The Right Five Journey (part 5)
Welcome to part 5 of The Right Five journey, from concept to product. In an attempt to provide continuity between these posts I re-read the last one and noticed the comment, “in a world of [almost] unprecedented uncertainty”. That just got ratcheted up!
Indeed, regular readers will know we outsourced the development of our product to a software development firm in Ukraine. We made that decision last October/November fully aware of the threat that existed to the sovereignty of Ukraine. One of life’s lessons?
Well, I can honestly say we have no regrets. Every now and again in life, if you’re lucky, you bump into a person or group of people that profoundly impact how you view humanity, what adversity looks like to others and how you deal with its extremes. Our development partner is one such group of people. Here’s the correspondence we received on 2/24 from their CEO:
“Hi Neil,
As CEO of XXX I have to contact you to describe the current situation and how it could affect your business.
Today my country faced an act of war, an attack on our sovereignty and territorial integrity. Thanks to Western countries, we’ve been warned.
We spent a lot of time preparing a continuity plan for our business that includes our people and families. Now everyone is safe and on their way away from potential targets.
We expect to reach our destination later today or tomorrow, but most of our people are online during the trip. Therefore, they will answer you as soon as possible.
A big part of our company is already working from Spain. Also, a substantial part of our company is located in Western Ukraine, and we’re partly operating today as usual. The most of your team members are currently safe and working today.
I hope everything is going back to normal very soon and I’m sorry for the possible delays in delivering your projects. I appreciate your understanding!
If the situation changes, we will, of course, keep you informed of our position.
Regards”
I’ve redacted their name as I don’t have permission to share publicly although I’d be glad to share privately if anyone wants a recommendation for a software dev shop.
This takes “leadership” to a new level doesn’t it? How many of us have had to develop continuity plans for war? Taking care of employees’ families too…
As he committed, the project work has continued and I was informed on Friday that the back-end work is ahead of schedule. Unbelievable.
In addition to supporting our dev partners, the majority of the rest of the time since our last update has involved website work. The structure is in place, the messaging and communications developed, we’ve been working to put that messaging into short videos.
We’re using Synthesia to create those short videos and what a find that has been. Simple to use and amazingly effective and professional. We’ve been able to turn weeks and months of production effort into days. Well worth taking a look at Synthesia if you’ve got upcoming video requirements that fit in their wheel house.
Until the next post…here’s hoping our collective “unprecedented uncertainty” isn’t further ratcheted up in the meantime.
