DOOR3

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a nonprofit that partners with lower-performing schools. Our focus is leadership coaching and interim assessment support. We have a number of online platforms that teachers and leaders use.  

I’m the director of product here, which means that I help define what our products look like and how they meet our customers’ needs.

What challenge were you trying to address with DOOR3?

We have an interim assessment that our teachers give students, and part of our platform provides performance data. Our need for a long time was that we didn’t have UX expertise in-house. D00R3 reimagined what they could look like based on what we identified and some they illuminated themselves.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’d done partner research to inform the direction we thought DOOR3’s team should go in, but we leaned on their expertise and ultimate design recommendations. There was already a basic brand template in place, but they created a full UX/UI kit for our engineers to use when they implemented the final product facelift. All work was done in Figma.  

What is the team composition?

The team was comprised of two UX designers, one technical lead, one project manager, and one floating resource, who may have been another project manager.

How did you come to work with DOOR3?

We talked to educational nonprofits who’d hired similar firms before, a DOOR3 came highly recommended. After prolonged conversations with 2–3 firms, we made our selection.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $45,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The relationship lasted from October–December 2021.

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

The project only ended 1–2 months ago, so we haven’t made any frontend changes, but our engineers feel like they have tools needed to update website to reflect the final design recommendations. DOOR3 as thoughtful enough to engage with our engineers along the way to make sure what they designed was feasible to implement. We’re confident that we can make the changes ourselves.

DOOR3 didn’t just give us pretty wireframes based on an imaginary backend. They considered our real limitations.

We’re pleased with the engagement and are likely to hire them again for other parts of the product we need to revisit.

How did DOOR3 perform from a project management standpoint?

They were great. Weekly status meetings, along with Zoom calls and emails, helped communication and let us know if anything was off track. We knew everything was happening according to expectations throughout the engagement.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team was truly invested in what we were trying to accomplish, going above and beyond to internalize our research. They’re not education experts, so they invested time in learning from our customers and from us about this space.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have a good answer to this, as we were really pleased.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear and specific on frontend deliverables. Clarity on both ends made sure we were all satisfied and received what we thought we were going to receive.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of engineering at a funding marketplace for women entrepreneurs. The company started as a crowdfunding platform for women entrepreneurs, and now we provide a spectrum of services. We’ve added coaching services, and we recently added a grants program as well.

What challenge were you trying to address with DOOR3?

The co-founders weren’t technically oriented, so they had to engage a company for all the website and platform services that they wanted to put out. When I came in, we didn’t have any in-house resources. The goal was to build up our engineering team slowly.

What was the scope of their involvement?

DOOR3 designed and developed our main site on Drupal. The site allowed users to create crowdfunding campaigns and browse through the ones we had. In addition, it let people browse our coaching programs, select a program, add it to the cart, and go to checkout.

When COVID-19 hit, we slowed down our hiring, and it was extremely valuable to have DOOR3 continuing on our roadmap for 2020.

What is the team composition?

I worked with two engineers, one QA engineer, a project manager, and a relationship manager. Throughout the project, the team size went up and down.

How did you come to work with DOOR3?

They were already working for the company when I joined in February 2020.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $250,000–$500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2020 and concluded our relationship with them in July 2021.

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

I’m an engineering manager, so I see how the code is written and how code reviews are done. I expect deployment to be automated, and I’m curious to see how things are hosted. In that sense, DOOR3 did a great job of laying the groundwork. Engineers were pretty diligent about reviewing everybody’s code, and a complete QA cycle was always done. In summary, they put together a good platform, and I’d give them five out of five in all categories.

Additionally, we just barely got into data analysis on click-level data. We were pretty interested in tracking how many crowdfunding campaigns have been created on our platform, how much money women have raised, and so on. In that regard, DOOR3 provided custom reports to keep an eye on everything we could look at through our Drupal system.

Overall, everything is going on positively from a business point of view. People like our platform, and our company continues to grow. We went from 15 people to about 35 people in the company, and it all has been fueled by DOOR3’s work.

How did DOOR3 perform from a project management standpoint?

