The Mad Botter

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the Associate Executive Director of San Diego Fleet Week, a non-profit series of events celebrating members of the military. 

What challenge were you trying to address with The Mad Botter?

We had been trying to put a mobile application together highlighting our events for a few years and finally got the funding do to so in 2017.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I spoke with their CEO on the phone to describe some of the features we wanted on the app, and from there they designed and developed it for iOS and Android. The app itself lists all of our events and sponsors with links to our sponsors’ websites. The app also features push notifications to highlight certain events. We are now working on an update for this year that will include more features such as the ability to send out push notifications internally.

What is the team composition?

I worked with their founder/CEO.

How did you come to work with The Mad Botter?

I put an advisement out through our social media pages looking for an app development company and they responded.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost around $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from July 2017–September 2017.

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

We were very pleased with the delivered application, especially the fact that it was delivered so quickly and had all of the features we wanted.

How did The Mad Botter perform from a project management standpoint?

They were great. They were very responsive to us and finished the project under a very tight deadline. We communicated mostly by email aside from our initial conversation describing our specifications over the phone.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to take the somewhat random ideas I had and turn them into a well-built and functioning application was really impressive. Additionally, right when we began working on the project they experienced a hurricane and had to be evacuated, but they still completed the project on time. That was extremely impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only issue I had last year was that I was not able to send out push notifications myself. However, this year’s platform will feature that ability.

Any advice for potential customers?

The more information you can give them about your needs the better work they will be able to do.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the vice president of a company that provides technology solutions for military operators.

For what projects/services did your company hire The Mad Botter?

We hired them to migrate an old technology stack spread across multiple servers to a unified environment.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to improve our system’s reliability and prepare for future expansion.

How did you select this vendor?

The owner hosts a podcast. It was obvious that he personally had the skills we needed.

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

They provided a database and web-based interface for our inventory, business analytics, and other functions. The project required the use of an existing code base, which was not the target of the new system. Development was done on a virtual server and then ported to our local network. We funded the project on a monthly basis.

What was the team composition?

Depending on the requirements, they had 2–4 developers working on various aspects of the project.

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

They helped improve the reliability and usability of our internal system. While we selected desired technologies and outcomes, they came up with other solutions that added to the quality of the product.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The experience was smooth once we figured out how to work together. The project ran in sprints with expected outcomes every month. We used Trello at first, but that proved inconvenient, so we shifted to monthly reports. This worked better for us.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They were always willing to fix issues and responded quickly to messages. The money we spent got me what I wanted.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

They already made the improvements we asked for, including resolving periodic issues that arose with one developer.