DDI Development

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the IT Director of PMCentersUSA

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

PMCentersUSA provides project management, agile, and business analysis staffing, training, and consulting services to help organizations achieve improved performance and effectiveness.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire DDI Development to accomplish?

• To Develop a LMS platform

SOLUTION

How did you find DDI Development?

Online Search

Why did you select DDI Development over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from DDI Development were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Building our new Learning Management System (LMS) with DDI Development was a fantastic experience. From the very beginning, their team took the lead in understanding our needs. They spent time with us, asking the right questions to get a solid handle on our goals and what our users would expect. This deep dive led to a clear, detailed roadmap that guided the entire project. Once we had the plan locked in, DDI's team got to work on the design and development. They were responsible for building the platform from the ground up, making sure it was not only powerful but also easy to use. They created a fully functional system that included all the features we needed for course management and student tracking. The main thing DDI delivered to us was the complete, ready-to-go LMS itself. They also provided all the user guides our team needed to run things smoothly and stayed on call to make sure our launch went off without a hitch. Their support was crucial in setting us up for success.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The new LMS has significantly improved our operations. We saw a 35% increase in user adoption and a 15% rise in course completion rates within the first six months.
From an efficiency standpoint, the platform has greatly streamlined our administrative tasks. This has freed up our team to focus on other priorities. Most importantly, the system is proving to be incredibly scalable, successfully handling major increases in users during our busiest periods.

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

DDI Development's project management was a key to our success. They kept us on a clear, well-structured roadmap, and every major deliverable was completed on time. 
Their use of an Agile methodology, with regular sprints and constant communication, made all the difference. Their team was incredibly responsive to our needs, acting as true partners rather than just a vendor. We never experienced delays, and their flexibility in handling our requests made the entire process smooth and efficient.

What was your primary form of communication with DDI Development?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

What I found most impressive about DDI Development was their technical expertise. They didn't just build the platform we asked for. They brought a level of deep knowledge that helped us navigate complex technical challenges and make smarter architectural decisions. They delivered a robust, high-performance product that we can rely on for the long term.

Are there any areas for improvement or something DDI Development could have done differently?

Honestly, when we look back on the project, there's truly nothing DDI could have done better. They were so proactive in anticipating our needs that they exceeded our expectations at every stage.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Information Technology Partner of SOLIT

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We develop mobile applications that transform businesses. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire DDI Development to accomplish?

• To Develop a Document Management System

SOLUTION

How did you find DDI Development?

Online Search

Why did you select DDI Development over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from DDI Development were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

We engaged DDI Development to develop a Document Management System for our business, and the results were excellent. The scope of work encompassed a diversity of tasks, including designing intuitive user interfaces, integrating advanced document handling features, and ensuring robust security protocols. 
One of the standout aspects of DDI Development's work was their transparent communication and documentation. They provided us with a detailed summary of the project's scope, breaking down each task and deliverable into manageable milestones. This not only gave us a clear understanding of the project's progress but also allowed us to make informed decisions along the way.
In summary, the scope of work was comprehensive, and the key deliverables achieved were truly remarkable. Their commitment to understanding our business needs and delivering a top-notch Document Management System is commendable. We are now enjoying improved operational efficiency and increased customer satisfaction, thanks to their exceptional work.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

One of the most significant outcomes achieved through our implementation of the Document Management System is the dramatic reduction in time spent retrieving patient records. Previously, accessing and managing medical records was a labor-intensive process. With the new system, healthcare providers can now retrieve patient information swiftly and securely, enabling faster decision-making and improving patient care outcomes.
Moreover, the system has strengthened our compliance with healthcare regulations such as HIPAA. The robust security features of the system ensure that patient records are protected and accessed only by authorized personnel, thereby safeguarding patient confidentiality and meeting stringent regulatory requirements. 
One more important outcome is the automation of document workflows, which has streamlined administrative tasks such as patient admissions, discharge summaries, and billing processes. This automation has not only reduced administrative errors but has also improved operational efficiency, allowing healthcare professionals to focus more on patient care.

