Praecipio Consulting

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of technology of a private water utility company in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Praecipio Consulting?

We engaged Praecipio’s services to help us migrate to the Atlassian helpdesk and to provide ongoing support for us. We had an incumbent helpdesk that had limited functionality, and we weren’t utilizing it other than for IT ticketing. As a result, we implemented JIRA service management. It has natural ties with the rest of the Atlassian suite, which we’ve been using for tracking and knowledge management.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Apart from helping us with migration, Praecipio also stood up the initial service desk in their own private environment. At present, they’re providing us with support and maintenance services, which involves providing strategies to help us evolve. They’re also broadening their support into other departments.

To sum up, the initial phase of engagement was more on migration, and the second phase has been more around evolution and enhancements. 

What is the team composition?

Praecipio is a small company, so we’ve been working with a number of people in different facets. 

One of their partners was our lead salesperson, and then we were handed off to an implementer who did much of the initial migration and configuration. We’ve also worked with a customer service manager and a person that manages the project in different facets. As the engagement evolves, different people come in and out of the process. 

How did you come to work with Praecipio Consulting?

We wanted to hire a company that’d host our Atlassian software because we didn’t want to host it ourselves on our own servers. Meanwhile, Praecipio had a broad range of expertise with many of the Atlassian tools —  this was their main differentiator — and they were based in the US. As a result, when they offered their hosting services, we hired them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $300,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in March 2020, and the partnership is ongoing.

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

We have no direct metrics because the project is a blank canvas to begin with. However, using the helpdesk, we’ve been able to get into the production of at least one MVP within a reasonable amount of time — I consider this a success. Obviously, we’ve had to iterate past that point, but that’s expected, so it hasn’t really been a challenge. 

How did Praecipio Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

Praecipio has handled the project in a very agile manner, and we’ve had daily retrospective meetings to look at what they’ve done. We’ve met for two hours five days a week for about 5–6 weeks. The process has been high-touch with an iterative approach. This has allowed us to fine-tune our expectations and figure out what we want to do with such a blank slate. 

It has been a good process; it prevents us from being surprised and allows us to always be engaged in the process — I’m sure we’re headed in the right direction at all times. In terms of communication, we conduct daily reviews, so we mainly use Zoom and Slack. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Praecipio really brings a lot of expertise in a lot of areas. They’ve been invested in my success, and I know that I can rely on them to perform and make things work well. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Praecipio’s biggest area of improvement has been understanding our business requirements better. Once we pivoted and found a better person to work with us with a more hands-on approach, the engagement became better. However, the initial challenge was for their team to understand our requirements.