Gorilla Logic

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a director at an HR software company that automates background investigations. For example, we fulfill the needs of companies seeking to hire someone but want to do a criminal background check or a drug screening.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We engaged Gorilla Logic to augment our staff and to help build out several teams as we’re in the process of developing a new software platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Essentially, Gorilla Logic’s helping us build the new core order entry and processing platform. Their team’s developing a backend system on Apache Kafka and the platform’s running on Google Cloud Platform. There are four different mobile-ready web components. They’re leveraging a modern tech stack that includes the workflow automation framework called Camunda and GraphQL.

What is the team composition?

We have two full teams working on the new platform. Those teams include 7–8 individuals including a tech lead, several senior software engineers, a couple of mid-level engineers, and QA engineers. Both teams share a scrum master.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

We looked at about four other nearshore providers. We knew that Gorilla Logic was more of a premier provider. Ultimately, we weren’t as satisfied with the other folks that we talked to based on the quality of the candidates as well as the companies’ overall reputations. We chose to spend a little more money to get higher quality than to seek deeper cost savings with a second or third-tier provider.

How much have you invested with them?

All in, we spend around $375,000 a month. We have several other Gorilla Logic teams that support our legacy platform.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Gorilla Logic in September 2018 and the work’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

In terms of their impact on the business, we engaged with them to add a variable staffing model to allow us to accelerate the build-out of the new platform. By having two-plus teams from Gorilla Logic, which is essentially half the size of the overall team, we’ve been able to accelerate our timelines in terms of getting our new platform to production. That’s significant. I have a lot of respect for our teams at Gorilla Logic. They’re very sharp individuals. The company can certainly find strong, top talent.

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

A handful of staff is embedded in employee-based teams and I’m in touch with them all of the time. We’re using the Atlassian stack, so Confluence and JIRA primarily. We also use a tool called Miro— an online, agile-based tool that allows users to do story mapping, card slicing, and decomposition. That has been a useful platform that they’ve presented to us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Gorilla Logic has a different level of talent. Their team works extremely hard. They have a fantastic corporate culture. I’ve made several trips to San Jose to visit with Gorilla Logic and their facilities are top-notch, which shows that they take care of their employees and invest in them. That was important to us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, it really comes down to communication and I don’t feel like there’s a gap.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If companies don’t communicate early and often, they won’t get the same success we’ve had. Businesses tend to engage with a partner like Gorilla Logic and expect them to be productive right out of the gate. Companies have to invest time upfront to ramp up the team and help them understand the business as well as the platform. What you put into a partnership's what you're going to get out of it.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a senior manager at Maxar. We are involved in various aspects of satellite production, satellite imagery collection, and intelligence gathering from satellites. My division is primarily concerned with collecting and processing remote sensing imagery from a constellation of satellites circling the earth. The project distributes the imagery to various customers around the globe.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We initially were looking for a company to help build a new processing system for cataloging images from one of our newer satellites but ended up wanting a longterm partner.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Gorilla Logic has been our partner for four years now. They initially provided staff augmentation for us but we eventually ended up bringing on entire flex teams from their Costa Rica development center to help out with our various projects. They produced the catalog system and the UI that went with that. They did virtually all the coding for our UI.

What is the team composition?

Gorilla Logic supplied us with four developers, 2 QA people, and a scrum master. The team varied from 6–7 people for the duration of the project.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

Our work with Gorilla Logic began several years prior to my engaging with them. We liked that they were local to us. 

What is the status of this engagement?

They began supporting my team in late 2015 but started in earnest in spring 2016. It went public two years ago, but they’ve been enhancing and maintaining it ever since.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Gorilla Logic provided great designs for us. Our project manager worked hand-in-hand with their engineers to come up with the initial wireframes and flows of the UI. The senior guys took a good lead in helping develop a lot of the components. Gorilla Logic made the decisions for what technology stack to go with, which turned out to be a good decision. 

Things have gone very smoothly overall. Gorilla Logic has the experience and the maturity necessary for our project. They selected the right frameworks and did a good job coding for us. They were as, if not, more productive than teams we had on-site. 

