The University of Vermont has a small web team to manage the university’s central web content management system (CMS). They consist of a team lead, a front-end developer, a back-end developer, and a developer who spends most of their time training the various departments at UVM (each of which has the ability to edit their own pages) on how to update and manage their content.
“Basically, our role is maintaining a highly customized web CMS specifically designed with the institution’s need in mind,” explained Tatjana Salcedo, Digital Communications Director. “We have ongoing training [of their internal clients], and we have ongoing work on our Drupal system. We can usually make various updates and take on smaller projects, but we’re not staffed to take on new projects that are big pieces of work, without risking the stability and integrity of the current web ecosphere.
“So when we’ve needed it, CoLab has been able to slot in and inject resources. We don’t hand off projects; we work together on them, but not to the detriment of our daily work.”
CoLab has been supporting UVM in this way since the end of 2020. We call it a Team Augmentation contract, under which the client and CoLab work as one team.
We didn’t just need extra hands, but also an injection of expertise.
Tatjana Salcedo
Digital Communications Director
The Drupal crisis
The UVM website runs on a web content management system called Drupal, which is free, open source, and particularly suited to complex websites that draw their content from multiple databases.
Until recently, The UVM site was running on Drupal version 7. In 2022, the community that maintains and updates Drupal announced that it would cease to support Drupal 7 in 2024.
“We knew we had to migrate to Drupal 10,” continued Tatjana, “but we just couldn’t find the cycles to make any meaningful progress towards the migration. Then suddenly, we had to make plans, and our team didn’t even have time to learn about the nuances of D10, which was scary and worrisome.
“So in this case, we didn’t just need extra hands, but also an injection of expertise. We could have trained ourselves in the technology, but not in the appropriate amount of time.”
CoLab had already done a number of D7 to D10 migrations, so UVM and CoLab joined forces. The migration was completed in January 2025.
Why team augmentation works
“Before we started working with you,” Tatjana told me, “we had a different augmentation model. We would hire somebody on a temporary contract.
“It was okay, but it wasn’t efficient, because we had to go through all the processes of hiring somebody whose contract had a drop deadline. If the work wasn’t finished by then, and what we hired them to do wasn’t complete, what could we do? Ask them to hang around for an unspecified amount of time, when soon we wouldn’t need them anymore? It was a tenuous situation for both the employee and us.
“Not only could we get CoLab on board really fast, but it made more sense, because with the previous model, we could only hire one person, not three. In addition to development, what if we needed design assistance or quality assurance?
“Also, we don’t have a project manager for our website, because it would be hard to justify for a team our size. It really helps that every CoLab project has a project manager.
“When we realized the value of someone keeping track of all the tasks and being able to report back, we had an aha! moment. This model definitely increased efficiency.”
What has been the result?
“Honestly, it’s been pleasantly surprising how easy it is to spin down and spin up again with you guys,” concluded Tatjana. “Especially the spinning up. Your people know our system, so when it’s time for a new project, we just have a kickoff and get back to work.
“This whole system of team augmentation has just been really smooth.”
