Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?
I don’t have specific metrics. Oracle gave KPI their Excellence Award for the curriculum project. I believe that KPI and Berkeley are the first university or government entity that has won that award. I give a lot of credit to KPI for the quality of the work.
How is their general performance?
I felt that the projects went well and that they provided good developers in most cases. We had a couple of occasions where we haven’t had particularly good developers, and we swapped them out for better ones. All in all, I feel good about the way they have treated us and the quality of people that they have brought to our projects.
Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?
They have both an onshore and offshore presence. For us, that was key because there were some situations where we needed to have people face to face, and there were other times when we wanted to take advantage of the lower cost model in having offshore.
KPI Partners managed their offshore resources, which is what they’re accustomed to. We found that [verbal] communication between all of us at Berkeley and the offshore team was important in order to shortcut the whole development process. This was an improvement over having three or four intermediate people who were trying to convey a message. We used an agile development style, and we all got on the phone and talked about what was needed. That worked very well.
Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?
No.
KPI Partners received an Excellence Award for their work on the curriculum. The team generally provided good developers and had the resources to change any developers who were not working well. They have both an onshore and offshore presence, which was key to building a partnership.