Altalogy

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Cofounder and CEO of Flume Internet - we are a last-mile broadband provider based out of NYC. Our company builds customer data center networks and helps cities take advantage of underutilized fiber infrastructure.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Altalogy?

We hired Altalogy to help us build our OSS and BSS and other internal management needed to run our company.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was the build an MVP and then iterate on it to be able to facilitate the day-to-day operations of an internet service provider. The system would manage building records, schedule installs, as well as managing subscriptions and plans.

SOLUTION

How did you select Altalogy?

We bid the project out to a few other software dev shops and Altalogy was by far the best price. We had also worked with them before in the past.

Describe the project in detail.

Altalogy helped us build the Flume admin portal. This is the portal where employees go to manage projects and installs in our network. In addition, Altalogy built the front end survey where customers select whether or not they can buy our service off of the website. The admin portal has employee access and is where Flume operators will go to check network project details.

What was the team composition?

The Altalogy Team had one PM (Dawid) as well as one developer (Tom) and one designer (Marta).

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The admin portal was a success and is in use today. We have over 650 apartments managed on the system and growing. Altalogy's work was a key part of the operations needed to grow our company at an early stage.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We found the weekly cadence and slack communications to make for a very effective workflow. We did long term project management in a join trello as well. It worked well for us and our employees.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their biggest strength is their ability to come up with an MVP very quickly. For a young company like ours having the ability to iterate on concepts very quickly is important and Altalogy was very good at that. One feature that distinguishes them is that they will push back on bad design or a feature that doesn't make sense. Other dev shops will often build whatever the customer wants without critical thought - and Altalogy is not like that.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I believe that they could have done a little more research upfront on our type of business / industry so that some of our feature requests could have been communicated in an easier fashion. This is especially important since we are a non-standard software business.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of product at Skafos. We create an interactive e-commerce shopping experience for customers through applied machine learning solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Altalogy?

Our goal is to create a new type of e-commerce experience that will be similar to how Amazon facilitates highly interactive and dynamic customer feedback. We were thinking about the user journey and the types of screens and components that customers would use to interact with our machine learning models.

Rather than vacillating on ideas and trying to build things ourselves, we partnered with Altalogy to explore and flesh out features. I wanted to get those features to a point where I could forward them to the engineering team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I have a fairly well-scripted business requirement within the larger context of how our products work. Altalogy took those requirements and came back with versions of what the solution could look like. We gave them a customer’s website, concepts, and ideas so that we could come up with this feature’s UI/UX. They delivered it in a segmented design, either clickable or versions of it.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Dawid (Co-Founder) and Marta (Junior UI/UX). They were the two main people we interacted with. Marta was the designer, and David was her support.

How did you come to work with Altalogy?

We found their portfolio online and we thought it is pretty professional. Their prices were also extraordinarily competitive.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from July–October 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We ended up using some of their work to directly demo our solution to customers. We haven’t gotten any negative feedback; in fact, we got some exciting commercial responses.

Altalogy brought something that our team didn’t have: true design and UX skills, and these are critical for our company’s success.

How did Altalogy perform from a project management standpoint?

They provided great communication, and they never missed a deadline. I was extremely pleased with Altalogy.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

Altalogy can probably make 10 sprints worth of work in 10–12 weeks. They were able to grasp the larger value proposition of the business and understand the business requirements and their context. They asked astute questions that helped in delivering a solid product. 

The team checked in early on to do some initial research and exploration. They always delivered in a timely fashion. They didn’t lose sight of our business goals. They understood the customer journey, flow, and UX on our apps. I was really impressed with their work, and I would love to continue working with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think our chief revenue officer wasn’t as pleased as we are with the project. She wanted a high-touch point team that could answer back-and-forth all the time. It felt like that was just a real disconnect on our expectations. They can improve on finding effective ways to tackle that situation and to try and give her a positive experience.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You have to trust that they have the best interest of your company in mind.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a mid-size startup and rapidly growing new product lines. We run 10+ web and mobile applications for the construction audience looking to digitize their business flows.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Altalogy?

We partnered with Dawid and his team to work on an array of projects:

1. Design new web & mobile applications for new products

2. Redesign existing web & mobile applications to refresh the UI and expand the usability.

What were your goals for this project?

A sleek, easy to use design for a complex interface that is convenient to use for a non-technical audience.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Based on a project trial period to determine communication flow and design approach.

Describe the project in detail.

We came to Altalogy with an idea for a mock, built out a protoype, and then shared it with our pilot customers for feedback. As we received feedback, we shared back with Altalogy and continued to grow the design to be a full-fledged experience. Depending on the project, it was web-based, mobile-based, or both.

