A Test Worth Remembering
Scenario
Cogstate is a global leader in cognitive science, providing digital brain health assessments for clinical trials and healthcare. Their Lila app — referenced by Bill Gates in his Alzheimer's research newsletter — helps detect early memory decline through a shopping list recall test.
The Challenge
A previous vendor had delivered a dysfunctional app riddled with technical debt. The codebase was poorly structured, untestable and hard to maintain, and internal stakeholders had lost confidence in working with external delivery partners.
Cogstate needed a working version released within three months — without rewriting everything from scratch.
Our Approach
Pragmateam set up a dedicated offshore team to take over delivery of the Lila app, embedding Cogstate's own developer and PM to form one unified team. Rather than defaulting to a full rewrite, we stabilised the codebase by prioritising high-value fixes — incrementally delivering value at every step and demonstrating that good delivery was possible without starting over.
The Impact
Working Lila app released into pilot use as planned, within the three-month target
Continued to work smoothly as a unified team with no distinction between Cogstate and Pragmateam team members, delivering many more versions
Demonstrated that seamless collaboration with an external partner is achievable with the right approach
Cogstate re-established confidence in working with external teams as true delivery collaborators