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

We work in an agile approach and our teams use Rally to track our work and communicate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The fluidity and ease of communication with Gorilla Logic were incredible. Actually working with them and going through design sessions was as easy as working with a local team or onshore team. I was also impressed with their technical capabilities, they know a lot about developing software. They’ve learned the tools of their trade quite well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We brought on multiple teams from Gorilla Logic and have had spotty success with some of them. Several of them matured and learned the technology we needed. In one instance, we hired a team and they were a bit younger. They didn’t produce the results we were looking for and we ended up calling off that engagement. However, we continue to work with Gorilla Logic because we’ve had success with their other teams.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

First, decide how you want to use Gorilla Logic. If you’re looking for staff augmentation, know that they are very choosy about their engineers. You will probably have success with whoever you get from a staff perspective. 

If you decide to work with their entire team, either onshore or offshore, keep a close eye on what you get with that team. Give them feedback if you’re not satisfied and Gorilla Logical will fix the problem.. I had one bad experience, but all of the other experiences I had with them were quite good.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of engineering at SambaSafety, a SaaS company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

Since we were developing new applications, we wanted to expand our team and look at different options. In the past, we worked with offshore companies and had challenges with the time zones. This time, we decided to go with a nearshore partner.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Gorilla Logic augmented our development staff, assisting with web applications and backend systems. There are a lot of backend integrations and data processing involved along with frontend web apps. We have an opensource Java as well as .NET. Our team also uses some of the latest technologies like Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF).

We have multiple applications; some of which need continuous feature development. Since we work with a lot of states that change their formats, there’s more on that front too.

What is the team composition?

In the beginning, we engaged with 11 people. Half of them were in opensource and the other worked with Microsoft technologies. Later on, we ended up scaling them.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

We evaluated a couple of companies in Mexico. We ended up finding Gorilla Logic in Costa Rica.

How much have you invested with them?

Each month, we spend between $100,000–$200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement with Gorilla Logic started in June 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We track a few metrics internally, comparing the team’s performance. We do a follow-up on their work.

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

If they’re working on a newer application, they excel. When working on legacy applications where domain knowledge is required, it takes a bit of time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Compared to other vendors, Gorilla Logic is more proactive. They always come up with ideas, working hard to be part of the team. Their team doesn’t just take instructions and finish the job; they look for ways to add value.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We have a QA group. Their team wants to be more involved in the automation process, but if they can have more training on their side, they can be more helpful in those areas.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Clients need to work closely with them at the beginning. The training period is crucial. If you have an existing app, you need to be involved in all of the discussions so that they can understand.

We started in groups that involved one developer sitting with you for 4–5 hours as you work together on the same issue or features. Applying some of these in the beginning while onboarding the resources will be successful in the long run.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was a product manager for internal tools for the sales efficiency team at a large internet platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We offer a lot of internal tools for our sales team, but they were outdated and not very user-friendly. We brought in Gorilla Logic to revamp one of the more commonly used pages within our internal CRM, with the goal of making it more intuitive and business-friendly. This was necessary in order to ensure that we’re offering the best solution and enable the sales team to have the right conversations with our customers.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were essentially improving the user experience to make it more intuitive. Part of it was updating data models so we could recommend the right tasks for our service professionals. Another aspect was working on the look and feel. The last time that page was worked on was probably about 10 or 15 years ago. To bring a modern look and feel, their team did a lot of frontend work and connecting different data models through the backend.

The web-based application is on Java. Their team converted older technology to a much more updated system. They replace struts libraries with spring libraries. They also integrated a few CARIS models.

What is the team composition?

We had a Scrum master, technical lead, frontend developer, and two backend developers. We also had a QA that focused on automation.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

One of our senior leaders brought them in.

How much have you invested with them?

I believe we spent around $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Gorilla Logic joined the project in March 2019 and concluded their work about two weeks ago.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The system is going live next week. Internally, the feedback has been positive. Everyone is thrilled with the updated look. They think it will be much more intuitive. It will be easier to train the agents on it as well. The training team feels that it would take much effort for users to understand how to manage the pages. Overall, it’s been a much more cohesive experience.

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

Gorilla Logic was timely with meeting their deliverable every sprint. We primarily manage everything in Jira. The Scrum master was great at chasing everything down and making sure they removed any roadblocks. In terms of the quality of work, they delivered with confidence. They made sure that they had the support to test and ensure automation going forward.

What did you find most impressive about them?

