MentorMate

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of client digital for a consulting and wealth management company. I’m primarily responsible for the strategy and execution of our client digital properties and mobile apps.

What challenge were you trying to address with MentorMate?

We undertook a complete digital transformation of our platform and had several challenges. Some of those challenges were how we’d identify design talent and integrate UX into our overarching practices to ensure we adhered to human-centered design.

Also, we knew we’d work with newer technologies that wouldn’t be familiar to our full-time employees. Since there wasn’t a large candidate pool in the US, we were looking for partners to help us address the design, resource, and integration challenges and help us extend our development capabilities, especially on new frontend technologies.

Our primary focus was completely reimagining the client’s digital experience and building a mobile application that met our business and client needs.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started by separating a special team to reimagine our client's digital experience. During that process, we engaged MentorMate for design resources to help us as we looked at the competitive challenge, user expectations, and initial prototypes to validate our approach. As we continued the process, we also started growing our modernized tech stack and integrating resources to straddle the design and development. Then, we started functioning in a dual-track design process.

First, our product owners identify the core capabilities and priorities based on the strategic alignment with the business needs. We then create prototypes and designs that resonate with what the users look for. We go through a user testing process, and once we confirm we have the right approach, we hand it off to our development teams. In this process, the design side helps us ensure we understand what we need. On the other hand, the development team ensures the product is robust enough to survive in a production environment.

We’ve been involved in these processes for the last two and a half years. MentorMate has been a growing partner throughout the journey; their UX designers are deeply integrated with our teams, and they now provide several development teams. They’ve brought an outside perspective and best practices around how users expect web and mobile applications to function and people’s expectations of digital tools. Initially, we used Envision and Sketch, but we use Figma now.

What is the team composition?

We currently have over 30 people on our team. We primarily work with our account manager and Denny (VP of Design).

How did you come to work with MentorMate?

Another client used them for mobile app development work and referred them. Also, we used MentorMate on a small-scale project several years ago. Based on the referral and our initial experience, we decided to extend our relationship with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent more than $5 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in October 2018, and our relationship is ongoing.

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

Since we’ve relaunched our client website with the new experience, we’ve seen dramatic growth in the number of users on the platform, visits per day, and deposits done using the mobile check deposit feature. Overall, we’ve seen a massive uptick in usage.

The design is unique to the financial services in healthcare; it’s incredibly regulated and data-dense. MentorMate has listened carefully to our different requirements and unique demands to craft designs and prototypes that answer our needs. Currently, we have production-level reimagined web-based experience and mobile apps that keep pace with our clients’ expectations and business demands.

Also, we’ve been impressed with the quality of the resources and work we get. On the rare occasion we have a resource that doesn’t meet our expectations, they immediately respond to rectify the situation.

How did MentorMate perform from a project management standpoint?

We have a few project managers who are Scrum masters, and they’re deeply embedded in our teams. They come to all our management meetings and do an exceptional job communicating.

We use Jira for project management. Additionally, we use Slack, email, phone, Webex, and Notion for communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their level of partnership is impressive. Also, we have an overlap in time, so we spend half the day working directly with the resources. Their responsiveness and ability to manage our needs have made them stand out from other companies.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Since we have an increasing strain on resources, it’d be great if we could ensure that we have a promising pipeline of candidates for when resources leave the teams. However, that’s probably out of their control.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Approach MentorMate as a partnership; they’ll work endlessly toward shared goals.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Digital Product Manager at Trek Bicycle, focused on a new Rider, Retailer, and Brand platform.

For what projects/services did your company hire MentorMate, and what were your goals?

We hired Mentormate to do iOS and Android development on my platform, which was purchased by Trek in June of this year. I have worked with Menotrmate for many years, building the platform that was just acquired.

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

I have worked with Mentoemate for ~5 years and suggested that Trek continue working with them, particularly on the mobile elements.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

They are extending the functionality of existing mobile apps, rebranding them for Trek, and tying them into the existing Trek infrastructure.