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

DDI Development demonstrated an organized and effective agile approach that ensured the project's success. 
In terms of timeliness, they met project milestones and deadlines. Their strict approach to the project schedule instilled confidence in our team and allowed us to plan our internal operations with precision. One more important point is that their flexibility and ability to adapt to our changing needs were invaluable in keeping the project aligned with our objectives and ensuring its overall success.
Finally, I want to underline that DDI Development's project management was marked by punctual delivery of project items and a strong commitment to meeting our needs. Their professionalism and responsiveness were instrumental in the project's success, and we are extremely satisfied with the outcomes achieved.

What was your primary form of communication with DDI Development?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

From my perspective, it was their ability to offer personalized solutions, their clear and open communication, and their commitment to delivering not only a technically sound product but one that truly met the needs of our business.

Are there any areas for improvement or something DDI Development could have done differently?

They've done an excellent job during our product collaboration, and I don't have any suggestions for improvement. It was a great digital journey.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our company, Bluehack srl (Ltd), owns the brand Kiralo, which is an e-commerce community-driven brand whose catalog of products is entirely taken care of by users. All the products on offer are required, voted, and discussed by the community of enthusiasts. Bluhack has five members and a few contributors. Kiralo is gathering among its members the most passionate and experienced people for each product category and is building the largest online community of enthusiasts.

The union of these users allows us to exert greater bargaining power on our suppliers to provide our users—mostly big spenders—the best prices online compared to high-volume purchases. We manage it like group buying. The Kiralo website is a private site where only registered users can use the facilities and see the prices. I'm one of the founders and CEO of Bluehack. I take care of the development of the business and the commercial side. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with DDI Development?

DDI Development has helped us to fix many of the problems on both the frontend and the backend of the site. They managed to fix the issues where other developers had failed. We found a perfect technical partner with DDI Development. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They handle quality assurance and web development.

How did you come to work with DDI Development?

I found them on a website for web development freelancers.

How much have you invested with DDI Development?

It has been about $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The tasks have always been executed perfectly, and a relationship of trust has developed between Bluhack and DDI. I expect a long-term collaboration. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or impact of the engagement?

The general performance of the project increased by 70%. A Bluehack stakeholder, who has another project, was pleasantly surprised by the work DDI Development did, so he decided to use their services for his project, which involved tasks related to a new software framework for the management of photovoltaic plants.

How did DDI Development perform from a project management standpoint?

They have very good project management. DDI Development has provided me with other developers when we needed them and recommended other aspects, such as the delicate transition from one provider to another.

What did you find most impressive about DDI Development?

They have been able to solve problems where other web developers had failed. The managing of communication and timing was perfect.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a digital agency that builds custom platforms, mostly SaaS [software-as-a-service] solutions, for ourselves and for our own clients.

What is your position?

I'm the founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with DDI Development?

It was for custom development. Actually, I was working with another company, and they passed the project onto DDI. I did not contact them directly, but it just kind of went that way, and I stuck with them ever since.

I think their workload was too high for the other company and they didn't have the capacity to do the job that I asked them to do. As a result, they passed it onto DDI.

There was a short "Twilight Zone" moment in between where a developer of theirs was working on the project and the other company was managing the project. That kind of went awry, and it was not working at all. Then, at some point, we just transferred the whole project to DDI. I got a project manager from DDI.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

It was primarily database and back-end development. It was just the back-end of the platform. I used a designer from a different company to deal with the front-end coding and implementation. DDI configured everything. They usually used the Symphony framework. They were using PHP, JavaScript, and Angular JS. 

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

I think it's about $10,000. Our new project is also not too big so that's going to be $4,000 next year [2016]. Right now, we are contemplating on what we are going to do next.

What is the status of this engagement?

There is one project running and so that's ongoing process, but a separate project was completed about a week ago [December 2015].

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We are starting a pilot phase quite soon. From real users, I don't really have any feedback yet.

How did DDI Development perform from a project management standpoint?

I haven't experienced any issues from a PM standpoint. We don't use any special tools, just Google Docs and email. All of our meetings happen through Skype.

What distinguishes DDI Development from other providers?

They're able and willing to be flexible with their clients, which is a great attribute. Projects and circumstances can change rather quickly, so it's important to have a partner capable of adapting to the situation.

Is there anything DDI Development could have improved or done differently?