There weren’t time zone challenges that generally happen when working with offshore teams because they’re nearshore. Everyone at Gorilla Logic has excellent communication skills. Overall, their technical understanding and ability were very high. Their senior frontend developer helps our junior frontend developer grow by helping them understand the best practices. It didn’t feel like they were a separate team. Gorilla Logic is a collaborative and amazing group to work with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Because of budgetary concerns from our side, their team had to roll out before we pushed the system live. If there are any issues found, it will be a challenge without their support.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

After the feature goes live, make sure there is adequate support.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of solutions at a software company. We’re a large technology company with a software as a service (SaaS) platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We had a project with a software component that required features and functionality that was not in our existing software. That meant we either had to build it internally or work with an outside partner—we decided on the latter.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our product is a SaaS platform, through which I can send alerts to the user. The software is written in Java.

What is the team composition?

We have a fully independent scrum team. There’s a technical lead/project leader, a scrum master/product owner who works with the product owner on our side, a couple of senior developers, a couple of junior developers, a QA, and a dev ops person.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

I knew someone at Gorilla Logic, which meant they were my first call, but we then went through a pretty rigorous process. I did some online research to find five other companies. We looked at the cost and whether they would require a lot of hand-holding or if they could be quite independent. We felt confident that they could deliver high quality, on time, and within the budget.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in July 2018 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It’s still too soon to have metrics, but we plan to complete the project in six to eight weeks. It’s very much on track.

We’ve had a few bumps and surprises along the way, but everything has been minor and to be expected. Any problems are mostly coming from our side, and then we get solutions from their side.

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

They have a business project management component, where invoicing, meeting the team, and signing the contract is done with an account service manager.

Beyond that, they use Jira for their day-to-day management. We have bi-weekly phone calls and sprint reviews. The technical lead has been to our office for a week at the kick-off and will be back in a couple weeks for more work, and I went to visit them as well. He’s competent, capable, highly technical, and a pretty good communicator. The scrum master directs the team day-to-day and leads daily stand-ups. We continue conversations through emails, as needed.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most impressive thing is my level of confidence in them. One thing we added to this particular project is a stakeholder meeting, once a month. We don’t fear them embarrassing us in that, despite the presence of our global stakeholders. We trust in both their technical abilities to explain things and their communication abilities when it comes to our international partners.

They do a great job of communicating with us in a good, timely fashion. I’m confident they’ll deliver what we need technically, but I also know I can bring them into the conversations with other people.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re almost an extension of our team—we treat them that way and they expect that. They do eight hours of work a day and get the job done, rather than being treated as a service team that’s just thrown in. They return a good investment for that.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

No.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CIO of a B2B property and casualty insurance company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We were looking for a developer to help us build a set of APIs that would allow our customers (insurance brokers) to integrate and interface their systems with ours, rather than having to send us insurance applications for a policies manually.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Gorilla Logic built a platform that connects the APIs of brokers to our insurance company, removing the need for manual data entry in the process. They've integrated AWS and use their recommended pipeline for creating the code, including Docker, Kubernetes, and Jenkins. They developed the architecture, wrote the processes and procedures, and aligned the stack development with our agile processes.

What is the team composition?

I work directly with a product owner, but we also have regular contact with the full team of developers working on our project during daily 15-minute stand-up meetings.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

I did a lot of online research and considered a couple of different vendors. The biographies of the owners of Gorilla Logic stood out to me, along with the fact that the company had credibility and positive reviews from other Fortune 500 companies that have worked with them previously. They were also a high-level partner with Amazon, so we knew they could provide a solution to put up the pipeline for us to replicate and use for development teams.

How much have you invested with them?

We've invested around $50,000 thus far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started talking to Gorilla Logic around March 2018 and started developing the platform in July. That work is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

So far we've been very happy with the quality of their work. Gorilla Logic has proven their expertise through their high-quality coding and architecting of features. They're very focused on developing the right solution in the most economical way and are conscious of the fact that Amazon requirements can break the bank.

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

They have a very well-rounded team and have been great at managing tasks in a timely fashion, while accommodating our agile processes. We manage everything through Jira and Confluence, but also meet with them daily through Zoom.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They ask a lot of questions that show how concerned they are about delivering a valuable solution at the end of the day, trying to understand our business and systems in detail. They take a first-class, professional approach compared to other vendors in that sense.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you've allocated resources internally to keep their team busy and to clear any potential obstacles, so they can keep the project moving along swiftly.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the delivery manager for the mobile application team at a global healthcare company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We wanted a lower cost solution to assist with app development. We offshored the work for previous projects, but often ran into scheduling issues. This time we were looking for a team within our time zone, but still not terribly expensive.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Gorilla Logic provided iOS devs, Android devs and .NET devs to work on our web and mobile patient-facing application. Their team of in-house thinkers provided additional guidance on design and alternative solutions to optimize our app. They continue to perform maintenance and assist us with additional tasks.

