Software Rescue and Development for Advisory Firm
Case Study
Client
SmartPM, formerly Construx Solutions, is an independent consultancy and advisory firm for large construction projects. Their job is to help their clients identify and mitigate the risks of delays, disruptions, and budget overruns. Through years of experience, SmartPM has developed a unique process to capture and analyze critical data metrics during construction projects that are above and beyond what is typically gathered by project managers. This data is analyzed and used to identify risks early and address them before they impact the project.
Business Challenge
To better scale their business and to improve the quality, quantity, and swiftness of data collected, SmartPM embarked on creating an application to put in the hands of construction teams in the field. This application would automate many of the key data capturing and analysis performed.
SmartPM had started working with an independent technical consultant. Although the project was progressing, SmartPM was becoming increasingly concerned by the lack of communication, design collaboration, and necessary testing performed. As a result, SmartPM had to dedicate one of their key resources for managing the project and performing quality assurance testing, issue tracking, and project management.
SmartPM needed a reliable technology partner that could salvage the existing code, reduce the dependency on their internal resources, and offer technical leadership. SmartPM selected us to take over the project.
“The transition was great. They helped us better understand what we needed to do to bring our product to the finish line and make it functional with our business model. If you ever need a software to get built, this is a very capable team that will get the job done, and on time.”
– Michael Pink, CEO & Founder
Solution
Understanding that the project was in a critical state, our team was able to immediately put a team in place to transition the application code and database to our development environment. The transition was verified, and existing technical knowledge was transferred from SmartPM’s vendor within a matter of a few days.
Although time was of the essence, we recognized that delivering an application that could support SmartPM’s business goals was also critical. Our project team took the approach of asking essential questions that could impact the project and product roadmap. The existing code, punch list, and enhancement features were reviewed for potential gaps that would keep SmartPM’s from reaching their vision and long-term goals. As a result of this effort, our project team made recommendations to SmartPM’s about changing development frameworks, adding security, implementing responsive design and converting the application to support Software as a Service (SaaS) by incorporating multi-tenancy and deploying the app in the cloud. With these items included in the project plan, working with SmartPM were able to execute and go live with the project in five months.
We were able to quickly transition the application and knowledge from SmartPM’s existing vendor so that little to no time and previous effort would be lost.
Impact
Once SmartPM’s business vision was understood, we reviewed the state of their existing codebase and the steps necessary to get them to where they wanted to be. The original codebase suffered from performance issues with a poorly designed database model, complex and incomplete scheduling algorithm, no security or mobile support, a single client model, and poorly implemented web service architecture. With a clear plan established, we were able to reduce the dependency on SmartPM’s internal team for managing the project, support SmartPM in their sales activities during development and launch a fully working product utilizing cloud infrastructure in five months.