When I joined, I instituted a standup process. We had morning standups three days a week, and they worked in sprints. All the work was managed in Jira, including features, bugs, and a ticketing system. DOOR3 was kind enough to host that for us. On the other hand, the code was managed on GitHub by DOOR3, and I could look at it from there.

We shared a Slack channel with the engineers. It was pretty easy to contact them even if there wasn’t a meeting. Their relationship manager was always available as well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were transparent, communicative, and open. If the project was delayed or they found a big bug that could be disastrous, they never hesitated to bring it up. The team never hid anything from us, and we found that to be extremely valuable.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The quality of their Drupal code and some of the custom modules they designed could’ve been better. I don’t know if they didn’t have the right kind of engineers, or we put a lot of pressure on getting things done quickly.

However, we worked out those issues when I joined and started to work with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you engage a lot with them. Don’t treat them like you’re throwing stuff across the wall. When I came in, I engaged with the developers and the project manager. That engagement created a close working relationship, making it feel like we had an internal team.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re one of the leader manufacturers in personal protection equipment. Worker safety is our top priority.

Our salespeople go into an organization's workplace environment and look at each job activity being performed by their workers, the hazards they’re exposed to, and the kind of injuries they’re experiencing. They put that information into a software solution, which makes recommendations on the right personal protection equipment that meets the job requirements.

What challenge were you trying to address with DOOR3?

For almost 12 years, we had a sales tool that was developed without any product management involvement. The software's UX was dated, difficult to use, and disconnected from other internal systems. There was no integration with the source for personal protection equipment information, so everything had to be manually entered into the database to match the source.

We needed to rebuild the software from the ground up. We also wanted to bring in new technology and make sure we had the best in class so it could grow as the business grows. Additionally, we wanted the new technology to be user-friendly so it required minimal training, especially for new salespeople, and integrated with some key systems to ensure the product data is in sync and up to date.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, we did the UX design and stylesheet for a couple of weeks. Then, we expanded to an architecture and technology review in order to get their recommendations. or their recommendations.  We decided it was best for us to keep engaging with their team, so we brought them on board to do development.

DOOR3 built a robust software with many different components and capabilities. The solution has 14 modules and provides an extensive report for the customer. We finished the first version, which launched in April. It was an MVP, which included about 85% of the functionality of the legacy solution. Then, we did a second release, to bring in the remaining functionality. We’ve just completed that development.

What is the team composition?

Overall, we have at least fifteen people on the project. The team included a project manager, business analysts,  developers, QA testers, an architect, and a UX designer as needed.

How did you come to work with DOOR3?

We initially were looking for a company that could look at the current software and provide a UX design that could simplify the user experience and had an updated look and feel. We also were looking for recommendations on the right technology stack to use.  

At my old company, I was looking to do a new UX design for our software, and I reached out to a number of vendors. DOOR3 is one of the vendors that we brought in to meet with. After meeting with them we learned more about them and that they did development.

At the time, we were using the same vendor for development for a number of years and thought this was the right time to make a change. Therefore, we decided to engage with DOOR3 for frontend development.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve probably spent $1.4 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in February 2020, to do the UX design and Architecture/Technology review work. We started the full implementation and development in July 2020, but we had multiple engagements with them before we decided to go for the full implementation and development.

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

Before, salespeople felt they were forced to use the software to meet performance metrics, but they didn’t want to use it because it took them too much time. Since we’ve launched this, our number of assessments has gone up because the software is intuitive, easy to use and faster to use. Now, salespeople are eager to use the tool.

Moreover, the quality has been excellent. We’ve had minimal issues or need for improvements. They did a great job meeting with our stakeholders and salespeople to get their feedback and make sure they were getting it right the first time.

Since this was such a strategic project, we had much senior leadership oversight. DOOR3 participated in bi-weekly steering committee meetings and assisted in preparing and presenting to the committee.  Overall, their work has been impressive.

How did DOOR3 perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been excellent! We recently made the move to Agile development methodology and they were well versed in Agile. They had a great Project Leader who served as a Scrum Master and their BA analysts really know how to break down the stories, and everyone in their team understands Agile. They have expertise in Jira to manage our agile sprints, do our backlog grooming, and all the agile activities. 

