20miles

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

In total, our solution was used by more than several tens of thousands of users (we can’t establish the exact number, because we intentionally do not maintain a user base). We have received hundreds of grateful letters from different countries. We did not offer donation options, but were pleased with the many thanks.

It was important for us to achieve our audit objectives: track all KPIs and understand how we can make a qualitative leap forward. In practice, we managed to convey to all the team members the value of the growth vector and all members of our team agreed with these ideas, especially because each of them participated in the formation of standards and philosophy, this united the team quite strongly.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We started with global product planning, held several meetings with the team in order to analyze the functionality in detail. After that each member of the team presented their assessment of the tasks, which was discussed and distributed between the rest of the team. Everything was fixed in the configured task tracker, after which the priorities for each feature were clarified. During the development process, the auditor monitored the KPI of our work and we discussed what could be improved, how to rebuild the process and make it more efficient.

After the 2nd month of work, we were able to stabilise the quality level and track our indicators, because each person had their own plan and moved independently within it. The whole team worked very synchronously according to the development plan. Each new version was presented to the focus group, we tracked errors and crashes, examined the wishes of users and compiled a wish-list, which we later voted on.

Sometimes we talked and consulted with the Mattermost team, but remained a completely independent initiative. At the end of the project development, we conducted a large-scale retrospective, which consolidated the implemented standards and an understanding of the necessary improvements on the following projects. Our entire team fully supported this approach and was interested in monitoring our own effectiveness. Everyone noticed significant improvements in productivity and these results gave us motivation to grow further.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

As an internal auditor, I felt the potential and strong desire of the team to look for ways to improve. At each meeting, the developers were very responsive and shared their problems. Such openness involves all team members in the process and a synergy effect arises. I had a clear belief that this team could do everything.

Are there any areas for improvement?

All our work on this project was built around the search for improvements, therefore, I can not describe here all the results achieved. But I can say that we went through all the difficulties quite confidently and I was satisfied. I don’t think that I can leave something here for improvements, because the team has moved much further without me.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The development has been challenged by the fact that we had development processes in parallel for 5 different operating systems. We adjusted business requirements and implemented them on all platforms.

This required more attention and concentration on specific tasks, but despite the difficulties the product was created and massively helped us in receiving market feedback to plan and adjust our future software updates.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

During the development stage we tested the product on the clients’ sites with the team. We faced a large amount of questions from infrastructure settings to deployment of the product into a live version. Such work required a high level of cooperation between both teams, but we managed to work efficiently together.

In respect to tools, we mainly used Skype and face to face meetings, we also had read access to their GitHub to track progress independently. The deadline for our initial release was met.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The team managed to take a lot of analytics, remember all the nuances and details of our business requirements and track our progress efficiently.

Are there any areas for improvement?

For projects like ours it would have been beneficial to organise a service that would manage portfolio when the user’s number increase significantly and the client get hundreds and thousands of internal projects. This however is more relevant to our own planning, rather than their service, but might be a tip for others.