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

2 iOS developers, 2 Android, and 2 QAs.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We are still in active development, but so far, the team is doing a great job of staying on task and hitting all of the near-term milestones. We're happy with the progress and look forward to working with these developers over the next one year-long phase to release this new product.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We are project managing them, and they have integrated well into our existing system and processes. We use JIRA and work in short sprint cycles.

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

Mentormate is responsive, with talented employees and a well-tuned communication and service model. I enjoy working with them very much!

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

So far so good. Nothing to remark on currently. Very happy with them!

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the President and Director of Technology for Easy Song, a music rights and permissions business based in Minneapolis, MN.

For what projects/services did your company hire MentorMate, and what were your goals?

We had an original idea for a music listening interface. We wanted to fuse this unique concept with our industry knowledge to produce a new music streaming service called Giddy. We knew we needed an app for Android and iOS and we had no app developers in-house.

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

We searched online for mobile app developers in our area and out of state. We met with several of them in person and some virtually. MentorMate stood out as the company aligned with our vision and capable of meeting the technical demands of the project. We also liked that they were local.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We had done quite a bit of legwork, creating plans and mock-ups to help define our vision. MentorMate took these plans and designs to the next level, mapping out a development strategy, cost estimate, and timeline. MentorMate's designers improved our designs and simplified the interface. We then developed the app in an iterative process using the agile methodology, organized on the Jira platform. My project manager, Frank, was instrumental in orchestrating the project and keeping us focused. The developers pulled off some impressive technological achievements, and QA ensured we released a quality product on time.

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

We had an amazing project manager, Frank, who took a personal interest in the project and demonstrated marvelous professionalism and leadership. The team size fluctuated a bit but generally consisted of a story writer (forgot what you call them), and roughly two each of front end, back end, and QA. We also called in your cloud professionals to set up dev and prod environments in the cloud.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We have only been in the iOS app store for less than a month. It's too early to say, but we are optimistic. I am happy that the finished (MVP) product "hangs with the big boys". It looks top-shelf and like it belongs beside Spotify, Apple Music, Google, and Amazon.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

My project manager, Frank, was amazing. He took the project personally and treated it like his own company. He would challenge my thinking, but always respectfully. We were teammates working to build the app/company together. I now consider him a friend and we meet out of work as well. The project management itself was done in Jira.

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

Two things. 1) They seemed to personally care about the project as if they were a part of my company. 2) They technically pulled of some very challenging feats. Namely, creating a totally new and unique user interface, unquestionably requiring heavy math, time, and geometry calculations. Also connecting to third party services Apple Music and Elastic Search. And finally making everything run smooth and FAST.

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

Looking back over the 2.5 years together, I wish the big picture had been mapped a little better. It felt like there was quite a bit of work thrown away, which was unfortunate. I suspect they could argue that my strategy pivoted and forced the throw-away. Still, I think the coding could have been done in a way that assumes it's going to go the distance (built modularly, to avoid throw-away work). For example, even though we determined we were building a proof of concept, I don't see why we apparently (mostly) started fresh when we decided to keep going and build the MVP. I suppose this is largely unavoidable, but still it's a little frustrating in retrospect. I don't blame MM much for this, but I think it's a small area where they could improve.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Bind Benefits was acquired by UnitedHealthcare in 2016. Its whole purpose is to bend the healthcare cost curve by introducing new, innovative, and on-demand health insurance products to the market. I am the VP of technology in the company.

What challenge were you trying to address with MentorMate?

We didn’t have the ability to ramp up a local development team at the pace that we needed to get our project moving, so we turned to MentorMate.

What was the scope of their involvement?

MentorMate provided full stack development services. We started from scratch but we had a basic architecture in mind that needed to be built from a product-driven perspective. They helped us spin up multiple scrum teams to build out the frontend of our Angular web application as well as our mobile app. We decided to go with a Java stack for our backend, and MentorMate provided the resources for that as well.

They also provided quality engineering services. A lot of times, the industry refers to it as QA, but QA has  a legacy association with manual testing which we don’t do. Everything is automated on our end, so we had their team perform the automated testing on our platform. 

