Six Feet Up, Inc.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Global Protocol Specialist working for a large National Laboratory. Our programs conduct security training course globally.

For what projects/services did your company hire Six Feet Up, Inc., and what were your goals?

Our department conducts approximately 800 training events both domestically and internationally. We needed a comprehensive system to handle registration and course material distribution globally.

We had been using Plone sites for function but would have to create a new site from scratch every time which was time consuming for our staff. We needed to update our platform and create a simple, user-friendly system for our staff.

How did you select Six Feet Up, Inc. and what were the deciding factors?

Six Feet Up is one of the few companies that has extensive experience using and developing Plone Sites. We have a very unique set of requirements that are constantly changing and Six Feet Up has been able to handle our urgent changes and additions in a timely fashion, at reasonable cost, while meeting our customers deadlines.

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

We starting with a training course for 20 staff members and then moved into system development. We started with a joint three department project consisting of our main Multi-conference System and then added additional work for each department's individual customer's needs.

We then added additional projects for other departments as well. We have weekly meetings on our projects. Six Feet Up also provides us with monthly server maintenance which includes all updates to the Plone software on the updates and additions we request to the system.

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

Our Six Feet Up team consists of six personnel. We have two project managers and four systems architects/development programmers.

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

With the upgrades and additions to our system we have been to streamline our processes, improve our services and product for our customers and bring in new work based on the improvements to our expanded system.

We are now providing our customers collaboration sites that make it easier for them to work together from anywhere on the global which is a direct result of the system improvements work we have done together.

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

We have weekly Zoom calls and use a shared drop-box to keep track of the many projects we have going. We have developed a good working relationship.

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

What is find most impressive is their ability to work with our constantly changing requirements and needs with ease. They are always available to help with any issue or problem quickly no matter what time of day it is.

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

We honestly can say that we have had no issues, concerns or problems with any of work that Six Feet Up has provided to us. They are a complete pleasure to work with.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m with the communications office of the Purdue University College of Engineering. Our responsibility is to maintain prints, designs, websites, emails, and anything that the college uses to market or communicate with its audiences.

What challenge were you trying to address with Six Feet Up, Inc.?

We were looking to migrate our entire web space into a new CMS on the web. Our previous Python-based CMS, Zope, was getting extremely old, having been introduced in 2001. We could design and maintain websites, but we were running into some security concerns and modernization issues. We were no longer able to keep up with the latest trends due to Zope’s limitations. 

We contacted Six Feet Up to help us with the migration process because they had expertise in working with a more modern CMS and because our college has roughly 30,000 web pages, which was a lot for our small team of four to handle. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

By and large, most of the work and the initial discussions were done over virtual meetings but the discovery work was done in person. There were a few instances where their team traveled to meet with us and go over the parameters and specifications details of the migration project. 

Six Feet Up then helped us move into a new CMS called Plone, which is a much more modernized version of Zope. It was the most advantageous choice for us because Plone was also built on a Python-based language, like our old platform. It made more sense, from a cost standpoint, to keep the same language instead of completely switching to something like Drupal or WordPress. They set up the server so that the migration of the 30,000 webpages could begin.

What is the team composition?

I worked with around 5–6 people. Gabrielle (CEO & Co-Founder) was the lead point of contact. There was also her spouse, Calvin (CTO & Co-Founder). Carol (VP of Sales) was in charge of all project management, collecting information, and keeping things organized.

Chrissy (Senior Python Developer) was the lead developer in charge of our project and helped with a lot of the technical aspects. Kim (VP Engineering) worked on a lot of the server setup and cloud aspects of modernizing the college’s backend.

How did you come to work with Six Feet Up, Inc.?

At the time, we were looking around to see what options were available for us to update and modernize our CMS. One of my colleagues attended a conference for the Python programming language, where Six Feet Up was in attendance as a presenter. My colleague saw that they were experts and knew how Python is used in some of the different applications within the CMS we’re looking to move into. 

We began discussing the project with them, laying out the scope and the timelines. From there, they were able to come up with an estimate for us.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested under $350,000, with a $10,000 tolerance.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project officially ran between April 2018–June 2020. We had our final wrap-up just after COVID-19 really started to take hold.

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

We cannot yet determine how efficiently we’re able to move some of our sites from the old framework to the new one as we’ve just started that process and are still getting our feet under us. It’s taken us a long time to move our sites over, and this is still ongoing so it’s hard to give anything specific at the moment. However, we’re very happy and couldn’t have been more pleased with their work.

Our team was very complimentary of everything we've done with Six Feet Up. We've started with additional projects unrelated to this one just because we enjoy working with them so much. It was a very positive experience.

How did Six Feet Up, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

We had weekly meetings where we went over the state of the work and any difficulties we were running into. They had very detailed checklists and were always prepared; we never caught them off guard on anything. Anytime we had a question, they were ready with an answer, even during the early discovery and estimation process. They just blew me away with how well they conveyed their process and expectations.

Anytime we had a request for support or needed more detail, they were right on top of it, every step of the way. They were extremely responsive and when we had a question or ran into an issue, Six Feet Up made themselves extremely available to support us. They responded to emails within a day — within minutes, in most cases, and at all hours.

They didn’t bill us for anything that they didn’t consider to be part of the original scope. They simply fixed issues to ensure that it worked the way we expected it to. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were a very progressive, entrepreneurial-minded startup and were on the leading edge of efficiency, making sure that the time they spent with us was maximized in every way.

Their expertise was impressive. They didn’t just peddle knowledge; they showed that they were passionate about it from the get-go. They always approached any task with enthusiasm and optimism, which we found contagious and made us extremely excited to work with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

This is more on our team than theirs but they could have dug a little deeper during the discovery process and when figuring out the scope. We were asking them to put a quote together as fast as possible which perhaps led to some steps being missed. 

They would’ve come up with an estimate that was a little more on the nose had they asked more questions about some aspects of the project. Then again, that could probably be on us as we should have been ready to give them more information. They delivered above and beyond what we expected and everything was a pleasure. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you’re going to start a project with Six Feet Up, make sure all your ducks are in a row. They’re going to try their best to draw that out of you as they go but it’s always extremely helpful to have a clear idea of what it is you need upfront. You can always rely on them to provide advice on what they think is the best way to move forward, but you ought to know ahead of time what you're looking to do down to the most specific detail. It also helps them quote something closer to your budget.