DSR Corporation

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of Labworks, a software company that develops software for laboratories.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with DSR Corporation?

We needed someone to develop software for us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

DSR Corporation has developed web and mobile software solutions and apps for us. For example, they’ve built a laboratory information management system (LIMS) that works on Windows systems and uses a .NET backend and Angular frontend. The mobile app is available for Android and iOS, and DSR Corporation has also developed a Windows mobile app.

We work closely with DSR Corporation. For every project, we give them requirements, and they propose solutions and come up with a schedule to deliver. They do everything from design and software architecture to development, QA, deployment, and distribution to the app stores. We’ve stopped supporting the Windows mobile app, but they’ve developed it.

What is the team composition?

We work with around 40 people from DSR Corporation. Our main point of contact is a project manager.

How did you come to work with DSR Corporation?

We got a recommendation. I’ve worked with them for about 10–11 years, and my previous company worked with them for at least another year or two before that. The lead architect at my previous company worked with them, so they were recommended to me. I was happy with their work.

When we acquired Labworks, we knew we wanted to work with DSR Corporation. They’re an amazing company, and they’re fair on pricing. They’re knowledgeable, so I’m very happy with them.

How much have you invested with them?

This is confidential data but it is a multi-year large team project

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together at my current company around March 2017, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

DSR Corporation is incredibly attentive to detail. The requirements gathering takes quite a bit of time, but they’re incredibly thorough. That always pays off because they discover things we weren’t even thinking about during the requirements gathering.

Our company has been around for a long time, and we’ve gone through multiple iterations of development. The software has been developed on older technologies, but DSR Corporation has created new web and mobile software with modern technologies. We get praised constantly by our customers, saying we’re leaps and bounds ahead of the competition when it comes to design and look and feel.

There are bugs every now and then, but the majority of them aren’t regressions. They usually come from requirements we didn’t give them properly. We have two different applications being developed at the same time, and sometimes the features work differently because the web implementation is different from the desktop one.

There are many different modules, and sometimes there’s different business logic on different modules. Sometimes they miss that, but I wouldn’t blame them. The bugs are edge cases and things we weren’t aware of that should work a certain way.

For example, DSR Corporation did a major rewrite of the mobile app because we moved from Xamarin to MAUI. With the big rewrites, some regressions were introduced with single sign-on support and things like that. The frameworks work a little differently, and only a small portion of our customers use single sign-on. We had a couple of regressions because our QA system wasn’t expecting those particular cases. Overall, I'm very pleased and happy with how DSR Corporation has handled everything.

How did DSR Corporation perform from a project management standpoint?

DSR Corporation is great. They’re bureaucratic in the sense of having a lot of processes, but that pays off in the actual delivery on time and on budget. It seems like overkill, but every time we have discussions with them, they always have good metrics that show it’s the right way to do it. The proof is in the pudding, and they’ve always been on budget and on time.

We mostly communicate by email and through our ticketing system. They send me weekly emails with project reports. They commit to a schedule of when the deliverables will be. If we have a new feature to implement, they’ll split it up into 3–4 different deliverables so we can check on progress every month or two months.

They always hit the deadline. Sometimes they need to slip one or two days because people are sick, but I don’t consider that slippage. We get progress updates, and they summarize what they’re actively working on. They’re very responsive to emails, and I have a great relationship with them. I know I can email them, and I’ll always get a response.

If it ever gets to a point where we’re not understanding each other or there’s a lot of miscommunication, I’ll schedule a call. However, that’s rare. I mostly interface with them by email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m always amazed by DSR Corporation’s skills. I’ve thrown some challenges at them, and I’m impressed by how they work around the issues. For example, we once had to add a web service to our web product. We had some limitations around control of permissions, but they integrated a library to hijack the communication between the web server and the web service implementation from Microsoft. They implemented the features we needed.

There was another situation where we had a UX issue. We had a limited number of colors, but we wanted to create a heat map to show heat for different things and capture people’s attention. We ran out of colors to differentiate the data on the screen. I went to DSR Corporation and asked if there was a solution for this. They came back with a mathematical theorem that solved the issue.

I always feel confident that when I have big challenges, DSR Corporation will figure it out. I haven’t had a situation where they haven’t figured it out.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re very bureaucratic. From a customer perspective, it feels like they’re taking too long to do the planning. They’re overzealous about the planning, but they need to do that. Otherwise, they’ll let us down. Still, I wish they could improve on that a little bit.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be thorough in communication and clear on your requirements. I try to be very clear on the requirements. I summarize things and share videos with them. I describe the problem and how I envision the solution. I record the video to show what I’m talking about and summarize the information in the video.

The more information you can provide them, the more successful they can be. There’s less miscommunication. Make sure the communication is going on your side. A lot of times, miscommunication happens on both sides. Keep clear communication because they’ll be responsive. You need to do your part and help them be successful.