In order to set up our pipeline, MentorMate also helped us with platform engineering work. 

What is the team composition?

The current team size is 65. We’ve had three waves of hires; from the initial scrum team of 6–7 people, we’ve ramped up to bring in six more, and then four more shortly thereafter. That was a three-month ramp-up in early 2017. Over the last few years, we’ve expanded and streamlined our product teams as we began to need more staff. 

How did you come to work with MentorMate?

When this engagement started, MentorMate had a pretty decent and proven track record of delivering high-quality software engineering talent. I did some offshore resourcing in a previous company and had really good luck with the European talent pool and work ethic, so I decided to give it another shot for this project. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spend about $4 million a year on their services. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2017, and we are still engaged with MentorMate.

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

Our team as a whole is split half-and-half between onshore and offshore, so I can’t say that we have any particular metrics to show that MentorMate’s presence has resulted in greater success for our team. Our relationship with MentorMate has become more of a partnership; their team is purposely embedded with ours, and there is a blurry line between our onshore and offshore resources. 

We do measure our team’s velocities as well as the quality of their work in terms of defects that have been introduced into the production environment, but we cannot attribute either of those from a contribution perspective. I will say, however, that a lot of our product owners, if given the choice of staying with our onshore team or with the MentorMate, would definitely choose the latter.

How did MentorMate perform from a project management standpoint?

We’re in constant communication over Slack, and we hold meetings over Zoom. Our correspondence is pretty much nonstop during our overlapping business hours, but there’s a fair amount of communication outside that timeframe as well. Most of the people at MentorMate are pretty dedicated people and will sometimes answer during the wee hours of the morning when they see that we’ve messaged them on Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

MentorMate provides really good, dedicated talents that possess a strong work ethic. We appreciate that they not only recruit and onboard for us but also do specialized training for the resources they provide. What’s more is that they tailor this specialized training to cater to particular team deficiencies that we have on our side. There is a great integration experience there.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there’s nothing they could improve on. Even their geographical distance is a small issue against the overlap of hours and tools that we have between us. Our communication and hand-off procedures work quite well. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that you approach this more as a partnership than a contracting relationship. From experience, I can say that there are a lot of rewards to having MentorMate embedded into your own team rather than having them as contractors that you hand off tasks to. This will not only enable you to engage with their higher-level people when it comes to design decisions but will also give you the benefit of working with a company that understands your requirements, goals, purpose, and mission. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the principal designer and design manager for a tech benefits broker. We help broker different benefits plans for various startups.

What challenge were you trying to address with MentorMate?

We hired MentorMate to help build a CMS and marketing site for us back in 2017. 

What was the scope of their involvement? 

MentorMate helped build out a WordPress CMS. We provided the general look and feel for the marketing site through Sketch files, putting them on InVision to do some prototyping. Their team was responsible for the staging site for the marketing site where we’d test out WordPress and the actual HTML responsiveness. They put together the raw design files from our prototype and developed some of the frontend.

In terms of the tools integrated, there was PathFactory, which helped clients understand what our company did and how we helped people. They also did our web forms through a Marketo integration.

What is the team composition? 

Our main point of contact was a project manager left in the middle of our project. We were reassigned another manager from there. Also, there were 3–4 developers working on the project — one might’ve been handling certain pages while another might’ve been doing the contact form. It felt more random than I would’ve liked.

How much have you invested with them?

It was about $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in early 2017 and ended the engagement in late 2018.

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

Both PathFactory and Marketo helped us communicate with our customers, but I don’t know the exact numbers off the top of my head.

As for the development, the feedback loop was basically going over the code or the look and feel on the browser as well as troubleshooting WordPress. I should note that a lot of our internal team had not used WordPress previously besides as a traditional blog. Using WordPress for an entire site was different — and it was difficult for some of our team members to wrap their heads around.

How did MentorMate perform from a project management standpoint?

