Focused boot camps key to DevelopIntelligence

BOULDER – With a service that can keep high-tech companies moving forward, DevelopIntelligence LLC has steadily grown to No. 4 on the BizWest Mercury 100 list of fastest-growing companies in Boulder and Broomfield counties for companies reporting more than $2 million in annual revenue.

DevelopIntelligence offers a suite of software training programs and accompanying services that have kept it in demand since 2003. It’s the customized training and added-value programs, however, that have moved the company faster and farther up the ladder to success, said company president Kelby Zorgdrager.

“A lot of technology companies have a hard time finding good engineers,” he said. “We help that with our new-hire boot camps, which lets them hire less experienced people and have them go through an on-boarding program.

“They finish up as mid- to senior-level engineers, and it saves companies money.”

Depending on what a company or its employees need, the “private university,” as Zorgdrager calls it, averages out to be about six-weeks long.

Boot camps are instructor-led with up to 40 percent of a class dedicated to lab time to make sure skill gaps are replaced with knowledge. Courses support up to 16 students and are effectively delivered onsite.

Focus for boot-camp classes includes Java certification, Java web development, Perl programming, mobile web development and Ruby on Rails.

A la carte trainings include instruction for programs such as Java (“our sweet spot,” said Zorgdrager), Agile, Apache, Ruby, MySQL, SpringSource and Google. The training is broken down into courses by skill level, by role, expert-led prototyping and self-paced training.

DevelopIntelligence is developing and delivering a leadership program that’s designed to transform senior level engineers into architects.

“The focus is on how to design software, how to manage teams and C-levels and how to convey ideas,” Zorgdrager said.

In 2011 DevelopIntelligence reported $617,000 revenue. For 2013, that number jumped to $2,046,307 – a 231.654 percent growth.

“I don’t know of anything significant we’ve done to grow other than that in 10 years we’ve changed our business model three or four times,” Zorgdrager said. “We’re now helping more organizations in a different capacity than other companies we compete with do.

“We used to be very transactional – teach a class and then move on. Now we’re training more engineers and having fewer clients,” he said, referring to the work his company does in quantity for each client.

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