What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
The quality has been very good, and we are very happy. There are a couple of things that were missed, but I pointed them out and they had fixed them the same day. It has been very good and better than expected. When you have had a poor experience in the past, a good one stands out. We have gotten some performance improvement when it comes to page load speed. I think the security configuration is improved and most of all, we can tell that they are very, very good at what they do.
How did Pattern Match perform from a project management standpoint?
I don’t think it is so good, but to qualify that, we weren’t project managing it to death to exact deadlines. We have been flexible; unplanned vacation crops up and something moves from this month to the next. Those things have happened, and I think there has been some slippage. Things haven’t been carried out to the original plan, but in this case, we aren’t troubled by that. We were comfortable that it would take a certain number of months and we were not obsessive about completion to a particular week.
We use Jira. I have a lot of project management experience, so we use Google sheets in place of Excel for planning as well. We also have our planning tool in our own software.
What did you find most impressive about them?
They are very specialized. I think there are 20 of them, and 17 of them are AWS experts with 10 years of AWS experience minimum. Through working with them, it’s clear they’re very competent, so we are very pleased with that.
Are there any areas they could improve?
They haven’t done their part in tracking the project against the plan. They have a list of activities to complete and they will tell me when they are complete, but there are a number of hours allocated to June and allocated to July for example, and I need to have a clear view of what was completed, the time, and what is remaining. I need that and that hasn’t been provided. It isn’t a massive deal, but it would be better if they did that, and it would be better if when I asked for it, it didn’t feel like they were charging me per hour for that information. For me, it isn’t the core work that needs to get done, it is the overhead activity.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
I wouldn’t hesitate to work with them. They are very good at what they do and they’re good at hiring experienced professionals. I would go ahead and hire them.
Pattern Match has delivered high-quality work so far. As result, the platform’s performance has improved. Although their project management could be improved, their clients are pleased with the partnership.