I have been talking about this quite extensively with my project manager because I think developers from Holland have a different mentality, especially revolving around the quality of the deliverables and the management of their deadlines. I think there is some room for improvement there.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a small e-learning platform that began in 2008. We developed a set of customized e-learning platforms for different countries. By customized, we mean it revolves around the curriculum for that country. For example, in the Caribbean you’ve got one examination body that deals with 19 countries, we partnered with that examination council. We have access to all of those countries; all of those countries use our platform. We focus primarily on underdeveloped countries, that’s the important point. Our approach has to encompass persons new to the web, so DDI has had to from the beginning, be aware that they’re developing a platform for persons that are new to the Internet.

What is your position?

I’m one of the directors of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with DDI Development?

What it came down to was having the resources we needed to build our solutions. We did not have enough talent to do it alone. We wanted to partner with a firm that could serve as a long-term resource and be able to handle complex development work.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

It’s primarily been development work, custom coding. It had also involved a certain layer of project management in terms of how best we should implement what we’ve done. For example, in terms of making sure that the markets that we’re in actually understand what we’re seeking to do. They put a lot of effort into it – responsible for the backend development, the frontend development, and APIs, which we do through Amazon. We would present a series of ideas to them. They would then develop wireframes. They bring a layer of advice to the process. I say advice because what happens is, we speak to teachers on the ground and teachers communicate to us what we do. We have an in-house design team that works extensively with end-users to improve the interface and user experience. DDI has mostly implemented our work using Python and Django, so they control all of that. They do the quality assurance, too. We also have our own quality assurance here because we just need to make sure that it always has the eye of someone from Africa or someone from the Caribbean, just so we don’t get too carried away with the latest stuff.

They’ve worked with a number of technologies like PHP, HTML, SQL and JavaScript.

How did you come to work with DDI Development?

When we were first approaching this, we weren’t sure if we were going to take a pre-existing solution and customize it for our needs or if we were going to build something custom from scratch and tailor it entirely to our needs. After doing some research and consulting with a number of different business partners, we decided that building something tailored to us would be the best way to go. Once we decided on that we received a referral from a business partner to consider hiring DDI. We approached DDI and a couple other companies and evaluated them as carefully as we could. DDI seemed like they would be the best fit because they had a lot of previous work experience, had a good amount of resource availability and came highly recommended.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It has been around $300,000 since 2011.

What is the status of this engagement?

It’s not completed. We are always resolving bugs, developing new features or trying to improve the system performance. They’re heavily involved at this point.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

User satisfaction is the easiest thing to share; people really seem to like to use the platform. It’s complicated to do a learning management system because you have to cater to those that aren't necessarily computer literate, and some or technophobes. Quite often when we do our workshops, people are being introduced to computing as well as our platform, which is called Notes Master. Notes Master is about simplifying e-learning through creating your own resources and then archiving them in your syllabus and then sharing them with your students. Our platform is considered very easy to use, but the best thing I would point to is the United Nations in 2003 launched a series of awards for societal change and impact. Our initiative on Notes Master, Namibia initiative won the award last month for 2016 societal impact.

We’re going to pick it up in China next year in February. A large part of that is due to the Notes Master platform. That’s what they evaluated on, that’s what they based it on so I wouldn’t think it’s a stretch to say DDI built an award-winning platform certified by the UN. I mean, there are a lot of awards out in the world but not everybody gets an award from the UN. We’re thrilled to have received it. You have to be nominated at a national level so you have to have made an impact in your country and then you get put forward by that country representative and it’s like 390 nominees, and then I think its 8 categories, 5 winners per category for different fields, and we won. It’s definitely a testament to what DDI developed.

How did DDI Development perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Red Mine and Assembler to manage the project. Our experience with the two tools was positive and they definitely helped us manage tasks and submit feedback in an efficient manner.

What distinguishes DDI Development from other providers?

Two things come to mind. We’ve tried companies and partners in South Africa, in India and obviously in UK and here in the Ukraine, but we’ve stuck with DDI. We have stuck with them because each time we do an evaluation or some of the other directors propose that we move on, there is no reason to do so. I wouldn’t say it’s unique but it’s definitely effective and it’s effective relative to the others that we’ve used. The other thing is, you follow the news, Ukraine is not in a great state and that hasn’t caused any challenges with our relationship. They haven’t been late on delivery and say some bombs exploded down the road or something. They haven’t used that as an excuse, so they’ve been pretty good in what is, I would imagine, quite a troubled climate there. They’re extremely reliable.