Additionally, we have a weekly status meeting that DOOR3 facilitated. They prepared a detailed status report showing milestones, next steps, and how they were performing to the budget. They would use a change management process for requests that were outside the scope of the Statement of Work. Overall, excellent project management processes.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their professionalism, knowledge, and expertise are what make them stand out.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Honestly, I don’t believe so. Even when they have obstacles in place, they try to help and remove them. DOOR3 does everything over and beyond to ensure the success of your project.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Listen to them, take their advice, and be open to doing things differently. They give great recommendations and are very accommodating and professional. It has been a pleasure to work with them, and they’ve kept the project on track.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

LoneStar Meter Solutions is a fairly new crop dusting company. I’m the CFO and focus on the creative side, while my husband is the founder and owner.

What challenge were you trying to address with DOOR3?

We were looking for a way to automatically pull usage information from our airplanes so that we could more efficiently conduct plane inspections. Before, we’d have to manually track an airplane’s hours in a logbook and then compare that to past records to identify which parts needed to be changed.

My husband came up with an idea to develop an hour meter that would go inside the plane and record information, so we reached out to DOOR3 to build the solution.

What was the scope of their involvement? 

DOOR3 is developing the software for an hour meter that will go inside of an airplane and automatically log the plane’s usage statistics — information such as tracked hours per specific plane part. The solution will then calculate a part’s usage and send notifications to the owner, pilot, and mechanic so that they know when something needs to be replaced.

The project started with a two-week discovery process to really break down exactly what we needed to get the product on the market. Their team had a lot of great ideas to get our solution up and going for the least amount of money possible, saving our larger-budget ideas for down the road. They planned to structure the architecture in a way where they wouldn’t have to redo any work for our second round of features, instead just integrating the changes when we had the financial means to do so.

By the end of that initial phase, they provided us with a sprint relay that mapped out all of the milestones and cost estimates over the course of three months. The timeline was great because it allowed us to figure out some of the challenges we were facing on the hardware side such as how to get our meter to read specific conditions. 

So far, we’ve got the hardware from a different company, and are working through those challenges. We plan to start API and software development with DOOR3 in April 2021 so that our hardware can communicate with our solution. The projected delivery date is around August 2021.

What is the team composition? 

Alex (Founder & President) is at all of our meetings. We also have a project manager, two software engineers, and a technical engineer. 

How did you come to work with DOOR3?

It was through Clutch’s Lead Matching Program. We talked to three companies in total, but DOOR3 stood out the most. My husband and Alex really hit it off because Alex was also a pilot. Not only did that make for a quick connection, but it also meant that Alex knew all of the terminology and headaches that came with aircraft maintenance. This saved us so much time because we didn’t have to explain anything; Alex could already answer any questions his internal team had about the plane inspection process. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $18,500. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We first spoke to them in mid-October 2020, and they’re still working with them.

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

The biggest takeaway for me has been that DOOR3 is open to feedback. They understand that this project is my husband’s baby and won’t try to impose how they think things need to be done. If we have comments on a specific item, they’ll immediately change it to suit our needs.

On the flip side, they’re always quick to offer key information that can help us in the future. The team has done all sorts of projects, so they know how to set up a solution while thinking ahead to our updates and add-ons. At the end of the day, we need function over flashing lights, and DOOR3 can do that.

How did DOOR3 perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re wonderful at communicating. There have been a couple of meetings that needed to be rescheduled, sometimes by them and other times by us, but they’ve always been prompt in letting us know. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Our personalities mesh well, and everyone enjoys talking and joking a bit. At this point, I’d call Alex a friend given how much we’ve spoken. Maybe it’s the airplanes that make us feel close together, but we’ve never had any hesitations calling him if there’s been something that we needed to know about. That’s just the kind of relationship that he’s created with us.

