CheckMyPaper LLC
First off, I think your own site is eXcellent. When looking for a developer I couldn’t believe how many folks had horrible sites but were competing to build mine – your site was clean, professional, full of details but not too busy; in a phrase, eXactly what I wanted mine to be. Account manager: Rick has been great. He has been easy to talk to, a great listener, and has been honest and up-front with me through every aspect of the build. I hate passive aggressiveness with a passion and appreciate how straightforward Rick has been at every step. When I forgot an aspect of our contract and stepped outside of the bounds of it he called me on it immediately, but did so gracefully and professionally. This is someone I can work with. He has also been patient with my delays with a build that is probably a bit outside of what you normally see; I’m not yet ready to launch and am okay with taking a little bit longer to develop my solution slowly – while this has contributed to our nearly two-year relationship now, I’ve never felt rushed and appreciate that you’re working with my timeline. Project manager: Kurt has been good; I think that our relationship hasn’t faced the need to develop as deeply because Abhi has been far more involved, independent, and easy to communicate with than I get the impression the average developer is. Since Abhi is so independent Kurt is rarely required to step in and interact directly; this is one of the very few things I would change. Not seeing Kurt in action keeps me from understanding what he specifically brings to the fight; I can understand what Rick, Abhi, and Nick’s roles are, but I’m a bit in the dark as to what Kurt does other than coordinate start/stop times with me. I’ve never had a single complaint about what I’ve seen him do, I just haven’t seen much. That doesn’t mean he isn’t behind the scenes working his tail off, it just means I haven’t seen it and therefore I don’t understand it. Lead developer: Abhi is great. Often I don’t understand exactly what I’m asking for or the technical implications of my request; Abhi does a good job of breaking things down in ways that I can understand and demonstrates an absolute mastery of the coding he’s required to do in every aspect of the builds. Lead designer: I’ve had very little opportunity to interact with Nick since we had mock-ups of most of the pages already designed when we started, but I don’t have any reason to complain about his work. It has been quick, professional, and without errors. Overall build thus far: I’ve been very pleased with what we’ve gotten done so far. I have the general impression that I’m getting more than I’m paying for, and a couple of things contribute to that. First, we had a bit of an issue with the lead developer who was initially assigned to me (I think his name was Tom?). The situation with him was resolved in a timely fashion, and one thing that I specifically noticed was that I was not billed for any of the time that he took; although I’m sure that cost eXcelisys money, none of those costs were passed on to me, as the customer. This spoke volumes. Second, although this is my first website/database design/build, I get the impression that Abhi works very quickly for a developer and I’m benefiting from his efficiency. The quality of the work has been very good. There have been several major bugs that I’ve discovered as I’ve thoroughly tested the builds over the past year: some of the functions that were designed simply do not work. However, I recognize that there’s an inherent trade-off here – I could demand an absolutely perfect product on the first delivery and eXcelisys could deliver it… but that would take a lot of hours of testing that I could just as easily, and far more cheaply, do myself. I feel like I’m being given a work in progress to evaluate and give feedback on, and that’s exactly how I like it. I have no complaints whatsoever. eXcelisys materials: Everything I’ve encountered has been professional, attractive, concise, and well-designed (in short, the exact opposite of everything I’m used to working with in the federal government). From the invoice design to the hourly rate handout; from Basecamp to this survey; it has all been incredibly user-friendly. Don’t change a thing.