How we ensure that your project is never held hostage by the absence of any individual developer.
Forgive us if the title is a little bit “out there” but this is one of those innovations that excites us no end. It has directly helped us ensure seamless continuity on our projects, prevented deadline misses and saved our clients thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost time and productivity. It is now so much a part of the company culture that we almost never notice it.
The software industry is one with a high attrition rate. Something in the range of 18-22%. This is inevitable. Finding good developers is like digging gold out of hard rocks. Hiring, training, and retaining talent requires more than just the paycheck. While Digital Mesh prides itself on having one of the lowest attrition rates in the business, about 5 to 7% (learn about our People Policies), we nevertheless recognize that life aspirations or even a medical emergency may cause a developer to discontinue on a project.
To prevent such a situation from impacting project deliveries we have in place, what we call shadows. A shadow is a developer who gets temporarily assigned to the project at the beginning. This is done at no additional cost to the client. He or she is familiarized with the project objectives, the technologies used, the coding standards adopted, the milestone targets, and the delivery schedule. The size of the shadow team will vary depending on the core team size and the complexity of the project.
Once the shadows are thoroughly familiar with your project they revert to their previous schedules. They nevertheless continue to receive copies of status updates which keep them clued into the current stage of the project. Around the 6-month mark, we once again bring the shadow back onto the project. We then rotate out one member of the development team and the shadow becomes part of the team. Simultaneously, another shadow is brought into the project and the whole process repeats itself at the next 6 month mark.
This ensures that your project continues seamlessly even in the absence of any individual developer. Another side benefit is that over a period of time we would have built up a team of developers with expertise in your domain thereby allowing us to scale up your team at short notice should the need arise. The success of this seamless rotation policy can be seen in the projects that we handle. We have continuously running projects that have been running for over 5 years without a break. In almost all cases, none of the original teamwork on these projects anymore. Nevertheless the projects continue without a hitch.
Ready to discuss your requirements? Please head over to the Project Enquiry page. The questionnaire is short and will help us zero in on your requirements quickly. You will receive a personalized acknowledgement within 12 business hours.