What is the team composition?

We work with a large team of developers; each onsite member has a counterpart based in Costa Rica. Gorilla Logic scales the team according to the size of each project.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

Our director heard about them and invited them in for a consultation. We were impressed with their team, specifically the CIO and one of the founders, and decided to partner with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2016 and the partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Many times the Gorilla Logic team is able to complete more work during a 2-week period than our local staff. Because each individual team member is trained in multiple skills, we are able to run a more productive and flexible workflow.

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

Culturally, the Gorilla Logic team is a good match for our company. They have a great sense of humor and we share similar interests. On the professional side, they communicate consistently and responsively. We’re an agile shop, so we video conference the Gorilla Logics team into our daily meetings for quick check-ins. Sub-teams connect through an instant messaging tool to share additional updates or concerns.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are very adaptable and receptive in staffing according to our funding changes. Occasionally, we get our funding pulled from a project at the last second, and their corporate team remains unoffended and continues to work with our best interests in mind. Usually, they try to bench those team members and occupy them with smaller projects until we are ready to move forward with the project. It is a huge bonus to continue working with the same people because they are already familiar with the project and coding style.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I really don’t have any criticism. They’re usually ahead of us in making improvements. In one case, they took it upon themselves to replace a team member with a more driven representative. Gorilla Logic had noticed a lack of productivity and slow work ethic on their end and took immediate action to ensure we had the best experience.

Any advice for potential customers?

I would advise customers to trust their account managers. If Gorilla Logic finds that someone on the administrative side of the project is showing real talent, they will promote that person to a manager. We have found a lot of value in having a person, who is already familiar with our project, lead the team. We feel comfortable reaching out at a moment’s notice with concerns and have faith that the manager has the experience to properly handle the situation.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a broadcast television network for the United States. I am the vice president of technology for NBC Digital and am responsible for our consumer-facing video streaming app and site.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We initially brought them on for DevOps support. Their role has grown to include software engineering and development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We sourced their team to support some of our microsites, user-generated content, and an app for one of our programs. We call on them for staff augmentation and most of our development staff comes from them. We have a mix of onshore and nearshore teams, the majority of which are based in Costa Rica. We ask for a specific set of skills and evaluate each new resource to see how they will fit into our organization. They spend a week or two acclimating to each environment before executing tasks and projects.

They introduce new technologies and capabilities into our stack and we can now capture and replay production-level traffic in any environment in our system. In real time, we can redirect traffic to a test environment to see how future releases will perform. They’ve also participated in the bulk of our iOS development and some of our over-the-top media devices. We have another vendor who works on our Android development, but Gorilla Logic is involved in almost every other aspect of our business logic.

What is the team composition?

Originally, we had one resource who we engaged on an ad hoc basis for staff augmentation. We now work regularly with a larger team that fluctuates between about 30–50 members on their side.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

They had an existing relationship with the previous management. We inherited one of their technology resources when I started. We started to leverage more of their team over time. We wanted a more structured engagement and a secondary team of development resources. Gorilla Logic submitted the best proposal and we signed a multi-year deal with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend in the neighborhood of $200,000 per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

They started working with our central corporate branch in 2008 and I started working with them directly in December 2013. They’ve added new resources and the relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Last quarter’s analysis shows 66 million downloads of our apps systemwide. Gorilla Logic definitely plays a part in those numbers. Our timelines are solid and they deliver effectively. They give us quality senior resources who are independently capable. They’re also willing to help us find the right resources to get jobs done.