It’s the same with the rest of the organization. I’ve met with a few people in their accounting department to make sure that they’ve received our payments, and they’ve all been very open-door with us. It’s a warm, comfortable engagement. They want to build the best product that they can for us, and the way to do that is by communicating consistently.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You can’t go wrong with DOOR3. They’ve got a wide range of knowledge based on the products that they’ve created, so they’ll be able to take any idea and run with it. Even though we’re building a unique solution that’s a bit new to them, they’ve still picked up on everything very quickly. It’s been a short learning curve for them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president and a software developer for COBRA Business Operations Software, Inc. We’re a software company that develops specialized business software and mobile solutions for primarily plumbing and electrical contractors.

What challenge were you trying to address with DOOR3?

We had two major projects related to our software. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

DOOR3 upgraded our database engine from an Access Database Engine into a SQL Database. We just began the coding part of the project. Their team outlined the script that we’ll then implement together. They’re helping to change our code to the new SQL database.

What is the team composition?

I work with about four people from DOOR3. 

How did you come to work with DOOR3?

For years, I tried to decide what help I needed to complete this massive project. I thought about hiring programmers but decided to hire a company that could provide more services. I wanted a team behind us because this was a massive project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve already spent about $35,000 on the database conversion. We’ll spend about $50,000 on the coding part of the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started talking in July but started the project in September 2019, and it’s ongoing.

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

I’m impressed by their work. They did an excellent job converting the data from an Access Database to a SQL database. I couldn’t be happier with the database conversion. I’ve been able to take a few of our customers with larger datasets and run them through the conversion.

How did DOOR3 perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re great. When we’ve run into issues, they’ve communicated well. We’re able to resolve challenges together. I’m happy with the team’s communication. They’re upfront about any issues.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m happy with their communication and development so far. However, as a small company, I don’t have previous experiences for comparison against DOOR3.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think so.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be honest and communicate with them. They’ll return in kind.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of a digital gift card platform.

What challenge were you trying to address with DOOR3?

We had an idea for a unique payment system and needed a partner to write the code to make the platform functional.

What was the scope of their involvement?

DOOR3 helped with the design documentation process, which helped them to understand our vision for the platform. They then built the technical aspects of it. Their team used Drupal and Angular, and the platform's database is Mongo. Our payment processor is Stripe.

Their team continues to work with us to innovate the platform with unique ideas. They focus on functionalities and software customization.

What is the team composition?

We work with a project manager, and their team includes Drupal and Angular developers.

How did you come to work with DOOR3?

I was sold on DOOR3 by their team’s professionalism. Alex (Founder & President), who owns the company, was the first person I met. He answered our phone calls before we even initiated the project. During our first meeting, he was in the conference room running the presentation. He listed the entire scope including the hours for development.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested between $100,000–$150,000 in their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around December 2019, and I’m still working with them.

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

Since our platform went live, we haven’t had a single functionality issue. Our core processes are functionally flawless. DOOR3 is a rock star team.

I had my ideas, and then DOOR3 made them into functional components. Alex takes time outside the company to hone what we want and then uses his expertise in technology to make our ideas work. He also adds elements that I didn’t think about, which is cool.

How did DOOR3 perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project manager checks-in weekly and talks with us about the state of our budget. Their team’s conscious about our budget to ensure they’re able to achieve our goals. Their project manager ensures the project progresses and remains conscious of the budget. They’re completely professional, and everything’s transparent.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The functionality of our platform’s flawless. One of DOOR3’s greatest assets is their personalized services. I’ve received unbelievable, personalized service and attention. I can text Alex and receive a response within 10–15 minutes.

I’m not a coder, and Alex has been a mentor throughout this entire process. He’s taken time outside of his routines to understand our mission and vision. I’ve never had the owner of any other software company take on a mentorship role. Alex actually shows how much he cares, and it’s been a tremendous experience working with him.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We didn’t have a clear vision of the design, so aspects of it weren’t exactly what we envisioned. That may fall onto our shoulders for not having a clear vision. We went into the process assuming that their UI/UX team would have an amazing design for us.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Come into the partnership with as much of a clear-cut plan as possible. It’s hard to translate an unclear vision and mission statement. If you’re not prepared, you can spend a lot of money very quickly. That’s not unique to DOOR3.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of product management at Elsevier, a global information analytics company. We provide digital solutions for healthcare, legal, and scientific industries.

