Contextual Code

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our organization is a scholarly society and professional association that’s comprised of about 24,000 members worldwide. Our members work in the fields of literature, language, linguistics, and humanities in general. My position is the head of technical project management in our IT department, and I report to our CIO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Contextual Code?

We reached out to Contextual Code to migrate our website from our previous platform to an easy-to-publish CMS.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

Contextual Code led our initial site migration, which involved revamping the site design along with many of the applications that we’d built off our legacy platform. The team developed an entirely new digital bookstore so that we could publish books and journals ourselves. Then, they integrated it with our product inventory database through our API as well as with Shopify. 

Since launching the site in October 2016, I’ve continued to manage our relationship over the course of new development projects. They’ve also done a lot of maintenance work for us, too.

What is the team composition? 

I have a monthly call with Mark (President & CEO) and coordinate with Hayley (Senior Account Manager). Besides them, I’ve worked closely with Nathan (Web Developer) as our primary developer, David (COO) for our infrastructure and hosting, and Matt (UI/UX Developer) for our frontend redesigns.

How did you come to work with Contextual Code?

I’m not sure how we found them because the engagement predates my position. I know that my predecessor reached out to Contextual Code, and I’ve inherited the relationship.

How much have you invested with them?

I’d estimate that we’ve spent about $650,000 between the initial project launch, our annual maintenance and hosting fees, and additional projects.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve actually been working with them since 2013, but I’ve personally started working with them since July 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Looking at our ticket turnovers, we’ve seen a marked improvement after we launched the site and got through some of the trickier application development phases and business rules.

Something that we’ve really worked on over the past couple of years has been how quickly we’ve gone through our quarterly maintenance hours. We used to always run right up against our maintenance budget for a given quarter, so Contextual Code worked with us to better communicate how much budget we have left. Now, we’re in a much more manageable situation and often have a surplus that they allow us to carry over from quarter to quarter. We normally reserve that surplus for larger projects.

On top of that, we’ve collaborated on workflow recommendations and expectations. Hayley and Mark have been especially open to those discussions, which is a positive sign of our relationship. We’ve since refined our service level agreement (SLA) to set clearer expectations among ourselves. This has ranged from determining proper response times based on the severity or priority of an incident to stating who needs to perform QA and so forth. 

How did Contextual Code perform from a project management standpoint?

When it comes to project management, they’re pretty solid. The team is willing to provide estimates for projects with a quick turnaround, and they’re pretty good at holding both sides to a set date. We use their ticketing system Mantis to communicate back and forth. For internal components that might be dependent on their work, we have our own Jira ticketing system.

Apart from that, Haley and Nathan have biweekly check-ins with us. If we’re working on a project that’s outside of our maintenance agreement, we normally have weekly stand-up meetings over the course of that project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

My relationship with Mark has been really fantastic — it’s allowed us to move quickly on a number of projects. I’m specifically thinking of a redesign project that we did last summer that involved releasing a completely new design system onto all of our applications and online properties within a short turnaround.

Haley and Matt were able to push forward to help us get that project done on scope, schedule, and budget. It was a great example of their solid work. I’d even add that they made a number of recommendations throughout the project that improved accessibility or highlighted areas that we hadn’t thought about.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Earlier in the relationship, we were a little frustrated by some of the QA standards that they had in place. We solved that ourselves by working through our expectations, though we could still use more unit and automated testing to make sure that a change that we were pushing into production doesn’t inadvertently break something else. I haven’t articulated this as a priority to Mark yet, but it’s something that comes up from time to time.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Come in with a clear vision of what you want to do. One of the things that we learned when we initially started with Contextual Code was that we had a lot of applications that we wanted to revamp. It wasn’t just a mass migration but also a redesign. That became a challenge because we combined everything into one. If you can scope your project more diligently than that, then you’ll have a solid time working with them.

I’d also suggest keeping an open mind and listening to their questions about your business processes, even down to the developer level. They’re a good team that will often make you question your assumptions with their recommendations.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the deputy director of public information for a state supreme court. For many years, I was a web administrator. Within the court, we have an office that handles all aspects of administration for the entire court system. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Contextual Code?

They deal with website issues and development for our two administrative office sites as well as the other five appellate courts as well. I’m responsible for a small number of these sites, but they’ve helped us with all of them.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

When we started working together, our idea was to create a templated website that all the appellate courts could use. That way, users would experience the same look and feel across all of our websites. For instance, we have 20 trial court websites with different design layouts. People are easily confused by this and have trouble finding information across sites. They created a unified look and feel so all five sites would provide the same experience. Our state supreme court site looks different because we operate differently. However, there are unified design elements on that site as well. 

In order to accomplish this scope of work, they created the templates after listening to end-users. We did internal surveys and conducted site reviews to find pain points keeping our sites from being easily used by attorneys and the press. After identifying issues, they helped us reduce many of our manual processes such as posting orders, opinions, and more. Now, a clerk can fill out a form to publish documents to a searchable database quite quickly. They used eZ Publish for the site.  

What is the team composition?

Haley (Senior Account Manager) was our representative and liaison between our team and their developers. There have been several backend developers. Mark (President/CEO) will also step in to listen to problems when we have larger projects starting. He offers guidance along with Haley and the developers to establish a game plan.  

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them on the state supreme court sites since January 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We don’t track engagement metrics because we’re not trying to sell a product in the same way other organizations are. It’s most important that attorneys and other users can find information easily when they need information from the courts. 

They’ve done a good job. When we first released bar exam results, which is very important for our attorneys, there were issues with the loading of the server. They fixed the issue very quickly, despite not anticipating the problem.

We anticipated high traffic during the election in 2020 because of all the engagement we’ve received from past presidential elections. We opted to think through how users would travel through our site to get the information they need. They developed a splash page that guided visitors toward election information on the site. All of their solutions were workable, and they played a key role in pre-planning to get us ahead of the game.    

How did Contextual Code perform from a project management standpoint?

I can’t say enough good things about Haley and the developers. She listened to our problems and goals to help us address issues with website solutions. They’re the easiest to work with because they truly understand our needs and seem to be knowledgeable enough to quickly provide us with effective solutions. 

They’re responsive to all of our questions. In fact, they’re usually waiting on us for things as deadlines approach. They’re very quick to turn tasks around and make them available for our review. When we request changes, they implement them quickly.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their employees are very attentive to our needs and quickly respond to requests. Whenever I run into a problem, I can reach out to them for solutions. I’ve always felt comfortable asking questions, and they can provide the knowledge or background needed to provide an answer. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything constructive. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Go in with an open mind, throwing all your ideas their way. They’ll come back with even more ideas and ways to implement your vision.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

A central clearinghouse for distributing course and research materials both hard-copy and digital. Our website is the primary vehicle for accomplishing this goal.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Please describe your company and your position there.

Contextual Code maintains and enhances our library website and the Content Management System that underpins it.

SOLUTION

Describe the project in detail.

We see Contextual Code as the leader in maintaining the Ibexa (formerly named eZ) Content Management System and were introduced to them in early 2017.

What was the team composition?

They have been utterly responsive in helping us meet our goals and commitments. They are our trusted partner in all development and planning. We work closely with about 2-3 Contextual Code team members on any given project ranging from Chief Engineer to 1-2 Senior Developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Contextual Code is responsive to our development processes and have accommodated our move from Waterfall to Agile methodology. This change has led to rapid delivery on our projects and has cut down our development time significantly.

Are there any areas for improvement?

One area where we think Contextual Code could improve is to better organize and plan projects of longer duration for our Agile Sprints.