What was the team composition?

Our team had a single product manager lead the conversation in the beginning, and Dawid represented Altalogy. As our relationship grew, we brought on more of our team to work directly with Dawid and his design team, prioritizing our project efforts.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Customers eagerly signed up to the new product lines and downloaded the mobile apps. Strong traction grew in the early launch.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The Altalogy team was very responsive, quick on their feet and iterated rapidly to present new ideas. They are a pleasure to work with on any project. The communication is seamless through slack.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their communication and aesthetic. They have a great design eye, and are able to move quickly to match our pace.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None at the moment.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the co-founder of Gruntwork, a company that provides a library of secure, reliable, full-automated, reusable infrastructure code that allows companies to go to prod on AWS and GCP in days rather than months.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Altalogy?

We hired Altalogy to build documentation/marketing websites for two of our open source projects: Terragrunt and Terratest.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted these open source projects to have their own websites so users had a first-class experience for understand what these tools did and how to use them. However, our own team did not have any cycles to spare to build documentation/marketing websites, so we looked for an external vendor to help out.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I posted the basic project details on Twitter and LinkedIn and asked for anyone interested to reach out. I got a number of responses, including Altalogy. I went through the website, portfolio, reviews, and background info for everyone that reached out, and picked Altalogy as they seemed the most likely to be able to independently do both design and implementation.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

I provided a basic set of requirements by email: what sort of websites we were looking for, what the content would be (mainly the READMEs the open source projects already had), and how we were going to deploy them (GitHub Pages). One of the key goals for us was to be hands-off and invest as little time as possible, so we expressly asked for Altalogy to take over and make as many of the decisions on design and content as possible.

What was the team composition?

Dawid handled most of the requirements, business, and legal details; Tom did most of the coding; I believe Marta did the design work.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Altalogy created nice designs, figured out how to display all the documentation we needed, and did all of the coding, on time, and on budget. We were able to launch these websites with only about a day of work from our side, which is great.

We've heard from users that the websites make the docs easier to browse. The websites are getting thousands of hits per month, and as they are branded for Gruntwork, this is also helping us get more customers.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We explicitly wanted to be as hands-off as possible with the project, so most of the work was done on the Altalogy side, which is exactly what we wanted. They checked in every week or two with updates and were responsive to all the feedback we provided. The project shipped quickly and stayed within the budget, so they did a great job of managing it.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They were able to deliver what we wanted with minimal input and zero "babysitting" from us. It's great to work with a vendor where you can hand off the work and trust that it'll get done.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a co-founder/CTO of Roll Labs, Inc. At Roll we are building a docked escooter solution for cities and campuses.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Altalogy?

Altalogy was hired to help Roll design and implement our iOS app.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to design and implement our ios app for allowing users to pick up and drop off scooters.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We initially posted on AngelList seeking a designer for our mobile app. Dawid from Altalogy reached out along with 2 dozen other candidates.

I interviewed 7-10 candidates over the course of the week and selected Altalogy as they were the only "team" that applied that offered other services as well (ios/android/backend development on top of design services).

Every other applicant was an individual freelance designer. I asked each designer that I interviewed to mock up a screen based on an RFP that I had written that described the app and project in great detail.

I was impressed by Altalogy's designer's work and liked that they offered other services that would potentially help us in implementation as the project continued (which we used!) and selected them for the project.

Describe the project in detail.

The project was broken up into two parts.

The first part was the design phase that had originally hired Altalogy for. This was a well-scoped project as we had provided them with a very detailed RFP that detailed the exact screens we wanted mocks for. Dawid also provided us with a terms/contract sheet that specified the scope of work (20 mocks + 15 safety cards).

As the design phase continued we began implementing the backend and app. We used our internal iOS developer for a few weeks but eventually leveraged Altology to help us complete the MVP app for demo purposes.

What was the team composition?

For the app design I interfaced entierly with Dawid from Altalogy who served as a proxy between me and their designer Marta. For the software stack the ios team was broken up into a squad of two of Dawid from Altalogy and Dan - a Roll Labs part-time employee, with minimal support from me. I handled the entirety of the backend implementation that powers the service.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

You can view the results of the ios app design / development in our demo video here: https://ridewithroll.com/demo

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our workflow was rather seamless. Our team is pretty remote - Altology is based in Poland, I am in NYC and our iOS dev is based in Seattle. Regardless of the timezone differences most of our conversations were done in slack.