What challenge were you trying to address with DOOR3?

We were looking for an enhancement to our UX function, and we were looking to bring someone who could provide best practices around UX to ensure that we had an optimal experience. My particular product was unique in that it was a brand new product.

What was the scope of their involvement?

DOOR3 helped us with a couple of products in our division. Nadine (Senior UX Designer) helped us to come up with an Alpha release, a Beta release, and GUI. She supported us through the whole journey.

She worked with us to review the feedback that came out of the market research and the various personas that we targeted, and she came up with some initial designs for us to iterate off of.

For the past couple of years, she’s been working with us regularly to review the feedback that we collect. DOOR3 also iterates and optimizes the experience, and they provide guidance as we add new functionality.

What is the team composition?

Nadine is my primary contact. 

How did you come to work with DOOR3?

I was referred to them by another product group within the organization who had worked with Door3.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in Q3 2018, and our engagement is ongoing. We’ve had some budget cuts due to COVID-19, so we’re going to have to slow down a little bit. 

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

We’ve received a lot of great feedback from our clients on the tool and the experience, and we’re constantly working on it.

How did DOOR3 perform from a project management standpoint?

Nadine performs very well. We operate in an agile framework, and she often has a lot of good information about the customer. Sometimes, there are gaps for various business reasons, and DOOR3 is adaptable enough to deliver quality experiences while keeping the bigger picture in mind. 

We use Confluence and Jira for project management, and we also use Zeplin mock up tools. Additionally, we communicate via Zoom video calls. Before COVID-19, we had standing weekly UX meetings where we talked about new product development that impacts the UX experience. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I enjoy working with Nadine because it feels like she’s a part of our team. She took a lot of time to understand the business problem and she knows the product well. It’s been a strong partnership.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing comes to mind.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Our engagement has been successful because I know that for UX to function optimally, you have to get the team as close as possible to the customer or feed them as much information about the customer. 

Always allow DOOR3 to have a window into that knowledge so that they can best support you with your project.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re an enterprise software product company. We have three offerings: an asset management platform, a life insurance platform, and a generic data migration platform. They’re all low- or no-code platforms where business users can configure applications themselves or have us make configurations for them. They can leverage the asset management and life insurance configurations that we have, and tweak them to their needs.

What challenge were you trying to address with DOOR3?

The platform we have is cloud-based and is entirely a web application. We don’t have an in-house design team, and we didn’t have an external partner. As a group, we just developed the application we felt was right, and a lot of features gathered over time, with iterative code layered one version on top of the other.

We never really had the time to take a step back and determine how we could make it visually-appealing, or apply best practices around the UI/UX of the app. We decided to do that, and I started the initiative. Basically, we were looking for a design refresh of the application.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We wanted someone to take a look at what we had, with the goal of improving style, harmonizing the different components, streamlining the UI and making it more efficient. While applying generic best practices around what we had, they refined the navigation and changed the color palette without throwing out what we did before.

Before this, we had was a very dark UI, with color palettes that weren’t practical to use. DOOR3 streamlined the theming, made better iconography and a more modern widget layout, and better navigation proposals. After all of that was discussed, they delivered a style guide and editable designs.

What is the team composition?

I was in communication with Alex (Founder & President) when the engagement started. He introduced me to Daniel (Senior Engagement Manager). When the team started the work, we were assigned a senior designer, a junior designer, and a business analyst. Then, they had a team in Kiev, and the project manager and the technical architect were based there.

How did you come to work with DOOR3?

I made a Google search for the top design agencies in New York City, and Clutch came up first as a site where I could find that information. I picked the top 5–6 teams, and reached out to all of them.

The first deciding factor was whether the provider had worked on an enterprise, data-heavy platform before, so that they could leverage what they’d done there. Cost was the second factor.

