Source Voting Client Review
Jun 21, 2018
Founder, Software Development Firm
Validated By
review summary
Sunflower Lab expertly executes a scrum process and maintains constant communication, easily adapting to scope and budget changes. The sales team didn’t go into enough detail on the project scope at the beginning, which led to renegotiations down the road, but the overall engagement has been great.
4/5
Schedule
5/5
Quality
5/5
Cost
5/5
Willing To Refer
5/5
Overall
Background
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the founder and CEO of a software development agency.
Opportunity/Challenge
What challenge were you trying to address with Sunflower Lab?
We had our own contract developers, but one was having problems and the others were on different projects. We needed a partner to augment our staff, so we could develop some time-sensitive software.
Solution
What was the scope of their involvement?
Sunflower Lab is working on a big software project, developing a web app from scratch that will eventually become a mobile app. They use PHP, SQL, and MEAN stack (except MongoDB). For user verification, they’ve integrated SMS and email verification. They’re also implementing videos and scalability features. The app is modular so that it can be propagated onto multiple servers that use the AWS system and platform.
What is the team composition?
They have a project manager who’s in charge of a different number of developers for each phase.
How did you come to work with Sunflower Lab?
We made a fairly large list of potential vendors and narrowed it down to 30 candidates who we got more information on. We then selected about six to do extensive presentations. From there, our internal team seriously discussed three of them, and Sunflower Lab won.
How much have you invested with them?
We’ve spent around $30,000 so far. It’s exceeded our original budget, but we’ve added requirements to the scope.
What is the status of this engagement?
We’ve been working together since May 2018.
Results & Feedback
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
This product is extremely important, and we’ve been satisfied with Sunflower Lab's work. Any problems have been minor or mostly our fault.
How did Sunflower Lab perform from a project management standpoint?
Our project manager is technically literate and uses a scrum process. We use the agile development process and Jira to track our progress. We do daily 15-minute calls to check the project status and to clarify any requirements or questions. They’ve been willing to handle our project differently, in a way that better suits our goals, and we appreciate that.
What did you find most impressive about them?
I’m used to a very fixed and rigid process for outsourced development. However, with Sunflower Lab, we have the flexibility to change requirements and adjust the budget, and that’s been extremely valuable. It’s a foundational part of the scrum methodology, so it helps to have agile-trained people on both teams.
Are there any areas they could improve?
I would’ve preferred they build the software in a way that allowed us to test it earlier. Because of the way they divided the project in the beginning, we couldn’t run tests until six weeks in.
When we outlined the project, their sales team somehow didn’t address our SEO need, which we assumed was part of the budget. When we began discussing SEO dev, we had to renegotiate because they’d assumed we didn’t need it. We should’ve spent more time clarifying our requirements at the beginning.