Impledge Technologies

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the founder of a bootstrapped startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Impledge Technologies?

We hired Impledge Technologies to develop a web application that had been fully created by a professional UI/UX designer. All design elements and images were defined in Zeplin.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to implement the web application according to existing user stories and Zeplin designs.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

A long-term colleague referred me to them.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

This was a fixed project that Impledge promised to finish in three-and-a-half months. They never delivered. They were four weeks late on the first milestone and bailed out after the first payment.

What was the team composition?

They were supposed to provide two full-time engineers and a part-time project manager. We never saw productivity worthy of two engineers, and the project manager was simply incompetent.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They delivered poor quality code, according to an engineer from another reliable vendor. They utilized inline CSS, which no professional developer uses. We requested a responsive app, but the engineer that assessed the code demonstrated that it was not. They set us back three months and took one third of the total payment for a worthless deliverable.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project management was a disaster. They were poorly organized and coordinated. We often felt like we were dealing with a government clerk, not a project manager.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their smooth talk was impressive. They gave the impression of sincerity and professionalism at the beginning but quickly resorted to blaming the quality of our backend API.

They failed to adjust their approach despite multiple efforts to make things work. Although they complained, the vendor that created our mobile app delivered on schedule and worked well with the same API.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

Impledge Technologies shouldn't submit a lower cost just to win the bid. They should ensure that they can deliver on time and uphold the quality expected from a professionally developed application. They should provide real value, not bill clients after delivering substandard work.

They should also refrain from sharing resources with other projects or employing part-time resources while telling clients that they are full-time. Project management is their weakest link since no one is accountable for timelines and deliverables.