Christina Anderskov, Project Manager and Executive Climate Officer

Web: www.worldclimatecommunity.com

Head Office: Copenhagen, Denmark

Ciklum Service: Fixed Project

Project Technologies: Microsoft .NET, MSSQL2005, EpiServer Relate+, Amazon EC2, load-balancing and failover

World Climate Community is an online portal and blog created by the City of Copenhagen in the event of the UN climate conference COP15. The aim was to bring people, ideas, opinions and visions from all over the world together. The portal has been developed and powered by Ciklum.

"Having chosen to engage with Ciklum for our EPiServer portal development it has been a relief to see technically competent, intelligent and pro-active Ciklum employees handle all matters contractual, planning, estimation and development - in a manner most IT-management consultancy houses in Western Europe would be hard pressed to top.

With the first sprints in place you have truly surprised all of us here in Copenhagen! The site is beautiful, functional, exciting, cool, interesting and exactly what our users and partners are looking for. We are blown away by how fast you have developed all of the new functionality – before we just had a pretty graphical interface – now we have a site which we can be proud of!"

Christina Anderskov, Project Manager and Executive Climate Officer

September 2009

"Let me just take this chance to thank you and your team for an outstanding job - we did have a few technical difficulties along the way, but I think this is unavoidable for these fast development projects. Especialy given the very short deadline, I really think you delivered a cool product. We also had great feedback both from our presentation venue at the climate conference and the public exhibition at the City Hall Square in Copenhagen. And you have been very professional and constructive partners during this whole intense period."

Jakob Norman-Hansen, Executive Climate Officer

January 2010

The following is the English translation of the article København flytter It-udvikling til Ukraine from Danske Kommuner (Issue 5, 11.02.2010, p. 32-33) www.danskekommuner.dk.

Copenhagen moves IT development to Ukraine

The Municipality of Copenhagen's Center of Environment has outsourced a software project to a Danish-owned company in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, which means huge cost savings.

By Jesper With

On the occasion of Cop15, the Municipality of Copenhagen initiated a global platform for climate and environmental debates, the World Climate Community. Time was scarce, there were technical difficulties and a delay had already hindered the project. Ultimately, the Ukrainian company Ciklum was given the task to get the site up and running in short time.

- We received the best offer from the Ukrainian company Ciklum, both regarding price and content. The Ukrainian IT specialists in Kiev had understood the assignment best. It was obvious that they had dived deep down into task, says Christina Anderskov, who is the project manager at Center of Environment in the Municipality of Copenhagen's Technical and Environmental Administration. In three months, the project was fully developed and www.worldclimatecommunity.com has since October 2009 given citizens all over the world the opportunity to participate in the environmental debate, also after COP15 ended.

- Ciklum has placed its headquarters in three floors in an office building in Kiev. Here, a handful of Danes sit, with Managing Director Torben Majgaard and Services and Consulting Director Christian Aaen, in charge.

Accompanied by 400 Ukrainian software developers, they offer IT solutions to private customers, primarily in Denmark. In Ukraine, Ciklum has offices in two other major cities, and a total of around 700 employees.

- Our IT guys are among the best you will find in the entire country. Since there are 46 million Ukrainians and great technical universities that each produce 30,000 IT candidates every year, there are a lot of good people to choose from. We try to make our work assignments and our environment attractive so that IT specialists want to work for us, explains Christian Aaen.

TEAM MODEL

Ciklum´s concept is to establish teams according to the assignment in question and then connect them closely to the Danish customer's employees in Denmark. Both e-marketing manager Simon Kaastrup-Olsen from the World Climate Community and Christina Anderskov visited Ciklum in Kiev before the final contract between the parties was formed. Since then, they have visited Kiev three times. The visits have turned out to be a good investment because it has made the contact between the parties much better as they know the faces of their coworkers.

- If you don't know the country, Ukraine can seem quite far away. But it does bust some myths, for Kiev is not further away than Milan, states Christina Anderskov.

ACROSS NATIONAL BORDERS

From day one, a communication and workflow system was set up to avoid misunderstandings and to minimize time losses. Simon Kaastrup-Olsen had a daily Skype contact with the project manager who himself is a developer.

- The division of work meant in practice that I could skip one step and speak directly with a member of the project team who knows exactly what he is talking about development wise, says Simon Kaastrup-Olsen.

At the same time, a small software application was used to share PC desktops so that both parties could see what was going on when specific designs or functions were to be evaluated.

- The most resource-demanding aspect is the dialogue across borders. But it is effective usage of time where time is not wasted on a lot of transportation, emails, meetings and long agendas. It is just about development, and it works, says Simon Kaastrup-Olsen. The method works so well that the two teams are in Skype dialogue once a week.

"We know each other and the project and the challenges so well now that it is all in our backbones," states Christina Anderskov. Ultimately, the project ended up being delivered three weeks before deadline.

THE PRICE IS ONE THIRD

The price of the project is about one third of what it costs in Denmark.

"But outsourcing is about other things than just price. There is no talk of sweatshops and what people might else think," says Simon Kaastrup-Olsen. The municipality of Copenhagen is extremely happy with the project, and Simon Kaastrup-Olsen would recommend outsourcing other public projects.

"It is high quality at a great price. In Denmark it can be hard to find qualified people fast enough for that kind of projects. At the same time, pay and work conditions at Ciklum are good, which is important to us as a municipality," says Simon Kaastrup-Olsen.

AMBITIOUS UKRAINIANS

Ciklum's director Christian Aaen describes the Ukrainian specialists as ambitious, engaged and very willing to go new ways and work hard to become part of big international projects.

"In countries like Denmark and England, from where I have experience, there is probably a tendency to be more laid back. That being said, I must say that the difference between Danish and Ukrainian IT people is not that big. We have a shared frame of reference as Europeans, we can have a beer together, discuss European politics or the European Championships of Soccer. The misunderstandings that do come up due to cultural misunderstandings we solve via our support team here in the house where we have a few Danes who speak fluent Russian and know the Ukrainian culture well," says Christian Aaen.

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