[Rubyforchange-talk] TROSA

[Bruce Tate]

If they have strong requirements, a motivation to work with us, and a  
strong need, it sounds like a good customer.

-bt
On Sep 13, 2007, at 3:51 PM, Justin Gehtland wrote:

> Trying to reply to this (seeing if it makes it through, now):
>
> That organization is still searching for the right people to build  
> the app, and I think would relish having the help of this kind of  
> group.
>
> Justin
>
> On Sep 13, 2007, at 4:29 PM, Chad Fowler wrote:
>
>> Here's the email Justin Gehtland has been trying to send.  Getting
>> stopped somehow:
>>
>> Recently, we were approached by an organization in North Carolina
>> called TROSA [1].  They are a residential rehabilitation organization
>> for substance abusers who have several businesses that the "clients"
>> work in during their rehab in order to gain work experience and be
>> part of a structured organization.  For example, we used them to move
>> our furniture when we moved, and we buy our Christmas trees from them
>> every year.
>>
>> The scenario is this:
>>
>> They have essentially "enterprise-level" needs.  They need an
>> application to track their "clients", including things like medicine
>> schedules, meetings with doctors and parole officers, tracking the
>> admit process and the questionnaires they need to fill out, interface
>> with government organizations, provide reports for the donors, etc.
>> etc. etc.
>>
>> Their current infrastructure is based on 11 separate Access and/or
>> Excel "applications" strung together will baling wire.
>>
>> Two years ago, they got a grant from (I think) the Kellogg Foundation
>> to upgrade their infrastructure.  They found a company who said they
>> would develop it in .NET Nuke. They spent two years and the entire
>> grant and have no code to show for it, but they have very clear  
>> system
>> requirements for what the application needs to do.
>>
>> It is very module, and could easily be tackled in small pieces, and
>> those pieces have a high degree of possible reusability across
>> charitable organizations.
>>
>> They have a small budget for this, since the whole grant was wasted.
>> They also had unbelievably unrealistic timelines.  When we looked at
>> the spec, we said it would be easily 9-18 months. Their original RFP
>> (from two years ago) gave two months for dev.  Needless to say, they
>> chose not to engage us to build the app.
>>
>> So, they are an ideal candidate because I don't think there is any  
>> way
>> they are going to get something useful through normal commercial
>> channels, due to the lack of funds compounded by lack of  
>> understanding
>> of the nature of the beast.
>>
>>
>> [1] http://www.trosainc.org/"
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>>
>
> ----------------------------------
> Justin Gehtland
> justin at thinkrelevance.com
> www.thinkrelevance.com
> 919.824.5409
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Rubyforchange-talk at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rubyforchange-talk

--------------------------
First Rule of Kayak: When in doubt, paddle like hell

Bruce Tate, CTO

WellGood, LLC, makers of ChangingThePresent.org

office:  512.266.2049
mobile:  512.799.9366
fax:  512.857.0415



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