Our Services

How We Work

We build open-source community.

Our work is based on the belief that open source, community-owned software most effectively advances the interests of cultural heritage institutions.

We understand the unique complexities of building software for communities with divergent requirements, abilities and resources.

Our primary goal is to support our clients as collaborators, to facilitate connections and to foster learning. This is the optimal path to advancing both the software and the ecosystem that supports and extends it. We're here to work with our clients and the community to get the most out of each ever-evolving open-source solution.

We employ a modified agile development process.

Agile development is an incremental process of creating and improving software with opportunities for human input along the way.

Born-Digital’s basic software installations deliver sites which conform to a predefined set of requirements. When our clients desire modifications to this basic set-up, we collaboratively define, estimate and prioritize these custom development tasks. We then use an iterative process to build solutions in a flexible manner, adjusting as needs change. As development tasks are completed, Born-Digital works with clients to reprioritize and refine the remaining tasks based on information from the previous work.

We build ongoing relationships.

Our relationships with clients rarely end at launch. We offer each client a Maintenance and Support package to keep their repositories running so they can do the important work of collection management and curation. As clients get comfortable with their new systems, they typically identify necessary new features, tweaks to configurations and other enhancements to improve functionality. We’re always on hand to help.

We believe robust project management is central to achieving excellent outcomes.

Our clients each work closely with a project manager who defines the project requirements, acts as a liaison between them and our development team and keeps projects moving forward. We work best when we have a one-to-one relationship between our project manager and a client project lead. We believe strongly in the value of expert project managers to keep projects on-track and on-budget, provide responsive customer service and deliver results that meet and, hopefully even exceed, clients’ expectations.

We operate on a time-and-materials basis.

Beyond the fixed price of our basic installations, Born-Digital bills all work hourly, in minimum increments of 6 minutes. Given the complex nature of custom development projects, we cannot guarantee specific outcomes for a fixed cost. Instead, we work closely with our clients to define expectations, give realistic budget estimates and we strive to adhere to both of them. When we encounter unexpected difficulties that prevent us from completing a task on-budget or on-time, we work together with our clients to determine the appropriate next steps.