Nightmare on Dev Street
When you’ve been in business as long as we have, nothing surprises you. We’ve heard some harrowing stories over the years from our customers involving either their own technology teams or outside partners. In some cases, we have had to step in to rescue our clients from the nightmarish situations they have encountered.
Since Halloween is around the corner, it makes sense to share five of the most chilling technology provider horror stories; a collection we like to call Nightmare on Dev Street.
Chasing Shadows
You met with the technology provider, got introduced to their team, and were impressed. You sign the contract, start to work with them, and… wait, what happened to the team I just signed up for? Just like the bodiless specters of lore, these ghostly developers seem to fade into the mist never to be heard from again, leaving your effort short-staffed and behind schedule. The source of these apparitions? Turnover. Employee turnover in the tech industry is notoriously high even among prominent players like Google and Amazon, according to a PayScale report. Chasing these shadows can be a nightmare for your technology efforts. A constant parade of new developers who waste time getting up-to-speed on your efforts before getting down to work is hardly the most efficient road to success.
At 10Pearls our people are an essential part of what makes us different. From our strategic delivery locations to our best operational practices and to our culture, we focus on ensuring that we are not only hiring the cream of the crop, but also retaining them. That’s why we opened the 10Pearls University: Center for Continuous and Advanced Learning which caters to all of our employees’ diverse backgrounds (science, engineering, art, business, and more). We invest in our employees’ growth and providing them the challenges and autonomy to keep them on our plane of existence.
House of Horrors
You’ve identified the perfect vendor for an exciting new technology solution. Everything seems perfect, like finding out your dream house – a charming Dutch colonial in Amityville, New York – is on the market. Your new partner has promised you the moon and the stars for an unbelievable price. What could go wrong? Turns out, just about everything. Before long strange and unsettling things start to happen. The effort you thought you agreed upon suddenly requires more and more work, and you’re tormented by creeping timelines. You’re kept blind-sided, with no visibility. And when the real bill finally arrives… The Horror! The Horror! Tragically, you are so invested in the effort that you feel shackled to your tormentor, trapped in your house of horrors!
Unfortunately, this nightmare is more common than you might think. To remain competitive, some firms will knowingly underbid on your project hoping to make it up in fees for scope changes. At 10Pearls, our Lean Product Accelerator has helped hundreds of companies launch new products or modernize existing ones. Rooted in design thinking and psychology-infused research practices, this low-risk approach is the first step in creating revenue-driving digital experiences for your customers.
More importantly, our one-team, agile mindset ensures that there are no surprises. We conduct daily scrum meetings, weekly touch points and collaborative sprint planning sessions where the customer has full transparency and involvement. This allows our customers to have complete flexibility and understand the potential impact of changes.
Pirates of Innovation
You’ve got a world-shaking idea that is going to help you transform your business, and perhaps even the industry. You engage a technology firm to bring the idea to reality, developing a marketplace or a mobile app. Everything is going smoothly, you’ve got the wind at your back and calm seas ahead. At some point, as you start thinking about filing patents and securing your intellectual property, you find that the firm has no experience helping customers protect their IP. Or worse, the fine print in their contracts give the outside firm ownership of the solutions you paid them to create.
At 10Pearls we take the security of your IP very seriously. To protect it, we employ the latest industry best practices. More importantly, we have the track record to prove it. As a trusted partner of the startup community, we’ve helped a number of venture capital-funded companies file patents, in some cases our developers are even named on the patents.
Beware the Zombies
You’ve started developing a fantastic new mobile app, and your developers say yes to everything you request… and suddenly you are surrounded by zombies! Not the brain-hungry monsters of cinema, but zombie developers who mindlessly travel down the path laid out for them with little regard for the ultimate destination. Imagine taking your pixel-perfect designs to your new partner for them to build, confident that you’ve thought through every aspect of the product. Rather than advising you to spend a couple days walking through the user experience with them, your partner mindlessly starts building. It’s not until after you go to market that you realize your product doesn’t address the users’ needs. Most importantly, you have lost invaluable time building something that was not needed.
At 10Pearls we have a strict No Zombies rule in place. Our contributors are individual thinkers who bring their unique experiences to every effort they work on. We believe in co-creation, working with our clients as one team. We bring design-thinking to the table early on to ensure that we pivot early if we need at the design level. Our process is collaborative, transparent, and proactive. Our development process follows a continuous cycle of build, measure, learn, and improve. We strive to maximize efficiency, minimize surprises, and increase speed to market.
Vampires are real
You expect the relationship with your technology partner to be mutually beneficial, a balanced exchange of value. Unfortunately, that’s not always how things go. Sometimes the relationship gradually transitions, and the changes are hard to notice. Decisions that should be made in a few days end up in limbo for months. After too many wasted months you realize, the symbiotic relationship you started out in has mutated into something horrific. Your development partner has been feeding on your business like a vampire on an unsuspecting victim. By letting indecision fester and spread within your team, your partner has added months and many thousands of dollars to the effort.
10Pearls project delivery teams are made up of innovative designers, savvy technologists, security experts, and QA professionals. Our team is always proactively thinking about and working together toward the end business goal. Ensuring our contributors and the customer’s stakeholders work together as one team requires immaculate orchestration. That’s why we dedicate Product Delivery Managers (PDMs) as the main point of contact with our customers. Our PDMs ensure the entire team is operating efficiently and the product delivered meets the business goals.
Working with a technology partner to build innovative and transformative digital products doesn’t have to keep you up at night. Our clients sleep better and grow faster because we build digital products that deliver results. Reach out to learn more about our end-to-end digital services and begin easing your anxiety today.
