Grupdev

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I work for an Online Publisher, who creates multiple sites and multiple deployments of various sites within the AWS cloud. I am a Senior Java Engineer who has moved into Devops and am taking over ownership of our Cloud Strategy.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Grupdev?

We had a lot of Devops work coming up, mainly some large migrations from bare metal to AWS. This caused a difficulty with completing other projects, which were just as high a priority, we needed additional DevOps engineers who could take on this additional workload and some of the day to day maintenance tasks, in a short turn around, rather than months of recruitment.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We were recommended this company by our Devop's Manager, who had good knowledge with them.

Describe the project in detail and walk through their service package.

We integrated GrupDev into our Sprint process and planned work based on the priorities of the business at the time. Having them work on our sprint schedule and attend our standup's was essential to keeping all of the engineers up to date. The main responsibilities of GrupDev was to lead in the upgrade of our application server stack, they created multiple new environments for us, using terraform to enable us to migrate from a Java 8 and Tomcat 7 stack to a Java 11 and Tomcat 9 stack.

They also took on a large DNS migration from one of our important clients, this was to move the DNS hosting provider from the clients own service to being managed by us within AWS. Other tasks they took were general small devops tasks such as Certificate Updates, Server restarts, which enabled the team to focus on large business priorities.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Between 3 and 4, Two

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

All timelines were delivered as requested within the Sprint time lines. Java/Tomcat upgrades were completed and ready for the deployment engineers. The DNS was delivered on time and we migrated the client as per the schedule that was originally agreed.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Initially getting the teams up and running took it's time, as the time difference between the teams could cause some issues with communications. However Grup Dev worked to resolve this and at all times we had a contact who we could discuss work and issues with that were on the main time zone of the business. (We have people working in multiple times zones, UK/US/India).

Due to this sometimes the communication could be difficult, but as mentioned our main contact at GrupDev would work hard to make sure that we had what we required or they would take on finding out the answer and getting back to us in a good time. Integrating the team with our into the standup's worked well. They attended our standups and planning sessions which enabled us to identify work they were able to do, and work that required additional input from us, eg where things were.

I was very much on the side of if the work is completed on time and within the sprint then I was happy and apart from the occasional time, which happens, we had the work delivered successfully.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The knowledge of the Business Owners and some members of staff who worked for us. As I was up-skilling into a more senior management position having someone who was willing to take time and explain things about AWS, go over billing and how certain aspects of that worked was an invaluable help, which I am grateful for.

Aside from the AWS mentoring, there did not seem to be a question with the infrastructure which they could not answer or were willing to discover the answer. Questions were answered. Time was made available for us to see if our ideas were good, and I felt that their advice was honest and fair. We don't want people to just say yes to everything, and I felt that we got no thats a bad idea in a professional way.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I felt that at times communication with the GrupDev team could be a bit clearer. Making sure the team have a good setup when they join our stand ups.