20/20 Vision

Since 1996, 20/20 vision Europe BV has been engaged in the development and implementation of software to optimize purchase-to-pay processes, i.e. everything from a customer purchase to the final payment. As a former supplier of market leading ERP-software, 20/20 vision has a deep knowledge of financial and logistic business processes as well as vast experience with a variety of financial systems.

We first got in contact with Ciklum in the fall of 2007 and found their 'client own development team' model right for our needs and hired our first developer in January 2008. Ciklum's services and flexibility were of critical importance to our business model, and after having nearshored our development department to Ukraine with Ciklum and further leveraging on some other cost-cutting initiatives, 20/20 vision today is one of the most profitable companies on the market. The biggest benefit however is that we now have a motivated and dedicated team of true 20/20 vision-ers that is focused on innovation and building great software.

The opportunity to start-up in the provinces of Ukraine, specifically in Ciklum's Dnipropetrovsk office, has proven to be a solid decision as we have combined both costs saving opportunity with competent Ciklum's local HR department to get the needed skills at the price that was suitable to us. Besides having our own team that is 20/20 vision's and not some unknown amount of developers, we have Ciklum's organization behind us to help ensure that our team grows both professionally and as team, and this ensures that we continually optimize and educate our investment to meet future needs.

In the mid-2010 there was a need for a change in the team and our development process, and after consulting with Ciklum we have decided to implement Scrum into our development process. To ensure that we get it right the first time we enrolled the help of Ciklum Services and Consulting (CSC) and HR retention consultants to provide us with training and support. The decision to formalize our Scrum efforts and give everybody the same understanding of how we shall do Scrum to support our development was the right one, as we were not experts in Scrum.

We have just started using Scrum but from the very intensive and good training that Ciklum provided on the subject we were able to grasp what this methodology of work processes organization can do for us as an independent software vendor. We are now working with the team on the first sprint and we feel confident that we are pushing the right buttons and are staying clear of 'Scrum butt's...

The two departments, HR retention and CSC, always provide us with valuable feedback in their semiannual Development Interviews with our team, but we also see that the training for our whole organization was an indispensable part for our success. We can say that they have supported us in both ad hoc situations like training and support, but more importantly they have secured 20/20 vision's mission: to make workable and great software.

Scrum will be the way forward for 20/20 vision and we have great expectations in terms of improving output and results, since Scrum allows us to see progress on the project in every sprint. This provides us much more insight into the match with our expectations and the total project planning.

 
Reference date: December 2010