I wasn’t as thrilled about their performance here because we had to switch project managers in the middle of the project. I’m used to working with 1–2 main points of contact, and when that person left, I remember having to work with the new project manager to get them up to speed. I had to remind them of everything that we’d done, which wasn’t a great experience for me. In the end, we still got the site up.

We primarily communicated through Trello, Jira, email, and Google Meet. They were pretty good at responding to emails. However, there were some things that I had to follow up on more than I liked. For example, they might say that they’d get a component done on Friday, but nothing would change on the staging site. I’d end up having to send a follow-up email that night, and then I’d usually get a pretty quick response after.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were a larger organization, so they were definitely staffed well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

My number one comment is keeping the project manager down on the project from end to end. I also think they could’ve stuck to the timelines a bit better.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be really clear and upfront about your goals and timeline. Maybe we didn’t do as good a job early on there, which might have led to a couple of bumps in the road. Setting up more calls might also be helpful in getting the project off the ground.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the miniatures manager for a tabletop miniatures game company.

What challenge were you trying to address with MentorMate?

We hired MentorMate to help us rebuild a platform that we use as a gameplay aid. That particular app allows players to pick and choose from the collection and create squadrons to play against their friends in a tabletop strategy game.

The app was originally developed by another company, but there were some significant issues with the UI/UX. It was difficult to navigate the menus and the features weren’t great. Although users could access the app through the web or through their mobile devices, there were significant problems with the mobile platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

MentorMate overhauled the platform, making it more user-friendly and less prone to bugs.

We sat down with Jake (Senior Experience Designer) and discussed the project. We even played the tabletop game do he had a better understanding of how the game worked and how all of the gaming materials in the app relate to the tabletop experience. From that point, he worked with the rest of the team to redesign and develop the platform. Now the app can be accessed through an iOS or Android device or the web.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Jake and Suzanne (Senior Project Manager). Designers and developers in Europe. We had a point of contact in charge of different aspects of the project. One individual focused on graphics and visuals, while others worked on the database and backend, UX, and menus.

How did you come to work with MentorMate?

The previous company we worked with was solely located in Europe, which created some language barriers and time zone challenges. When we started looking for a new partner, we wanted a local company so we could go to their office and communicate freely with them. Although a lot of MentorMate’s team is located in Europe, their local points of contact were just across town. We looked at several different options nearby, but at the end of the day, MentorMate was the team we wanted to work with.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $50,000–$200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Development took about 11 months, lasting from December 2019–November 2020.  

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

Overall, I was pleased with the results. The quality of their work was good. It was really important that different aspects of the app looked or functioned a certain way for the game, so it would have been challenging to design it if you weren’t an expert in the game itself. MentorMate did a good job of asking questions in order to figure out the best solution.

How did MentorMate perform from a project management standpoint?

Generally, they were very professional. Suzanne maintained organization, kept everyone up to date, and coordinated everything. We worked in sprints, so we set weekly goals and they focused on immediate deliverables. Then, as they completed each task, we would move on to the next one.

They had some general systems in place to track each task. Because there were so many different aspects of this project, they had to be very detail-oriented. They did a very good job of keeping things on track and providing us with updates. They were transparent about the cost and often gave us several different solutions to choose from to keep the price low.

Overall, correspondence was on-point, but we did run into some snags due to communication and efficiency issues. However, the team was eager to help out and fix problems.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were eager to find solutions and were very flexible. We faced several challenges, and they were able to identify several different ways to resolve them. At one point, we had a massive spreadsheet with tons of data points that needed to function together, and they were able to handle it. Even in those situations, they were efficient and maintained their composure.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Of course, things fall apart every once in a while. There were some instances when they didn’t communicate how difficult it would be to achieve certain deliverables. A few times, we were surprised by hidden costs. Had they focused more on that during discovery, we could have avoided that. This was uncommon, though. Generally, I was very happy with their work.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a partner at a boutique consulting firm. We focus on the education industry, primarily in the K–12 public sector. We do HR consulting and work with educators on the teacher-principal-leader spectrum. 

What challenge were you trying to address with MentorMate?