From a past experience perspective, DOOR3 had done similar work, and we saw that in their proposal. They understood what we were trying to do, compared to some other companies, which were purely website and branding companies, and didn’t really understand what enterprise apps need.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $75,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with DOOR3 in January 2020. We were planning to get into an extended contract, but we were in the middle of a capital raise. Investors have held on to that, and we’ve basically paused on any work. Basically, it’s a ripple effect. We’re not getting our money, so we’ve plugged our outflows. After the situation improves, we will continue our engagement with them.

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

Whatever designs we had, we presented to our clients, and everyone was excited and happy.

Long-term clients have been saying that the new design feels modern and fresh. Everyone’s really excited.

The design is beautiful and is as good as any other app our clients have been working with. Compared to where we started our platform, we’ve made a lot of progress. The style guides are much better as well.

We haven’t really finished the development and rolled it out to the full client base yet. We’ve only been able to show prototypes, PDFs, and teasers to get people excited.

It will take us another 2–3 months to finish the work, and another couple of months to test it and iron out any issues. Hopefully, we’ll start leveraging the new design fully by September or October 2020.

How did DOOR3 perform from a project management standpoint?

The style guides and different components were delivered through Zeplin, and the actual editable designs were made available in Sketch.

We’ve realized that this was one of our better consulting engagements. We knew what we wanted, and DOOR3 quickly understood what they had to give us. From a team perspective, it was one of our more successful consulting engagements.

It was a two-and-a-half-month engagement, and we had calls every second day with the team. There were five people from our side and 2–3 people from DOOR3 talking every other day, and we also used email, SharePoint, and OneDrive, to share documents and artefacts. We used Zeplin to do reviews of the style guides.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It was a very focused project, and we were in constant communication. We got what we wanted.

My CEO was very skeptical going into this, saying he’d never had a successful consulting engagement, but he was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. The teams gelled, and we got on the same page very quickly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Everything worked out well for us, so there’s nothing I can think of.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

With any consulting engagement, it’ll help if you’re very clear on what we want. Any design agency can provide hundreds of ideas, but it just takes a lot of time if we don’t know what we want. If we know what we want, and just want someone to vet those ideas quickly and come up with a good proposal, then that’s what I’d suggest. Otherwise, these engagements get extended, and there’s nothing tangible coming out of them. My advice would be for the client to spend time getting to know what they want, and then start the engagement, not the other way around.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of a financial services consulting firm. We consult exclusively to banks on issues concerning strategic planning, asset-liability work, and other areas along those lines.

What challenge were you trying to address with DOOR3?

At the start, we had various discussions with their team. We decided to move ahead with DOOR3 when we wanted to migrate off of a Rackspace environment and our internal environment that hosted our applications to a JIRA cloud environment.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were based in and wrote our code in a Microsoft stack environment. All of that code was migrated to an Azure environment. We made some changes to user JIRA functions instead of what we were doing in Rackspace. It was a relatively straightforward migration.

Our team wrote a lot of the migration code ourselves with their assistance. The critical element of the project involved an architecture standpoint. Their team ensured everything was appropriately structured to allow for future additions. Along with handling parts of the migration, they did some coding around Blob storage.

What is the team composition?

At different points during the project, we engaged with almost ten people. We had an engagement manager, a project manager, a business analyst, and an architect. There were also a few developers.

How did you come to work with DOOR3?

We performed a nationwide search, using Clutch and other resources to identify companies that we felt were the most experienced and best-reviewed. After looking into the areas we wanted to accomplish, we went through a screening process. We interviewed three companies and decided to go with DOOR3.

The primary reason we went for DOOR3 was that they offered consultancy services along with development offerings. They were able to help us define what the project was, making sure we looked at everything we needed to look at and structured it all correctly. That differentiated them from other companies we talked to. They are also local. We’re based in New Jersey, and their office is in New York.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested a little over $190,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement with DOOR3 lasted from July–October 2019.

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

We were able to migrate everything pretty clearly. There were some code changes, areas that needed to be rewritten, and data we could migrate ourselves. Their communication was superb. The engagement manager did an exceptional job, keeping everyone updated. The company, as a whole, made course adjustments to ensure we stayed both on our timeline and budget.

