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Customization Request Process

Many of our customers are not only excited about our feature-rich platform, but also because we offer a service to custom build and/or change features on their platform. This allows our customers to add functionality that is tailored for how they are planning to run their LMS platform in relation to their business operations, something that is incredibly rare in the LMS industry. Instead of needing to hire a web agency to develop an entire LMS from scratch, our customers can use our core platform and build the most-needed custom functionality on top, saving a lot of money and time.

Customers that are looking to request changes to their platform will have to initiate our Customization Request Process. Academy of Mine is going to help customers work through the requirements of the functionality, evaluate what the platform offers out of the box, consider potential workarounds, build a custom specification for the development work to be done (which includes a price and estimated timeline for release), and schedule the work.

It is important to understand that we expect customers to spend the time needed to work through the details with our team in order to avoid unexpected surprises or complications down the road. Below is the process at a high-level: 

Customization Request Process​

  1. In order to request a customization or change to the platform, reach out to [email protected] indicating what functionality you are looking for and why. The support team might be able to point you to where you can already find this functionality, or perhaps suggest some easy workarounds. If, however, the functionality does not exist and has to indeed be coded for you, they will give you a range of hours of the cost associated. This is of course a preliminary cost estimate that will be adjusted once requirements are clarified, but we want to make sure there are no big surprises for you later.
  2. Once you have decided to move forward with the custom functionality, we will work with you to build out the requirements. This process can include some back and forth - depending on the size and scope of the functionality - as we will want to fully understand what you are looking for, so we can present the best, or perhaps multiple approaches, considering budget and timeline. These requirement discussions generally happen over email, as well as on calls, as needed.
  3. Then, we will create a specifications document, which includes the cost and target date. We will ask you to thoroughly vet the specification details, including the assumptions and open questions included in the document, as this will be used directly by our development team to build the functionality. Discrepancies between the desired functionality and the specifications have to be addressed here.
  4. Once we have confirmation on the specifications and details, we will loop in Accounting to handle the payment, and schedule the work with our development team. If there are any questions that our development team may have during the process, we will reach out to you for clarification.
  5. We will reach out to you once the functionality is ready to be tested. The target release date included in the proposal is a tentative release date for User Acceptance Testing. That means the development team has completed the initial build, has completed testing, and will now present it to you for testing and sign-off. Depending on the activity on your platform, the development team may decide to deploy the functionality on a temporary staging environment. This is to ensure that, if there are unexpected issues, the live platform and users are not affected. It is very important that you take the time to go through the new functionality and to confirm that everything is working as intended. Only once we receive sign-off can we deploy the functionality on the live platform and close out the work item.

Important additional details​

  • By default, any change request will be considered a paid customization. In exceptional cases, the team can decide to provide small functionality as a courtesy. Furthermore, we may be aware of similar functionality that has been provided to a customer in the past and can suggest a direct copy of that functionality. This does not eliminate all costs as there is still work involved for requirement collection, extracting existing code, technical analysis to prevent code conflicts, deployment of the code, and testing, but it may significantly reduce the total fee.

  • The hourly fee is set at $125/hour. Our minimum customization billing starts at 8 hours, depending on the complexity of the item.

  • We calculate the target release data based on the development hours required and development bandwidth available.

  • We do not develop multiple customizations for a customer in parallel. Instead, when a customer has multiple items that they want developed, we will tackle each item one-by-one.

  • When feature items in your Academy of Mine contract have been agreed upon, they will be listed in a Statement of Work. If the requirements listed in your Statement of Work (SOW) remain in the initial scope, there will be no additional costs. However, if the scope of the SOW changes and supplemental work is deemed necessary, additional costs may be incurred.