We’re developing a mentoring platform called Torace. At the time, we’d completed an in-house proof of concept as well as a prototype and felt that we were ready to take things to the next step. We opted to go with MentorMate to develop a scalable, potentially widely distributed piece of software for us.

What was the scope of their involvement? 

MentorMate developed a mentorship management solution for educational institutions. Initially, we came to them with a prototype that we’d implemented in a few places, talking them through what we’d done and what we wanted to do. That included some code that we’d developed, screenshots of our rudimentary platform, and customer research.

MentorMate then guided us through their design phase. We went through journey mapping, developed user personas in much greater detail, and created wireframes. Once we transitioned into full-scale development, they built a cloud-based app in AWS and released the product. We also had them design and develop our marketing website, which was a Jamstack solution.

What is the team composition? 

At the peak of their involvement, there were around 15 people who rotated in depending on our needs. They assigned a business analyst, a project manager, two backend developers, a frontend developer, a full stack developer, three QA specialists, a designer, and a software team lead.

How did you come to work with MentorMate?

When we made the decision not to staff up internally, it was a natural step to start looking at companies that specialized in this kind of application development. 

There were a lot of US-based companies that did impressive work in this space, but we were drawn to MentorMate because of their unique value proposition. They followed an integrated offshore model where they had a team in Bulgaria that was part of their main group. The potential value there coupled with our due diligence on their references and past work led to our decision.

We didn’t jump into the engagement on the development side immediately. Instead, we worked with them from a design perspective to build confidence in their understanding of the solutions that we wanted to build and their ability to execute on them.

What is the status of this engagement?

After our initial conversations, we made it up to Minneapolis for an in-person working session sometime around January 2020. The initial MVP development lasted from March–September 2020, which was a major milestone for us. Then, they did our marketing website between September–November 2020. We’ve since transitioned into continued production and engineering support.

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

We’re in the midst of rolling out the product through various soft launches. Anecdotally speaking, we’ve received feedback from non-tech-savvy educators who’ve found the UI to be very intuitive. Our core administrative users have also found the feature set to be compelling.

As we talk with both current and prospective customers, the solution’s flexibility has been really positive from a technical standpoint. We’ve had no bugs come out due to the system nor any downtime. It’s just been solid and reliable in its performance.

How did MentorMate perform from a project management standpoint?

They managed the entire project really tightly but not in a way that felt overly restrictive or unnecessarily process-driven. It was one of those scenarios where we knew where the project was on any given day. We understood where our sprints sat within the larger time frame. 

That level of professionalism was impressive. We knew what to expect going into every meeting, and it was clear that they had internal stand-ups prior to our meetings because they always seemed prepared. There was never any wasted time, and they took advantage of the Bulgarian work schedule well. 

I’d also say that the communication was really fluid. It wasn’t limited to one point of contact, but rather, we could Slack anyone on the project team at large. It was clear that people could communicate with us as necessary, and there were regularly recurring structures around our budget and testing plans.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were really impressed with the steps that they took to understand exactly what we were trying to accomplish. It went beyond understanding our requirements. Instead, they’d ask themselves, “If I were this type of user, what would I try to do? What would be the pain points?” That really allowed them to point out potential unintended consequences, thinking through if we needed to test a functionality because there could be downstream implications. 

It really felt like every team member was bringing their expertise and creativity to the floor. They weren’t just delivering to our user acceptance criteria but rather pushing us during the development to consider other cases. It really helped us achieve an outcome that we believed in and felt good about.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, this really was a great experience, and we’re still working with them now. We’re hopeful that we’ll be able to work with them again on another sizeable enhancement to the product.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The more time you put in at the front of the project, the better. It always takes a little bit of time for a team to reach optimal efficiency, so you should try to make yourself available or get another decision-maker involved in those early design calls to sync up with their team. That will help as you convey what you’re trying to do, and it allows them to be solution-oriented.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the SVP of a sports organization that organizes and displays live sporting events, specifically in the media operations and technology group. My team is responsible for broadcast operations and engineering all the way through to digital products. The latter applies to software and development for our owned and operated direct-to-consumer products.

