How Preemptive Love overhauled its technology environment with Particle41
Problem
Preemptive Love works around the globe, assisting refugees fleeing violence and war. In addition to providing food, education, shelter, and medical care, the organization trains refugees and creates jobs that can withstand upheaval, violence, and quarantine.
Shortly after Preemptive Love’s Chief Technology Officer Jeffrey Tuffield arrived at the organization, he identified several projects that needed immediate attention. These projects related to software development, website development, payments microservices, DevOps, and quality assurance.
“The previous culture of the technology team resulted in the creation of internal processes and technology projects that did not follow best practices,” said Jeffrey. “There was sort of a cowboy mentality that drove development. I needed a vendor partner with broad and deep capabilities to help me get the organization back on the right track.”
The partner Preemptive Love was looking for turned out to be Particle41.
Solution
Preemptive Love first brought Particle41 on board to assist with an artificial intelligence project relating to microwork. The goal was to increase the quality of the code and get the project ready for market. The Particle41 team went to work despite the fact that requirements were never documented.
The next project involved the coding of Preemptive Love’s website, which lacked much-
needed functionality.
“Our website was so hard-coded that it was impossible for the marketing team to update content on its own,” said Jeffrey. “Whenever an update was necessary, the marketing team would have to request the technology team make the change. Not only did the Particle41 team fix most of the code, but they’ve pushed content updates into production in those areas that have not yet been re-coded.”
Developing Preemptive Love’s payments microservices was another critical piece of the work that the Particle41 team engaged in.
“The Particle41 team’s contributions in this area have been great,” said Jeffrey. “Many of our supporters donate on a monthly basis through payment processors such as PayPal and Stripe. We worked with the Particle41 team to develop a process that allows the payment webhooks to grab information from the payment processors and input that information into our Salesforce environment. That was a fairly substantial project, and it’s been very successful.”
The Particle41 team has also helped with DevOps, streamlining Preemptive Love’s complex Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment.
“Previously, developers would just go and make changes that they pushed directly into production without testing. That is obviously not good practice,” said Jeffrey. “Now, with the help of the Particle41 team, we have our environments set up properly, and we have best practices in place.”
Finally, Particle41 helped Preemptive Love stand up its quality assurance (QA) team.
“We didn’t have a QA team, but Particle41 does,” said Jeffrey. “We conducted a workforce development course for refugees, and six individuals showed enough promise to be considered for a QA team. So we brought in a Particle41 trainer to help us teach refugees the skills necessary to excel on a QA team. The trainer worked with these individuals for three months. Today, we have a QA team that operates at an extremely high standard.”
Overall, Particle41 has been an integral partner, working alongside multiple service providers across various projects.
“It’s difficult to imagine Particle41 not being a part of us,” said Jeffrey.
“We have thrown many challenges at the Particle 41 team, and they have consistently shown that they are ready to do whatever it takes to help us get to where we need to be.”
Jeffrey Tuffield
Chief Technology Officer, Preemptive Love
Results
A True Technology Partner
“We very firmly believe that partners working with us are part of us, not just a vendor,” said Jeffrey. “The Particle41 team has dedicated itself to working with us and making sure that we are successful.”
Increased Donor Engagement
“Having our payments microservices functioning at a high level is extremely important because each year, the development team uses the information ported into Salesforce to manage and increase donor giving,” said Jeffrey.
