*instinctools

Convert semi-compliant Dita content to compliant Dita content. Migrate the content to the Instinctools DitaWorks SaaS. Create a custom interface for document handling (product linking, publishing, updating, removal) to the www.deif.com CMS.

We selected *instinctools over others as per below:

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• DitaWorks CCMS

TLDR: They used our outline spec to create a user-friendly and robust custom interface. For our custom document handling interface, we provided an outline specification. Instinctools not only implemented the specification, but they also added all the small, helpful HMI elements that makes the interface a pleasure to use. These elements were not included in our outline specification. They also added error checking and messages to make the system robust

Where issues arose, Instinctools was quick to understand them and adjust accordingly.

Onboarding of the team was done very quickly - the team “hit the ground running” and was very quick in picking up their tasks, understanding them, and delivering on them. We were also very impressed with the team’s level of communication and quality of work. At the beginning the team worked pretty isolated from our internal development teams, but once both sides were more familiar with each other’s contributions - integrations worked very smoothly.

Availability and communications were very good, and - based on feedback from both sides, and past experiences with other vendors - it feels both sides understand each other pretty well. On most of the epics the team was tasked with they were able to exceed our expectations in both the quality of work, as well as hitting delivery milestones. We were also impressed with the team’s effort to be involved more, and to reach beyond the areas they worked on.

PM was very professional and well maintained. Goals and timelines were set and understood clearly. On most tasks and epics - where there were no external blockers during development and testing - they were able to deliver on time and even exceeded our estimates. Responses to shifting needs and definitions - which did happen a lot, unfortunately - were quite positive, and the team was able to be very reactive.

Compared with prior experiences with other vendors, we were very impressed with both the team’s level of communication and quality of work. We were pleased with their responsiveness and willingness to be involved in our business.

I believe the team (and the vendor in general) are making a great effort to deliver. So far I have not experienced anything major that I would flag as a major area that requires improvements.

instinctools engineers work on delivering new and improving existing features of our SaaS offering, including dev.ops activities of our cloud infrastructure. Lately instinctools also provide us with a QA automation engineer to help us with our e2e testing efforts.

instinctools does deliver on time and budget. The company proactively asks how they can support our efforts and provide ideas how to help us with very good candidates with expertise that either we requested or that instinctools identified to be missing.

The professional way everyone at instinctools shows when working with them – from the account management to the engineers we work with.

Maybe provide us with an option to buy out their engineers after let’s say 18 months 😃.

A significant amount of customer-impacting bugs were caught by the teams prior to release. They were very autonomous, proactive, professional, and always open to help.

Scope of work was as follows:

• Provide release and feature qualification of our 2 storage software.
• Implement state-of-the-art QA practices.

Technical skills.

Nothing in mind.