What challenge were you trying to address with MentorMate?

As part of a new initiative, we’d signed a partnership with Microsoft to rebuild our owned and operated platforms. The project would help us refocus on our direct-to-consumer side with the end goal of better supporting and enhancing our customer base. Ultimately, we wanted to have a direct relationship with our customers.

MentorMate helped us reevaluate the DevOps processes, tools, and services that Microsoft had to offer as part of their cloud environment while we transitioned from an open-sourced methodology to a more Azure-centric experience. They acted as an independent voice in the project, sharing the pros and cons of a Microsoft toolset versus other tools in the market. 

What was the scope of their involvement? 

For this analysis project, MentorMate compared the Microsoft Azure DevOps tool that we had in place against other competitors, both open-source and commercial.

The first step was to understand our requirements and needs from an internal standpoint. There was a lot of greenfield in what we wanted to do going forward, so they needed to know that what we were doing at the time shouldn’t necessarily govern what we’d do in the future. Frankly, this was an opportunity to reinvent our processes.

From there, MentorMate evaluated various tools across 4¬–5 DevOps toolchain components, including repositories, pipelines, artifacts, agile boards, and test plans. They created a weighted Pugh Analysis Matrix across each item based on the features and functions that we deemed important. Then, they did the hands-on work of going through the tools to see if they did what they said they did and how well they met our division’s specifications.

MentorMate’s final presentation covered the results of the Pugh Matrix along with a set of recommendations that showed us where Microsoft’s DevOps tool stood among others in the market. 

What is the team composition? 

We worked with 4–5 resources depending on the project cycle. An on-shore executive oversaw the program, and there were 3–4 domain experts from their Bulgaria office. The combination of on- and off-shore teams allowed us to have a little bit more cost containment.

How did you come to work with MentorMate?

MentorMate had done some fantastic work for one of our member teams, so their name came up a couple of times during our discussions. It was an easy decision because they were a preferred Microsoft partner, provided end-to-end software delivery, and had the experience and capabilities to deliver this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from May–August 2020. The hand-on work ended in July, but the final presentation didn’t come until later.

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

The quality of their output was exactly what we were looking for, from the methodology to the groundwork and final output. In many ways, they’d approached the evaluation from angles that we wouldn’t have thought of ourselves. That’s why we brought them in as consultants — to fill out the gaps where we didn’t have that internal expertise.

How did MentorMate perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed very well. The executive touchpoints were once a week, and we had direct Slack channels with the engineering team. That allowed for constant communication between our questions and answers. We also used Confluence for the more formal deliverables. Because they had an off-shore team, they accommodated us by shifting some of their work times to better match ours on the East Coast.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It was the quality of the output. They were professional throughout, and, quite frankly, we received exactly what we asked for (with a bit more than anticipated) on time and within budget.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Had we had the foresight of what MentorMate’s approach would be, we might have included a few more things earlier on. We would’ve expanded the scope to include cybersecurity tooling, looking at how it relates to our DevOps pipeline.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Let them share their full capabilities and describe what they have to offer. They’re a full-service organization that can tackle anything from design all the way through to deployment support. Even though we only did a short-term project for one particular discipline, I suspect that they’d be equally competent in all of the services they offer based on the success we had with them.

Please describe your company and your position there.

CIO for a manufacturing company that manufactures custom products for homes and businesses.

For what projects/services did your company hire MentorMate, and what were your goals?

To develop an solution that would allow our customers to easily order our customized products, plus be easy to maintain and provide real-time visibility of orders.

How did you select MentorMate and what were the deciding factors?

We wanted to use modern web-based technology with a current and fresh look and interface. We did not have the internal staffing and expertise to build this, so we developed our requirements and met with several companies. MentorMate had the expertise, the available staffing, and were able to show us other solutions they had developed for other clients that were very impressive.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We had ancient existing systems that handled some of this, but they were limited in their functionality and expensive to maintain. We wanted to replace our internal system and that of a 3rd party vendor with a single system, which would reduce our complexity as well as maintenance.

