email or conference calls. They have a disparate team — some were based in Virginia, others were based abroad, and some were elsewhere in the US — so we often shared screens during conference calls and when we were reviewing the map.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They adjusted when our project requirements shifted. They identified what was possible within the scope of what we had originally planned and modified the contract to absorb new elements. They were very flexible when it came to that.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. From my interactions with them, I was completely satisfied with the level of information and guidance they provided us with.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of Bay International Technologies, a technology firm.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with 10Pearls?

I needed to get a patent for a shooting game, 7Forces.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed patented software for our game. They also provided wireframes. I then approached multiple investors to invest in the game, and I received a statement of work from 10Pearls to complete the finished version of the game. The total cost would be $1.8 million. They also provided details of the patent completion.

Recently, I got the investment and am working with the investor to build this project, but he hasn’t been able to come back from Europe due to the pandemic.

What is the team composition?

I visited their company multiple times to work on the patent. I worked with 8–9 people directly.

How much have you invested with them?

My company spent $110,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from April–July 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

I was very satisfied with their services and the final product. It worked out very well because I got in touch with investors, and they were satisfied with the product and interested in investing in it.

How did 10Pearls perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated via email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I give them five stars for the project they’ve done for me.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing I’d have them improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You can trust them 100% and won’t have any issues or problems.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Flikshop.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with 10Pearls?

Initially, we hired 10Pearls because we didn't have a technical team. All of our tech resources were contracted.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

During our first engagement, 10Pearls built out our Android app. The platform allows users to take a picture and add text. For $00.99, we print and ship the photo on a tangible postcard to any person in any prison throughout the country.

After meeting our project manager, we created a plan to make sure that the platform met all of the requirements. We built the technical requirements and then the wireframes. Before they built the backend, their team developed the first iterations of our UX/UI to ensure the custom facing aspects were in place. They continued to build our database and worked on the frameworks needed to tie back to our web app for any microservice. They then managed QA to ensure the platform was fully functional.

In our second engagement, we worked with them to convert our technology from applications wrapped inside of them over to natively built technologies. While we have a tech team now, we still leverage 10Pearls when we have to deploy quickly.

What is the team composition?

I communicate with a project manager. They have an offshore technical team that built the actual technology.

How did you come to work with 10Pearls?

One of the developers on my team worked with 10Pearls on a UX/UI project. When it was time to build out the Android app, I was introduced to them.  

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $120,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around 2013, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

There are key metrics that inform my decisions about the value of future engagements and we’ve had a couple of them. My deadlines are driven by my customers and customer engagement. 10Pearls meets them all, which are specific to the times.

For example, Father’s Day is Sunday. We didn’t hire them to support a Father’s Day project but if we did, their team would be all hands on deck to assure that we were ready for deployment by Sunday.

How 10Pearls perform from a project management standpoint?

Our project manager alleviates any potential headaches around workflow.

What did you find most impressive about them?

10Pearls has an offshore development team and leverages domestic partners who manage the project separately. They don’t need to support their developers much, which is good for a non-technical founder like me.

Are there any areas they could improve?

As a non-technical founder, I didn’t know how long it takes to develop software. To me, it seemed like everything could be done within a day, which wasn’t true. They had to work on their communication of milestones and deliverables to manage my expectations. We learned how to communicate swiftly.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

The organization that I was a part of when 10Pearls worked with us is ARP Services, the for-profit subsidiary of the nonprofit AARP. The ARP services side predominantly builds and designs solutions that are meant to have commercial value for AARP members, which are generally individuals over the age of 50. They have everything from health and financial products and services to caregiving products and services, which is the team that I was on. That’s also the body of work that we had the 10Pearls team help us with.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with 10Pearls?

Several years ago, we had a challenge around offering commercial value to unpaid family caregivers. These are individuals who are spending more than 20 hours per week caring for a loved one, a family member, or a spouse. They found it difficult to find not only the education that they needed to help take care of someone to the extent that they were, but also in actually purchasing products and services that would make their lives easier. These could be everything from nonmedical companion care to tips and hacks to help save time so that they were able to get through their caregiving activities without that dipping into other areas of their life, which we frequently saw. We also looked to introduce new solutions that might meet their need. 

Reaching that population of what is today roughly 40 million individuals can be quite challenging. There's a plethora of information online; many people get lost in the Google abyss trying to find not only products they can trust in taking care of their loved ones, but also finding information that could help them be better in their day-to-day experience of living as a caregiver, which can often be a very taxing experience. 

