Paul’s team transformed Real Colors’ buggy pandemic-era virtual assessment into a robust platform powering seamless HR/L&D workshops worldwide. Over 2.5 years, we stabilized the codebase, fixed critical issues, and delivered “impossible” features that slashed client admin time.
+ 2.5-year partnership
+ “Remarkable” client time savings
+ “Impossible” features delivered
Real Colors, part of NCTI, delivers four-color personality assessments and workshops improving team communication. NCTI serves B2B clients by certifying HR/L&D professionals for healthcare and behavior-change workshops. A small team (<10 employees) manages criminal justice programs alongside Real Colors.
Pre-2020 workshops used paper requiring in-person delivery or mailed booklets. Pandemic forced emergency virtual launch via marketing agency lacking software expertise. Result: functional but flawed platform with heavy admin burdens and “impossible” feature limitations after 2 years of fixes.
Real Colors evaluated US/Europe/India vendors for 1 year. US agencies charged 3X with rigid models; offshore lacked communication/commitment for a messy codebase. Paul Ryazanov and his team won via Trello transparency, European pricing, and confidence in owning a unique virtual assessment platform.
“Ultimately, for us it was finding a team that could confidently look at the back end of our site and look at our virtual instrument and say, ‘Yes, we can manage this project for you,’ even though it is so different than what we typically do.”
Ashley Miller | Technical project manager at NCTI and Real Colors
Key differentiators:
“When we met with Paul and his team and saw the way they function using Trello, the way they project‑managed, I just felt very, very comfortable and very confident that they would be able to take over this project for us.”
The collaboration with Paul Ryazanov started with a discovery and stabilization phase focused on understanding how the virtual Real Colors instrument had been built and how it actually behaved in production. Over the first period – Phase 1 – Stabilization (first 1.5 years), the team:
Once the platform was stable, we shifted into product improvement and feature delivery – Phase 2:
“After two and a half years, Paul’s team initially learned the website, cleaned up a lot of the issues, and then in December, we were able to launch kind of phase two of our virtual instrument and deliver on the functionality and form that our clients have been asking for for five years now.”
Paper-to-virtual transition accelerated as improved UX made digital workshops compelling. Admin/logistics dropped dramatically for HR teams. A stable platform enables competitive marketing vs advanced rivals.
Key outcomes:
“We were able to launch a lot of new updates, and the amount of time it’s saving our clients is really remarkable.”
The company plans to strengthen its marketing and SEO efforts to accelerate the adoption of virtual solutions and expand its digital presence. At the same time, a strong focus will be placed on ecommerce optimization to improve user experience, increase conversion rates, and support scalable growth.