Dawid is a true professional. He is extremely responsive and energetic. He was able to push our project forward and see it to completion.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Altalogy's turn around time on a given task is extremely impressive. New iterations on the mocks were whipped out within hours of me providing feedback. Every morning I would wake up to find the latest deliverables completed and in my inbox.

On the iOS side, Dawid was building the UI elements and was able to translate the mocks into a functional app prototype well within the scoped timeline and went above and beyond in figuring out a state machine and implementing it without much direction provided by Dan or me. I can't be any more thrilled about how Altalogy works.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Honestly, for the work we scoped and the given timeline we executed in, I think we achieved our goals and stretch goals for the project. We couldn't be any happier with our partnership with Altalogy and will most likely use them again in the future!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

My company deal with the production of exclusive garden hearths. We are a young company but we have a monopoly in Poland.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Altalogy?

We employed Altalogy to create an advanced website. Www.hettasupply.com

What were your goals for this project?

Show our company as modern through an interesting website.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I found it on the internet based on positive reviews.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The project involved creating a modern website that would encourage customers to buy our product. The site had several interesting solutions such as smooth page transitions and custom transitions to the right.

What was the team composition?

The team consisted of a graphic designer and web developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The number of people visiting our site has increased. Our sales have started.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

All went thermally and without any problems.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They delivered everything with great punctuality.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Probably not .

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a company that helps moms raise money, using games and online educational tools. We’re based in Atlanta.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Altalogy?

They worked on a game called Gender Reveal, which allows expecting mothers to raise money by having friends and family guess the baby’s gender with cash.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They came into the picture after I had produced an MVP. They helped make iterations for the existing website by optimizing features and updating the design.

Firstly, they walked us through how to optimize our engagement with moms. They strategized a homepage redesign and adding simple features like an FAQ page. They also integrated a payment option through Stripe into the backend, which is how we collect the funds. The site utilizes React for the frontend and Ruby on Rails for the backend. They also used PHP for the admin panel.

What is the team composition?

My main point of contact was Dawid (Co-founder, Altalogy) who served as a project manager, and the team fluctuated around 4 people.

How did you come to work with Altalogy?

They were recommended to me by another company, who had had a good experience with them. I went to them based on her recommendation.

How much have you invested with them?

I’ve spent around $5000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in April and wrapped up in August 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Thanks to their updates, we’ve been able to host 250 games, which is a considerable increase from before. We’ve also gotten compliments on the design of the homepage. If there were any bugs, they caught them before I did—if a customer found one, I would let them know and they’d resolve it immediately.

How did Altalogy perform from a project management standpoint?

Dawid has been great. While there’s often a language barrier when you outsource, that was not an issue at all. Since Dawid was my primary point of contact, it was easy to keep track of communications and progress. We used Slack and Twilio to communicate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The constant communication was very impressive. There were even some times when they’d have to check in with me because they hadn’t heard from me. They’re extremely knowledgeable and always abided by a realistic timeline. I didn’t experience any scheduling issues—they were usually ahead of the deadline or they’d communicate to me in advance.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would appreciate if they had a simpler pricing model. They have developers of various levels on their team, so it makes sense that they’d charge you more for a senior developer than a junior developer. Having said that, it makes it a little difficult for me when trying to decide on the cost of the project.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re very competitively priced. While they’re not expensive, they’re not cheap—which is frequently the expectation with overseas providers. For that price, you’ll definitely be getting good quality work.

Make sure that you’re fully fleshing out your concept with them if they’re coming into the project without starting from scratch.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the co-owner of an online marketplace for streetwear and authentic sneakers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Altalogy?

We hired Altalogy to develop the web application platform for our business.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I’m not a very technical person, so I entered into the engagement with only a general idea of the platform and how it should look. We held brainstorming sessions with Altalogy’s team to determine the specific features and flow of the product. Once we agreed to a project plan, Altalogy designed and developed the platform over a series of sprints using React.js. We use AWS to host the platform, and Altalogy added payment and social media integrations. I received several product demonstrations throughout the development process, and they implemented my feedback after each round of feedback. Ultimately, we reached the MVP stage, and we have since continued updating the platform so that it can soon launch.  

What is the team composition?

We have about four people working with our project.

How did you come to work with Altalogy?

We learned of Altalogy through a reference. They are located in the same city as us, so it was quite easy to communicate and meet, which was important to us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent approximately $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement began in November 2018 and remains ongoing. If the launch of our web application goes well, I expect us to work with Altalogy again to build a mobile app as well.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

They have delivered great work so far, and they provide outstanding support when we need it.

