What they wanted: strategic and technical advice

Mid Devon District Council were developing a new website, and were looking for guidance at both the strategic level, and the technical one. They were using Umbraco, and had undergone some formal training in how to develop with the system, but they were still at an early stage in that learning curve, and wanted some additional support while they got to grips with it.

What we did:

We ran a workshop with the development team, to help them work out what their particular problems were, and then offered them ideas and guidance on how to solve those problems. We made technical recommendations, and offered advice on managing the project, as well as writing some parts of the code ourselves, to lighten the burden on the team who were still learning Umbraco.

What we delivered:

The outcomes to this project were twofold - initially, we helped them to define and identify the parameters of the project, whilst helping them to take control of the new technology involved. Then, as they grew more confident, we offered them a "call-off" contract, in which they bought several days of our time in advance, for the reassurance of being able to call on our help when necessary, in the future. Most of these days were actually used to get us to write code for them, rather than in supporting the team directly, since they had grown in confidence, and no longer needed that level of support. The biggest coding project we undertook for them, was the integration between Umbraco and Civica E-Pay.