Oshyn

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

They’ve demonstrated their technical competency. They’ve been able to quickly resolve issues that couldn’t be handled by our previous contractor. We were astonished when they fixed problems we’ve had for months, in just a couple of days.

In addition to just making things work, Oshyn receives rave reviews from our internal team. The feedback from stakeholders as well as our internal organization has been immensely positive. Our marketing team always has great things to say about them.

How did Oshyn perform from a project management standpoint?

We receive weekly reports and use n inhouse ticketing system to manage our sprints. They’ve been good at leveraging project management tools. They’ve been effective at monitoring and keeping our backlog down.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We have a great working relationship, so they feel like a true partner. They’re very flexible and are willing to work with us—especially during this pandemic when budgets are tight. They’ve been accommodating about negotiating terms and can quickly adapt to business needs.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not really. We’ve been very happy with their work. We’d like to see them branch out to offer web design, but we understand that that’s not really their model.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Try them out first. Make sure that they’re a good fit for whatever you’re trying to accomplish. That way, you’ll get a sense of how you work together before committing to a long-term partnership.

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

The site’s speed increased by 50% and the site was much more stable. It wasn’t going down anymore. The client was very happy with the work and very proud of it.

How did Oshyn perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Jira, and Gustavo was my point of contact. He was fantastic, always easy to work with, and always met deadlines. They were always pretty accurate with cost estimates as well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were the subject matter experts for the site stabilization efforts. All of their recommendations were very accurate. They’re professionals with a lot of expertise.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They had an operations person who wasn’t easy to work with. That’s not a knock on Oshyn — they did a fantastic job.

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they’ve delivered?

Let’s see. Again, from my point of view, when you balance the quantity, quality and responsiveness of the work they do, they definitely meet all of the parameters that we went into the relationship with.

On the statement of work type projects, like redesigning the website, again, after the project was done, it’s all positive feedback in terms of people within our company.

The one metric we could look at is we had some stability problems with our website before we were working with Oshyn. We’ve measurably improved the uptime of our environment by both upgrading the versions that we had and getting everything up to best practice levels, recommended version levels and distributing the Web servers in a different fashion within the data center. I’m very happy with the improved uptime there.

When working with Oshyn, is there anything you would consider unique or special about them compared to other service providers with which you’ve worked?

Again, when we approached Oshyn we weren’t in search of a marketing partner. We really needed an exemplary development team to augment our own capabilities. A lot of the certified partners for Sitecore are more akin to marketing agencies that can develop on Sitecore, rather than Sitecore developers, per se. We knew what we needed going into the relationship, and they’ve been able to deliver.

In retrospect, are there areas you believe Oshyn could improve upon, or are there certain things you'd do differently as a client before initiating projects of this nature?

In any of these relationships, you have to sort of tune them and understand how both sides work. One of the lessons we’ve learned is that given the business model of the retainer relationship and their skill sets, we need to do more preparation. As an example, we can’t just give business level requirements to their team and say, “Here’s what we want to do.” We have to think it through a solution and give them more technical requirements, and then they can execute it pretty flawlessly.

I think that gap is where, as marketers, we’d like to be able to give business level requirements, if that makes sense, and then have someone else to figure out the technical side of things. We’ve found that we have to provide a little more of what would normally be business analyst level task in between, translating the business requirements into technical specifications. When we do that, everything works out fine. When we submit business level requirements to them, it could be a hit or miss.