Marmaladesoul

More fun

When you're working alongside someone, you already know what's not fun... poor communication skills, poor comprehension and unrealistic promises. At Marmaladesoul we work hard to have open channels of communication.

• Your project will be given one Project Planner which means one point of contact, not passed along a chain or people but rather one person who will work alongside both yourself and our team to communicate and deliver the best possible results. We give you all the information you need in relation to timeframes, when we will be working on your project and what we aim to achieve each week based on your priorities, your needs.
• We also take pride in our ability to talk both laymans as well as drupalspeak so no matter where you are at technologically we can hear and listen to your ideas and talk with you about implementing these in a way that you understand. We are honest and open and if at any stage we are using technical language that is not understood we are always willing to take the time to explain those terms in order to have smoother and more open relationships. The aim is to provide you the understanding you need to have full confidence in how or what we are building.
• Marmaladesoul also endeavours not promise anything we know we cannot deliver. We aim to give realistic terms and goals concerning each element of your site. We try to be as accurate as we can with our estimates and what we can reasonably deliver within your time and budget constraints. If something looks like it's going to blow out, we let you know. If we make a mistake, we let you know. If things look tight, we're happy to pull in the extra hours needed to make it happen. We desire to meet the goals that we set.

At the end of the day it is about being open and honest. We are still learning a lot about communication but we indeed desire to live up to the dream of having clear, open communication that keeps you in the loop at all times.

More productive

We've tried and tested many models of productivity and feel that we are finally honing our masterpiece.

• At Marmaladesoul, we follow a design methodology carefully crafted to create achievable goals within a project progression. We take small bites of the overall project, allowing both you and our team to feel that sense of achievement in meeting specific designated tasks. We talk with you about your priorities and work on a smaller list within the bigger scope — a list agreed upon by you — which enables our team to remain motivated and productive as we see these items being ticked off. We keep prioritising and meeting the objectives until your site is fully developed.
• Our team has a wide range of skills and we aim to keep on the cutting edge of these skills. Each person is expected to keep up to date and in the loop with the latest advancements in their field. We pride ourselves in excellent coding skills, brilliant design interfaces as well as being heavily immersed in Drupal and it's capabilites. Drupal can be quite fast moving at times so if we don't know it, we will learn it on our own time in order to give you the maximum benefit.
• As mentioned above we assign a project planner to each project which means there is one person who represents you when we have our team meeting to discuss your project. This provides us with one person who is in the know at all times with all aspects of your project. The project planner is like a bridge that connects your needs to what the team is actually achieving. They have a greater sense of what you are feeling and can communicate those desires in order to achieve the results you are looking for. It also works the other way and they will keep you in the loop with what is going on at our end which makes for a more supportive and productive environment.

More empowering

• At Marmaladesoul, we see our relationship with you as ongoing — not just a "here today and gone tomorrow" attitude. We hope to continue to develop your site with addition features, security updates, and generally keeping your site fresh well after the bulk of your project is developed. This means we build your site with the future in mind. Depending on budget or time constraints, we often divide projects up into Phases with Phase 1 being the main thrust to get you up and running. We then begin to implement the various aspects that you have chosen to wait until time or budget can allow them to progress.
• A concept we despise is the cookie cutter mentality. Even though Drupal is used as the under-the-surface base, we desire to deliver something that is uniquely you. We work alongside you to deliver the results you want, from the whole package including graphic design, coding, theming, php, etc or just part of that package — whatever your needs are, we will work with you to ensure that it reflects you and your business.
• The most empowering tool we own at Marmaladesoul is our tracker aptly named gecko as it deals quite well with bugs and issues. Through gecko, we list the specific designated tasks that you have prioritsed for our team to work on. It enables you to see the breakdown of the components of your site into workable and acheivable issues. Once those issues are active, you see the progress of each task and you can add comments and attachments which will concisely provide us with the feedback we need to develop those aspects to your specifications. It keeps you up to date with where specific issues are up to.
• The wonderful thing about using Drupal is that it allows access to features that would have cost many thousands of dollars to create from scratch. Using open-source technology allows the community to give to each other in ways that are empowering to your site specifically. You reap the benefits of other projects developed before you with modules being submitted to the community that will make implementing your ideas much quicker and smoother.
• Lastly, Marmaladesoul has a broad range of industry contacts so if you require a very specific feature that requires unusual skills, we can usually find someone to achieve that goal. We work closely with specifically chosen contractors who have proven themselves time and again in delivering excellent results to our clients. Be assured that if our team can't do it — we will know someone who can.