Mission Cycling
The Challenge
Mission Cycling is a neighborhood-based cycling club in San Francisco. They were looking to move from a WordPress based blog to a full function community site that would allow them to more easily add custom features that strengthened their sense of community and matched the directions they were taking the club.
Our Contribution
Development Leverage rapidly developed and deployed some of the core site functionality. Our work allowed riders to post details and photos of their rides, award each other Jersey's for excellence, comment on rides, and automatically produced daily summaries of total rides and peak performances.
Technologies: Rails3, JQuery, HAML, SASS, Paperclip, HTTParty, MySQL
Partners: onehouse.net
Examples
BetterMe
The Challenge
To make it easier for their growing user base to get and receive feedback, BetterMe needed enhanced contact management. On the internal side, growth created challenges as well. In the early days, BetterMe handled their email marketing and reporting needs manually. However, as the business grew, they needed to keep their user information in sync with MailChimp automatically and to be able to run management reports at the push of a button.
Our Contribution
Development Leverage developed an Address Book that utilized JavaScript and AJAX to provide a responsive and easy to use interface. Behind the scenes, new users and user profile changes are now kept in sync with the marketing database on MailChimp automatically. Development Leverage also created a reporting system that allows complex management reports to be run offline and mailed out as Excel files when they complete.
Technologies: Rails 2.3.5, JQuery, MySQL, MailChimp, Hominid, Whenever
Partners: onehouse.net
Examples
Professional Aptitude Council
The Challenge
In response to market demand, the Professional Aptitude Council (PAC) had launched it's web products quickly by linking together a number of off the shelf products with PHP. As their business grew, they needed functionality that couldn't be accommodated by these packages and were burdened by a highly manual testing process for each release. They needed new product family that they could rapidly enhance and extend. They also needed an automated test suite that allowed them to innovate rapidly without defects.
Our Contribution
Development Leverage helped PAC choose a core technology, Ruby on Rails, and hire a team that could quickly implement the functionality they needed. In addition, Steve worked side by side with the PAC developers to spec out and build the new web site. Over several major releases in a 10 month period, a completely new site was built that included significant enhancements over the original while smoothly importing all legacy data. The new system was able to handle the same volumes with 1/4 of the server capacity PAC had been using for the old PHP system.
Examples
TV Guide
The Challenge
TV Guide had engaged a global systems integrator to help them design and implement a business critical replacement to their entertainment data repository. The initial release of the software for user testing exposed major misunderstandings by the India based development team of the requirements and substantial quality problems. In response, the integrator made process and personnel changes and proposed a significant extension to the project timeline. TV Guide needed an independent assessment of whether these changes had addressed the problems and if they could depend on the new schedule.
Our Contribution
The Development Leverage team travelled to Bangalore for a one week detailed project review. We interviewed all senior team members, a representative sample of junior team members, and performed detailed reviews of key quality processed. In addition, we performed a detailed review of project management artifacts, monitored daily team processes, and dug into the specific QA scripts and infrastructure. We were able to independently confirm that a number of positive changes outlined by the integrator had been successfully implemented. In addition, we identified a number of additional significant risks and problems that were raised with the integrator. Built consensus between integrator and TV Guide on concrete proposals that led to additional improvements in project processes.
Examples
Private Investor
The Challenge
A private investor had been been approached by a company with an interesting business idea and an initial version of the product. The investor found the idea intriguing, but he didn't have the technical skills to evaluate the completeness of the initial release or what would be required to bring the idea to market.
The information provided as a result of your timely, thorough, objective analysis proved invaluable as the basis for a sound investment decision. Not only did I benefit financially, but the peace of mind I have from knowing I made the right decision is beyond measure. I would not consider a similar investment opportunity without first utilizing your services.-- Paul Miller
Our Contribution
Development Leverage rapidly reviewed the state of the company and product. We clarified the market opportunities the business was pursuing and assessed the technical complexity and feasibility of solving them in the way envisioned by the company. We then reviewed the initial product to assess its maturity and how well it solved the business problem. We also assessed the state of the company and technical team. Our examination revealed material information that differed from the investor's initial understanding and they decided not to invest in this company.
Examples