When we first started working with the 10Pearls team, we were looking at how we might put together a trusted source of content, educational resources, and market solutions – mainly products and services – that were meant and intended for caregivers. Then, we wanted to tie that into a separate panel of caregivers that would give us feedback and iterate on that product.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

10Pearls supported our caregiving program. First, they designed and developed CareConnection, a web app that served as an online marketplace for caregivers. Ultimately, the goal was to really understand how we could get feedback from caregivers and also validate some of the assumptions that we had around whether it would be a viable solution for this target population, which we very much did. CareConnection was truly personalized to an individual’s experience. Users could log in and save information.

Then, 10Pearls built Caregivers in the Community, a mobile app on iOS and Android. One of the things that we heard a lot in our research was that caregivers felt really isolated in their role and that they wanted to share experiences with people who had similar experiences. 10Pearls worked with us on developing this app, which was focused on creating a peer community of caregivers where they could friend other caregivers, have video chats with those caregivers, and also read supportive educational content. 10Pearls handled the entire product life cycle, from whitespace to design and development to introducing it to market. We worked with them collaboratively in terms of design and user research, but they are very much responsible for the UI and the entire front- and backend experiences. They also worked with other vendors to enable things like messaging and calls.

We reached a point in that product journey where it was natural for it to mature beyond just connecting with other caregivers; AARP as an enterprise has quite a few offerings for forums, message boards, and ways for people to connect. The nonprofit had asked us to explore a new business opportunity, where we might connect products and services more closely to caregivers. The goal was really to bring a business case to the executive teams on AARP and ARP services to essentially move into diversifying our revenue. We believed that this application was an opportunity to do so. We explored product iterations and how to expand this product experience to its next version. 10Pearls was solely responsible for ongoing maintenance, development, and design work as needed. They were able, in a really effective way and from both technical and UX perspectives, to develop a new design for this application, which fundamentally changed the bones of the application. What was a social network became a really personalized education experience. The app also provided a way to connect with others, not necessarily in a one-to-one capacity or a messaging forum capacity, but in a format that they could find social proof against products and services. 

Despite the fact that both of the solutions I'm talking about are not live today, there was a tremendous amount of research done on both of these digital solutions when they were live, and 10Pearls was exceedingly helpful in helping us validate those assumptions.

What is the team composition?

By this point, we’d worked with 10Pearls for over three years, so we worked with quite a few of their team members. In my time, I worked with two main points of contact, one based here in the US and then another in Karachi. My point person here was the main project manager and supported a lot of the coordinating, both on the design and development front. We would talk about what the business need was, and then he would pull the right resources together to execute. 

I also met with several of the design team members here, but as we moved from just an application that focused on social connection and started to bring in the idea of how we might connect products with these caregivers and improve the experience as a result. I also worked with several UX designers and members of the UX team based in this area.

How did you come to work with 10Pearls?

10Pearls was already working with ARP before I joined the company. Some of their team members had deep institutional knowledge from before I joined, which was great and really helpful in my onboarding into ARP. 

How much have you invested with them?

For this work in 2019, my company spent a little over $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I wasn’t at the organization when the collaboration began, but I assume it was around 2016. The work I was involved in was completed in December 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The reason I can't share specific metrics in terms of the application, which is the main piece I was working on, is that there wasn't really a goal in terms of scale, conversion, or more typical metrics. What I will share is anecdotal in terms of what we had asked of this team and what they were able to do. 

It was a really huge shift and deviation from the first version of the app to the second. There was just tremendous coordination between the UX team here and the development team in Karachi. I was really impressed by how clean and effective they were in presenting new visuals and options for handling some of the business requirements, which were very different from the original application. 

One of the things that's most challenging when working with a nonprofit and even a for-profit subsidiary such as ours is really honing in on what the measurement and evaluation need to be to support decision making for any of these things. Despite the fact that we never took version 2.0 to market, I think the design and development team were really helpful in guiding me to think about how I should measure success and how I should look at these new parts of this experience in a way that would help us make future decisions and that would impact our product roadmap as well as our business priorities. I think that goes beyond just the design and development of the application itself.

How did 10Pearls perform from a project management standpoint?

