Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
As Chief Digital Officer at BlueSky Retail Holdings I oversee technology investment and delivery across our Real Estate operations in Chicago, USA. We are a commercially focused business and our technology choices are always evaluated in terms of their direct contribution to business outcomes rather than technical elegance alone.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
The immediate problem was that our DevOps Services capability had become the bottleneck limiting our ability to grow. Every feature request, every new client requirement, every internal initiative was delayed by a platform that had been extended beyond its original design. We needed a rebuild, not a patch.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The scope covered the full DevOps Services lifecycle: discovery and requirements definition, solution architecture, iterative development across twelve sprints, integration testing, performance validation, production deployment, and a structured four-week hypercare period. They also provided system documentation and a knowledge transfer programme for our internal team.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
We had a failed engagement behind us and were more rigorous in our selection process as a result. We asked detailed questions about how they managed scope change, how they handled estimation, and how they communicated problems. The answers were specific, evidenced, and consistent across the team members we spoke to. That gave us confidence that the process was real rather than rehearsed.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Comprehensively. The discovery phase they ran was more thorough than anything we had experienced with previous vendors. They challenged requirements that were vague or contradictory, proposed alternatives where our initial thinking was limiting, and produced a functional specification that our internal stakeholders agreed was the clearest articulation of the product they had seen written down.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
The project management framework was the most structured I have experienced with an external vendor. Sprint planning was tight, acceptance criteria were specific, retrospectives were honest and acted on. The project manager treated the shared backlog as a live document and the risk register as an operational tool rather than a compliance artefact. I never had to ask for a status update.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
On time and within the approved budget. The estimation accuracy was notable — they had broken the work down in sufficient detail during discovery that their forecast proved reliable throughout, rather than being a number that shifted with every change in scope. We received one change request and it was for scope we had introduced ourselves.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
Quantifying the impact precisely is complicated by other variables in our business, but the metrics we can attribute directly to the DevOps Services work are meaningful: session duration up, conversion rate up, error rate down, and our NPS for the digital touchpoint has improved by eleven points. Our account managers report that the new capability is coming up positively in client conversations.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The continuity of the team. The engineers who participated in the discovery sessions were the engineers who built the system. That consistency of institutional knowledge across a six-month project has a value that is difficult to quantify but easy to notice when it is absent. Every conversation built on the previous ones.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Absolutely. With a specific note that the value starts in the discovery phase — clients who approach that process with seriousness will get the most from the engagement. We invested appropriately at the front end and the returns are evident in what was delivered.