How did Altalogy perform from a project management standpoint?

We didn’t experience a single delay during the development process. They accomplished everything on time. I’m pretty old-school, so I managed the project from our end in Excel spreadsheets. We met every week or two, so I was always updated regarding their progress.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Altalogy has a professional team, and they honor their promises. If they committed to finishing something, they completed it by the appropriate date. They also offered smart ideas to help build out the platform. I’m not technology savvy, but Altalogy helped me understand how things worked and what could improve.

Are there any areas they could improve?

If I was a developer myself, I might be able to critique them better, but from my current point of view, they accomplished everything we needed of them. It was a pretty straightforward engagement.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Altalogy is deserving of your trust. If you work with them, you can expect results you’ll be happy with.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder of KYKS — Keep Your Kids Safe. We help children get off and on the correct school buses or go home a pre-determined way that their parents have assigned.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Altalogy?

After having a poor experience with another developer, I hired Altalogy to fix our software program and have it work the way it was intended.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our previous developer crashed our system right as we were preparing to release our product with a group of schools. Altalogy corrected everything in four days. They repaired the database and our AWS server, and they fixed a lot of the framework and the user experience. Further, Altalogy made some edits to the design—making it softer to not look so archaic—and they added several time-saving features for the end user. We continue to work with them to maintain the system. 

What is the team composition?

I coordinate with one project manager and two developers.

How did you come to work with Altalogy?

They came as a recommendation from an entrepreneur friend of mine.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent less than $50,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement began in August 2018 and remains ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

If it weren’t for their swift development work, we would have been out of business. They managed to step up when another provider failed to do so. They helped us retain our existing clients and add a few others, and our system has experienced no problems. That’s a testament to their work.

How did Altology perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been far more communicative and transparent than our previous vendor. We have weekly stand-up meetings through video calls and otherwise share notes through Slack and Trello. They meet all of their deadlines, and they’ve been wonderful to work with. I would highly recommend them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re problem-solvers. Very little is out of the realm of possibility for them. They do their best to meet my needs, and they are clear if they can’t. I appreciate that level of honesty and communication.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they’ve done nothing but impress me so far.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d advise future clients to do their homework on all of the vendors they consider. Ask the difficult questions and look at their portfolios because that’s how you’ll determine if your chosen vendor can handle your work.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of FoodGarage, a food order pickup technology company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Altalogy?

We provide online access to order pickup by pairing our online technology with a customizable locker system. We needed additional development support for our app as we grew.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Altalogy provides additional development support to build and manage our app, working with React, GraphQL, and Node.js. We jointly developed a scope of work that articulated the challenges we were facing and the how Altalogy could help us address them. We identified a number of activities that they could take over from us including the UX and UI for our platform. They also troubleshoot.

The online platform connects users with restaurants who place completed orders in lockers for pickup. The app provides an overview of restaurant takeout order status. It relies on SMS notifications through which users and restaurants can communicate directly about the status of the orders.

What is the team composition?

We work with the owner and a programmer.

How did you come to work with Altalogy?

Their CEO messaged me about their services on LinkedIn. I often get offers like that. The reason I chose Altalogy was their level of transparency and honesty. My investors were opposed to outsourcing given past bad experiences they had had. I made the executive decision to work with Altalogy because they offered to work with us at no cost at first as a trial. I couldn’t pass up that opportunity and they very quickly demonstrated their value added. As a result, I was able to earn the investors’ trust and we started our collaboration with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent more than $3,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2018 and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

If I was rating them on a scale, their work would be a 10 out of 10. I've never experienced programmers that work to this level. I've worked with programmers quite often and none of them have delivered to the capacity that Altalogy has.

How did Altalogy perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate via email, video calls, even Facebook Messenger. They use a tool to leave notes in the code so my in-house developer can see exactly where they left off and what they were doing. They communicate daily, not weekly or monthly.

They always deliver on time. If anything becomes an issue, they're willing to assess it. Even after they’ve delivered the product, they provide support to make sure everything is working as promised.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Transparency and honesty are the most important things to me. They let us know where they can help, where they can’t, and are always honest. It feels more like we’re working with friends than with another business.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. If anything, they could grow their team so that they can help more clients deliver value. They have everything that you’d want to have in a business partner.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Trust them. They know what they're doing. They establish a high level of communication and identify the problems you need to solve. They will create a scope of work that clarifies the outcomes and how long it will take to reach them. The way in which they run their operation will get you the results that you want. They do a great job leading the way.