How did DOOR3 perform from a project management standpoint?

From a project management standpoint, they did an outstanding job. Our engagement manager was involved throughout the whole process, managing the project well. In addition to daily stand-up meetings and weekly follow-ups, we used JIRA for all of the code and ticket tracking. We used a shared Slack channel for communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was impressed by their ability to perform a lot of fact-finding and consulting work. Their team leader could manage the project, making course adjustments and bringing resources when needed. They strived to keep us on time and budget.

Are there any areas they could improve?

One of the challenges, which isn’t unique to DOOR3, is relevant to offshore and onshore development teams. There can be difficulties with code turnaround and communication. The only area where we had a slight challenge was with some of the code that needed debugging. Having everyone onsite would’ve helped with that. But that happens with any company that uses onshore and offshore teams.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

From my experience, the key is to establish a relationship with the engagement manager upfront. Make sure you’re comfortable with how they’re going to be running the project. Since we worked as a blended team, I took over as the project lead for our side. I was involved in those daily meetings, which is critical to completing a successful engagement.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the vice president of app development at Fresh Direct from 2015–2018. Fresh Direct is an online supermarket offering orders delivered to your door. It’s based in New York and available throughout the Northeast. I was in charge of everything related to the customer-facing website and mobile apps, including project management, QA, and customer service.

What challenge were you trying to address with DOOR3?

We were starting another business, a sister company, called Foodkick, which we envisioned as a service for fill-in shopping needs. It’s only available in Brooklyn and Manhattan. We realized we were going to have five different mobile apps across various platforms. We knew that we would be difficult to maintain with a small team.

DOOR3 suggested using Xamarin to create one mobile app code base for the backend to ease maintenance across the platforms. The key code and the APIs and backend integration would all come from one codebase. We needed them to augment our development team and craft a strategy to integrate Xamarin into our business, as well as work on the apps themselves.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The in-house team designed all of the screens, and DOOR3 had to develop them and build them out. It’s a C Sharp code base and it deploys to Android and iOS in a native fashion. Our team hired our own mobile developers as well. They helped us with the rollout of the apps.

What is the team composition?

At most times, we had about five developers that were working with us. Later in the engagement, there were three developers from DOOR3 working with three in-house developers. Their project manager, John (Former Senior Project Manager, DOOR3), worked directly with our mobile development lead.

How did you come to work with DOOR3?

I believe they had a relationship with Fresh Direct that predated my time at the company. When the concept of this new business came up, the CIO at the time decided to work with DOOR3.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $1.3 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from June 2015–August 2016.

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

We were really impressed with the speed with which we could roll out new features using the shared backend through Xamarin. It was fantastic. When we needed to make a small change, we only had to make it in one place. Our vision really came to life. In addition, the uniformity of our apps made it easier for customers to use the system.

The shared platform also helped us track checkouts and delivery more efficient. DOOR3’s strategy optimized our efforts because we no longer had to make changes to five different apps, which would have been a strain on our resources. There was a case study written by Microsoft, which now owns Xamarin, and it talks about DOOR3’s involvement and influence.

How did DOOR3 perform from a project management standpoint?

They were on top of the project and understood what we needed. They listened very well, and John was great at pushing us and driving the business forward. We initially used DOOR3’s Jira for project management before transitioning onto our own Jira system.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their transition into a staff augmentation model was beneficial and made knowledge transfer easy because they were working hand-in-hand with us. They weren’t always on-site, but they still partnered with us completely.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It was hard to really understand exactly what people were doing each day when you're paying on a time and materials basis, but with the project manager’s help, they were able to rectify it and clarify it so it wasn't straightforward as giving us an invoice. We had to do a little due diligence and really understand what the different time tracking metrics meant. But they were very transparent with us and they worked with us completely. I don't know if we took full advantage of their testing capabilities, but we ended up handling all of the QA and testing.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Integrate them right into your team. They want to learn and they want to help you. They don't want to take over and own it. They really want to partner with you and the more you allow them to partner and understand your business, the easier it will be for them to come up with solutions to whatever your biggest challenges are.