We followed the agile methodology, with daily stand up meetings, two-week duration sprints with reviews of the application, requirements gathering and review meetings, and user involvement. The key deliverable was a single web application that provided all the functionality and could handle different user roles as well. Main technology was C# with a SQL Server database, plus integration of Azure AD to provide integrated single sign on.

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

About 10. We had a Project Manager, Architect (early in the project), Senior .NET lead, several .NET developers (back end and front end), a QA lead plus another QA person when needed, plus a business analyst.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We were able to completely sunset our old order entry system plus not renew a contract with a 3rd party that was giving us headaches. Our customers were able to quickly learn the new application, and we have received numerous accolades.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

We used Jira to track all tasks, timelines, and deliverables. A sprint planning meeting was held every two weeks as well as a backlog review. We were able to know what was being worked on each week, plus we had the opportunity to suggest changes based on our observation and testing of each release of the application. The PM we had kept everything on track, and challenged the team to get key components done when we ran into some challenges.

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

They have a great staffing model and were able to understand our issues. They were able to provide excellent staff members (developers, PMs, analysts) and not just bodies lacking key skills. When we had to replace a person they found just as good of a candidate to replace the person leaving.

The PM did an excellent job understanding what we were looking for in a solution, and asked a number of hard questions and gave his input. We ended up changing our approach on a number of items after hearing and thinking about his input and ideas.

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

We had some issues with our requirements not being captured and organized, and we had to scramble to find our copy and resupply them. Once we paid more attention to make sure we were providing everything we stopped having this issue.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of education delivery and technology solutions for an education nonprofit. We’re focused on supplemental education for k-12. We help students own their own economic success by providing course on financial literacy, work and career readiness, and entrepreneurship. We build programming and solutions for hundreds of nonprofits across the country. We use a unique volunteer model, in which volunteers come in to create content that enriches the learning experience.

What challenge were you trying to address with MentorMate?

We were redeveloping a virtual program from what used to be an onsite program. The program helps students learn about what they need to be an adult, such as budgeting, spending, and balancing budgets on a monthly basis.

What was the scope of their involvement?

 We’ve also done some technology architecture with them. They helped us figure out what our long-term technology infrastructure would look like to help us evolve and meet future goals.

They’ve also built an evaluation engine that allows us to do real-time, data-driven, evaluations through student assessments and surveys to measure impact. Now they’re helping us with virtual volunteering to help us through the COVID-19 crisis.

Our infrastructure is based on Azure and .NET.

What is the team composition?

Lucille has always been the project manager and Clint is the account manager. The team changes things based on the sprint cadence and what we’ve needed. So we’ve also worked with some QA people, engineers, and designers.

How did you come to work with MentorMate?

We went through an RFP process and MentorMate was th3 best company we came across.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $1.5 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2019 and the work is ongoing.

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

They finished up delivery, but we’re beginning continuation engineering as we roll that product out. They’re a great organization. They listen well and have helped us figure out the best solution. They’re intent is really to guide their partners and foster a good relationship. They’ve bought into our mission and have engaged in our success.

How did MentorMate perform from a project management standpoint?

They followed an agile project management process. They’re constantly looking at how we’re building out our technology. We’ve had multiple projects with them in which they really stepped up to be the partner we needed.

If there’s an issue and we need a resolution, they’re always calm and roll up their sleeves to solve any issues.

They use a lot of project management tools. I particularly liked Jira to track stories. They have daily stand-ups that we’re invited to, and they have monthly management meetings. If I raise a flag when there’s an issue, they respond right away. The cadence of our communication is great.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most successful vendors are willing to spend the time with their clients and are really engaged. MentorMate really listens and focuses on our mission and shows how they can help. For example, they adjusted our project to incorporate a new design that would improve the engineering and help us meet our goals.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We did face some challenges with a few resources. With any organization, I think there may be some communication issues. They do outsource some of their stuff, and communicating across language barriers was tough sometimes. I think we could get ahead of some of those things. Whenever we raise an issue, they deal with it quickly.