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

They augment our staff, but we run the management. They provide a core set of resources, including a tech lead, a product lead, and a project lead. We will go to them whenever we need additional resources.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re really proactive and stay ahead of our needs. Their iOS staff in Costa Rica is great and they help with our recruiting. Their nearshoring efforts have been successful within our organization and are much simpler than our experiences with offshore companies on the other side of the globe.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In some ways, they’re an extension of our teams. We could be more constructive with our resource management and boundaries. We occasionally assign a resource to a task that’s counter to Gorilla Logic’s plan, so we could do a better job aligning with them. We haven’t spoken to them about that yet.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They have a strong internal management team. It’s always easy to talk with them to work out issues. If you have any concerns on your side, they will partner with you to resolve and manage them accordingly.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a development manager for Santa Clara County’s tax collector’s office. We collect over $5 billion a year in property taxes from Silicon Valley.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We needed help to develop the enterprise software for our tax collection system.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The engagement started as a Java J2ee project and has morphed over time. Now, they build mobile apps, move content to the cloud, and develop an online payment portal. They’re always implementing cutting-edge technology for the public sector. Their products do anything from receiving information on individual properties to calculating the individual tax bills to be collected. They’ve enabled us to receive any kind of payment: online credit card, e-checks, and even in-person cash payments. The system tracks all of those payments and the respective funds they belong to.

The system is still Java-based, but Gorilla constantly brings in new technology, and we’re currently thinking about switching to Scala. The big focus, right now, is to integrate the system with a cloud-based native iOS and Android mobile app to make paying taxes easier. We interact with quite a few clients, and Gorilla has made it easier for us to share data and make more information available to the public.

Gorilla uses a variety of different technologies to do their work. They use Eclipse and Oracle for the backend, Toad and SQL Developer to manage the database, BusinessObjects for reporting, Jenkins for automated build, Git for code repositories, Selenium for UI testing, and JUnit for other manual testing.

What is the team composition?

We have about a dozen people from their team, three Business Analysts and the rest are developers.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

About ten years ago, they responded to an RFP we sent out. They had the dev skills and met an extensive list of specifications, so we hired them for a three-year contract. We’ve continued to extend the contract because of the great work they do.

How much have you invested with them?

Our base contract is about $2 million a year. If we have special projects, that can go up to $3.5 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We partnered in 2009, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We send out about a million bills a year, take in over $5.5 billion, and manage 500,000 properties, and Gorilla’s system tracks all of that. It organizes the properties into tax rates and does all of the work we’d otherwise have to do manually. Gorilla has been crucial in implementing all of these new technologies.

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

They meet every deadline and communicate well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

California tax code can be confusing, but Gorilla has taken the time to understand our business and be able to code for it. They’re technical leaders, always learning new things and pushing the envelope. They’ve been on the project for nearly a decade and consistently find new technologies that improve our products.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

They're a high-functioning group, so let them lead the way.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm a senior manager for Arrow Electronics and I primarily work on a website that is a significant subset of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We were in the process of updating our website with newer technologies, so I needed additional staff to help us get the project completed on time. We were looking for vendors with development experience with technologies that include Angular, Java, Jenkins, and others.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Gorilla Logic provided a team of developers to help our staff update our website with an entirely new stack, using a variety of technologies. Their work is fully integrated with our work, and we're continually adjusting what Gorilla Logic's teams are working on to make sure it's meeting our business needs.

What is the team composition?

At the moment, there are about 35 people working with us. That number fluctuates depending on what we're working on. We have two full teams working on our project—one here in Denver and the other in their Costa Rica office. I have one primary contact for each location.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

I had worked with them previously at another company. I liked that they had business partners in South America, which meant working in the same timezone as our team.

How much have you invested with them?

We've invested about $300,000 per month so far. The current engagement should last about another six months and total around $1.5 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started talking with their team about the project around August 2017 and signed a contract by November. By January 2018, they allocated a full development team to our project. It looks like the relationship will continue until at least the end of the year, depending on how we progress.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They've completed each sprint successfully and on time, occasionally overdelivering on commitments.

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project leads help keep everything on track and we don't even have to pay for the additional project management provided from their Costa Rica office. We track projects through Jira and other basic tools like PowerPoint.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Unlike other vendors, they don't continually try to sell me on additional or unnecessary services. They've got a broad range of expertise in software development, which saves us a lot of time on having to train new resources. 

They also provide a lot of great suggestions to help us make improvements in our processes or approach to projects. It's great to work with a vendor willing to speak up when it comes to helping us be more effective.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Though their turnaround times are relatively quick, I think there's still room for improvement to make them faster. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you plan to work off a statement of work, make sure to make that document available upfront, so they can understand your expectations and establish the best way to communicate with you. If projects fall behind or new challenges arise, it's important to have a comfortable level of communication with your vendor so they feel they can be honest with you as things come up.