Outsourced Custom Software Dev for Education Consultancy
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Other Digital Marketing
- $10,000 to $49,999
- Sep. 2016 - July 2017
- Quality
- 4.0
- Schedule
- 4.0
- Cost
- 3.0
- Willing to Refer
- 5.0
“They are like a machine, so it’s up to the client to make sure they are doing what is needed.”
- Business services
- San Francisco, California
- 1-10 Employees
- Phone Interview
- Verified
Perpetual collaborated with a third party’s internal developers in creation of a customized version of Open edX.
Perpetual’s ability to eliminate blockages was impressive, and although some customized pages don’t work as envisioned, the platform’s basic components are functional. A more rigorous testing and communication process would improve their already transparent and responsive project management.
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
BACKGROUND
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the CEO of Turn the Wheel, an education and technology consulting company. We focus on education products.
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What challenge were you trying to address with Perpetual?
We needed help in developing an online course platform for one of my clients. It’s a customized version of the Open edX platform.
SOLUTION
What was the scope of their involvement?
The platform is a customized version of Open edX, which is an open source code for a learning platform where anyone can create courses. We can have our own website, but we use that underlying architecture to create courses that are available to anyone on the frontend. Anyone can customize the Open edX platform, but it takes a lot of engineering work.
We worked with Perpetual to build the platform, but then the client wanted to try and finish the rest in house, so we had a six-month hiatus. However, the client didn’t have the expertise nor the bandwidth to complete it internally, so we went back to Perpetual to finish the project.
What is the team composition?
We worked with one project manager who was very good and responded promptly to us. There was also an entire offshore development team consisting of about three to four developers, but I didn’t spend as much time directly talking to them.
How did you come to work with Perpetual?
A trusted colleague recommended them to me.
At the time, we’d looked at a couple of other firms, but none were very responsive or seemed to have the same amount of Open edX development experience.
How much have you invested in them?
We spent around $75,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
We worked with them from September of 2016 to July of 2017.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
We were able to build a functioning platform that allows admins to build courses into the back end and students to take courses on the front end. In other words, Perpetual successfully implemented the underlying course creation architecture (which includes features such as multiple-choice questions, HTML, polls, videos).
However, we weren’t able to finish some of the customized features, such as a dashboard that showed students’ progress in every course, because other issues came up that the client’s internal team couldn’t fix. This was supposed to be a joint effort between Perpetual and the client’s internal team, so when the internal team didn’t have the expertise to do something, Perpetual took over. The internal team was very happy with Perpetual and voiced how they couldn’t have deployed the customized Open edX platform without them. Unfortunately, these issues significantly changed the scope of work and a lot of important features that we had originally agreed on did not get completed.
This really showed the importance of having a technical expert liaise with the product visionary (me, in this case) to prioritize development efforts and manage everyone working on the project to make sure that the most important features are implemented. The changing scope of work was communicated to the internal team but not to me, so I was caught off-guard to hear that some features wouldn’t be implemented.
How did Perpetual perform from a project management standpoint?
I met with Perpetual’s project manager once a week to review development progress. We would test new features during the call, which would last 1-2 hours.
It would have been more efficient for the project manager to have a crystal clear understanding of what we needed to accomplish so that she could test features herself rather than needing me to test over the call. She would often see the new developments for the first time when we would run through them together. Whatever gets developed will have a ton of bugs, and then those bugs need to be tested and fixed. Oftentimes, when those bugs are fixed, some new bugs will develop, which requires a constant iteration process. It would have been great if the project manager could have tested these herself and flagged issues to the dev team, and then flagged for me only the features that she believed were working accurately so that I could test and approve only those rather than me going through every feature every time and finding all sorts of new bugs.
This way, the call can be maximized so that we focus only on approving completed features and defining the next development sprints.
What did you find most impressive about them?
Their transparency was really helpful, and it was impressive how quickly they responded.
Are there any areas they could improve?
If they understand what things should look like, then they will develop it. It’s a matter of clear communication and checking in, as well as iteration. I can’t think of anything they could improve on because they have the project manager. It could be their responsibility to try and improve things, but if I were to do this over again, I would make sure there were more resources dedicated to them versus them trying to do anything different.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
One piece of advice I would give anyone working with any development company is that they need someone with technical expertise to manage them. They are like a machine, so it’s up to the client to make sure they are doing what is needed. Clients won’t know if the product is turning out as envisioned without a ton of communication.
It’s important to know what language they are planning to use, as well as what their stack and database are. This allows visibility into whether the company or developer is going to create the project in a lean, seamless way that allows for future builds. Talk to developers who have done this before to know what key questions need to be asked, and then figure out who will go about it the best way.
RATINGS
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Quality
4.0Service & Deliverables
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Schedule
4.0On time / deadlines
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Cost
3.0Value / within estimates
"It’s a very subjective number, as I’ve never paid anyone else to develop a custom version of Open edX. They also developed a lot of customized pages."
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Willing to Refer
5.0NPS
"It’s so hard to find a trustworthy development company. There will always be setbacks, but I would rather have an honest company who tries their best.