In general, I would just say that their timeliness and level of professionalism was always very helpful. There was very close coordination between all teams involved, which meant to me that behind the scenes, there was someone guiding that quite closely in order to provide timely and relevant updates.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was so pleased with 10Pearls in general, and I would absolutely hire them again for similar work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I was very happy with our work together. I was always pleased with the timeliness of communication and how coordinated the teams were. One thing that I felt would’ve been really helpful when I was going through this experience was probably less communication. There were quite a few calls that I probably didn’t need to be on. However, I think the team erred on the side of over-communication, which I totally understand. There’s a fine line between when it makes sense to bring in the client or just having the conversation internally and bringing the client in after the fact. Also, I think it was as much on me as it was on them; I was onboarding to a team during a time when they were doing ongoing work already with that team. I was a little bit behind in getting up to speed, which is probably why I was involved in all of those conversations.

Any advice for potential customers?

Set expectations upfront of what communication styles work for you, how frequently you want to be in contact, and what your overarching business objectives are. However, I think those are things that they do cover from a project management perspective, which is great. In general, they're an excellent team to work with. I don't have too many points for a future prospective client of theirs, because I think they will do a great job in onboarding that client into their work.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

ADAMS Compassionate Healthcare Network is a nonprofit free safety-net clinic that provides free primary care and specialty care services to uninsured, low-income individuals and families. We have been in operation since 2013 and have serves thousands of patients. I am responsible for the operational functioning of the clinic.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with 10Pearls?

We needed our website to be redesigned because it was not informative enough and lacked information about our services. It was textual and missed visuals.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

From a design perspective, we didn’t know what we wanted it to look like, but we provided them with the content we wanted to be presented. 10Pearls then came up with the design and changed the look of the website. 

They used some photos from our various events and took additional photos as well. The team also added visual content and forms for all of our services, and they streamlined the donation capability, incorporating a wish list and a volunteer section onto one page. 

They also helped switch our donation page to using PayPal, which was very helpful. There is an events page, as well as a calendar on the main page.

What is the team composition?

I had one point of contact.

How did you come to work with 10Pearls?

Their CEO contacted us, wanting to contribute to our cause.

How much have you invested with them?

The value of the investment was $11,750. It was a donation.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from September 2016–January 2017, when the website went live.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The website directs people to our Facebook easily now and has reduced our workload of needing to answer as many questions since the information is available online.

After the website went live, 10Pearls followed up to make sure everything was working properly and that no features were missing. They were willing to add on any new features.

How did 10Pearls perform from a project management standpoint?

The team did very well. They were responsive, willing to make changes, and approachable.

What did you find most impressive about them?

10Pearls made the process very easy for us because we didn’t have to deal with the technical aspects of the project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would’ve been helpful to have a timeline.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Ask to see available design formats before committing to one.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of engineering for a research company. Our hardware and software provide situational awareness insights to our military and law enforcement personnel, helping to keep people who are putting their lives on the line every day for our country and state to be safer and get better support. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with 10Pearls?

10Pearls is my development team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They develop our real-time analysis engine and do backend work on an IoT product for the battlefield and law enforcement. We’re building a near-real-time system that is taking a lot of data from the field and then synthesizing it and producing meaningful insights. They helped us migrate off of Heroku and onto AWS.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with seven different people who put in either full- or part-time support.

How did you come to work with 10Pearls?

I found them through word-of-mouth and my own experience. In a previous job, I had talked to the CEO and CTO about potential work. Then, through my network, I had referrals to use them for cloud-based development.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our work together began in October 2019, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

10Pearls is very dedicated. They do a good job and take ownership of what they do. They’ve been a real pleasure to work with.

How did 10Pearls perform from a project management standpoint?

We use the agile development process, so we have daily standups and use a three-week sprint cycle. They’re held accountable for the work they’re committed to in a sprint. We use a variety of tools to track their work, like Jira and Basecamp. We talk about status on a daily basis and adjust accordingly, as the agile process is really intended to support. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re working with an offshore team from 10Pearls, and there are no language or cultural barriers. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know the team. The conscientious nature of the team has really made a difference in our working relationship and the success of the work we’ve been doing. They make sure they’re doing the right things and working around the time differences, and they’re very smart.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Again, the time difference can be a challenge, so finding that common time to schedule design reviews and team meetings is hard. I don’t think they can necessarily do anything better, because when it’s required, they’re flexible with their schedule, and we’ve been flexible with ours. There’s no getting around the seven-hour difference and having to make compromises.

Any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you have good requirements for them to work on and set up a collaborative work environment. The team will thrive and deliver what you need.