What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
So far, we’ve done 4–5 releases to production with them. It took them a little while to ramp up, but since then it’s been going well. There have been no bumps at all with 3 out of 4 of those releases.
We push releases in the middle of the night. The next morning, the support team can’t tell that we’ve released something new. That’s how seamless their work is. While our previous team’s releases would need 2 or more rounds of support adjustments, these releases require none. It makes everybody in the company smile. I’m very happy about that.
How did PSL Corp perform from a project management standpoint?
Organizationally and team-wise, they’re great. We started off using Scrum and quickly progressed to Kanban. That was my suggestion, and they took to it right away. It’s been very nice to work with a team that is excited about using such an advanced process.
I was impressed with their initiative in researching Kanban. One team member was out a few days due to illness, and he spent that whole time researching it so he’d be ready to go with it when he got back. It’s been neat to see that.
Our next step, which we’ve already begun, is to move to more of a DevOps-style process. It won’t involve the Kanban approach.
What did you find most impressive about them?
The difference in work quality, and quality-focused mindset, between them and our previous team underscores that they’re who we were looking for. Our previous team would push out code very quickly, but it was almost always poor-quality. It had bugs and either didn’t fix the original problem or caused worse problems. That meant our actual productivity was low, even though they worked quickly.
We haven’t seen that with PSL Corp. The developers are very careful to deliver a quality product from the start. The QA engineers don’t let errors slip through. It’s been a good, high-quality experience so far. Nothing is perfect dealing with human beings, but it has been very smooth. They’re clearly very interested in making sure that their quality metrics are high.
Are there any areas they could improve?
They ask me almost too often how well they’re doing so they can improve. That’s not a bad thing. The management team has been flexible and willing to do business in ways that are slightly different from their normal process.
There is a downside in working with them that’s also an upside: They’ve developed a particular system to ensure that they deliver a high-quality product. This extends not only to code, but also to the engineers and the teams that they assign. When have requests that deviate somewhat from their system, they push back with the concern that their product won’t be as high quality with that change.
That’s both heartening and frustrating. I’ve worked with teams that promise they can deliver whatever you ask for. That always feels good on the front end, but when they fail to truly deliver it, that’s a problem. So while I appreciate their honesty, they could improve by broadening their areas of expertise. For instance, I’ve requested a Ruby developer, and they’re working on it. But they don’t have that as a center of excellence. I’d love for them to add technologies to the ones they already feel comfortable with.
Though still in the early stages of development, stakeholders are extremely pleased with PSL Corp.’s ability to rise to the challenge so far. The team is highly skilled, well-managed, and has already taken ownership of the project. Customers can expect a dedicated and engaged partner.