Code Runners

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and one of the founders of a home loan company. We’re a digital online business that launched last year.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Code Runners?

We needed someone to develop our MVP and launch it to market.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed our MVP. The initial work lasted about three months which enabled us to launch to market. Since then they have been helping us on a monthly basis with various enhancements and improvements to our product. The work included all of our digital assets. They helped us develop our corporate and marketing website. They helped us develop our loan onboarding platform and all of the various dashboards and analytical tools involved in the background as well. 

The website is a standard HTML and CSS. It has React components. The loan onboarding platform is in Ruby and has React components as well. All of the technology was hosted in AWS. Some of the analytical tools are built in Quickstart, an AWS tool.

What is the team composition?

When we first started, there were 4–5 dedicated developers. There are people working on frontend and backend, and they have a project manager.

How did you come to work with Code Runners?

We ran an RFP process to several Bulgarian-based development agencies. Through the selection process, Code Runners had a really good proposal and decided to proceed with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $50,000–$60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May 2019 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re a startup business. What really mattered to us was our ability to actually develop a really good MVP on time and on budget and get it to market fast. We had a very tight timeline. They did an absolutely fantastic job of pushing themselves hard to get us to our target launch date. Our launch was super successful which was the biggest success metric for me.

How did Code Runners perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management has been fantastic. The person leading the project is one of the owners of the company. He’s super organized with a very high level of motivation and dedication, and he’s always willing to put the extra hour in. We use Slack and Trello to communicate. We’ve had to deal some time zone difference challenges, but they’ve been very accommodating with that with early morning and late-night calls. We really appreciate their availability. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their motivation, dedication, and ability to deliver on time are impressive. They deliver high-quality work that doesn’t require a lot of iteration.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they’ve done a fantastic job. I highly recommend them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure the communication is set up well. It’s important to make sure you have people on your team that are flexible and accommodating with working with an overseas team.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m in the European Research Department of Fox Network Group, which is a part of 21st Century Fox. The latter is a large media company that distributes channels.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Code Runners?

Our monthly reports, with information pooled from 25 different regions, were based on manual entries into Excel. We needed assistance to consolidate and optimize our reporting.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Code Runners created a scalable database. They provided extract, transform, load (ETL) services, where they created a platform that could pool data from our various regions. They also provided SQL training to our employees for the upkeep of the platform they created.

What is the team composition?

I had direct contact with a project manager, who oversaw a team.

How did you come to work with Code Runners?

We were looking for a local company, and an acquaintance from another organization recommended them; they had utilized Code Runners for the exact same service.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $28,500.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in May 2019 and the project ended over the summer, in July.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The product they’ve created has largely optimized our process. Their work was very warmly received by our colleagues because it’s saved them a lot of time. I received feedback that the SQL training was also very useful. We’re very satisfied with the engagement, overall.

How did Code Runners perform from a project management standpoint?

We never had any issues, because we contacted our project manager directly, who was prompt in relaying information to the development team. They were transparent and efficient.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were remarkably flexible in the face of changing requirements. We requested sudden changes, but they were able to quickly accommodate them. They were also great at explaining the rationale behind their decisions.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There was one instance of miscommunication, where not everyone participated in an important meeting. That caused some gaps in team members’ knowledge.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be very detailed when you give a brief.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a two-person startup. We’re building a platform for commodity companies to exchange chemical lab assays (metal and ore testing).

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Code Runners?

My business partner and I built the platform’s backend. We needed a vendor for frontend coding and UI design.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They designed the UI on JavaScript according to our initial set of requirements. Specifically, the frontend needed to interact with the backend we’d already built. The code ran five to six pages.

We emphasized frontend functionalities to accommodate our beta customers’ needs. For example, metal or ore trades may contain up to 40 lots. Each lot contains four to five fields that need to be analyzed using our platform’s data captures. This functionality would help standardize product descriptions for the buyer and seller.

What is the team composition?

I interacted with the project manager and two developers. The founder was involved early in the project and occasionally checked on development in later stages.

How did you come to work with Code Runners?

I saw the company mentioned on a blog. At that point, we had considered, but didn’t engage, three other vendors. I contacted Code Runners and met with the team. They were professional and reasonably priced.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent €10,000 ($12,400 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them between September–December 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

My business partner found the frontend impressive, particularly its compatibility with the backend. Code Runners used effective coordination and technical skills to create a seamless process.

How did Code Runners perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Jira to track progress and create tickets. The team was responsive to questions and update requests. Their proximity to our office made in-person meetings convenient. We had follow-up and update meetings every other week.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They cared about our success; the team always had our best interests in mind. Given the budget, their output exceeded our expectations.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Development went slightly overschedule, but we weren’t too unhappy about it. We found a resolution that worked for both sides.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We had a good experience with them. We’ll likely engage Code Runners again, after the beta period ends in three to six months.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a realistic threat penetration testing firm focusing on breaching networks in the same way as nation states or malicious third parties would. I’m the managing partner and CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Code Runners?

They were helping us build a portal for completing analysis and delivering reports to our customers. The depth of the reports was so significant that producing them manually was time-consuming. We designed a portal that would compress the time to delivery by about 75%. The actual time it saves depends on the project. It could reduce the work from four hours to one hour, or it could be one full month down to one week.

How did you come to work with Code Runners?

We were working with a few development firms previously, and we had lots of issues with them. Some of them failed to deliver on time, and others failed to deliver what they promised. Others pretended to deliver what they promised, but we found the code was copied from someplace else and was shoddy. When we confronted previous vendors about the code, they just disappeared. I Googled and found Dimiter [Shalvardjiev, CTO] at Code Runners.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They are incredibly fluent in anything having to do with Ruby and hard configurations on Linux. They’re incredible with Postgres and MySQL. They understand secure coding practices unlike any of the other people I have worked with. The code was by far less buggy than other firms. They also have expertise in Microsoft ASP.NET, and other platform and products.

How much have you invested with them?

We have spent $120,000-$130,000 so far with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them three years ago.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We had our reporting center built our previously by other firms, and we were running significantly less efficiently in terms of display time and report generation time. When Code Runners took over, we noticed a dramatic improvement in performance. The reporting center is basically real-time now, and that’s something we never thought we’d be able to achieve because of the kinds of calculations we’re doing in the backend.

As far as volume of code, you get what you pay for. The time they put into it is time well spent. Sometimes I’d find myself asking why it’s taking so long to produce something, but then I would see the end result and I understood why. It wasn’t as simple as I thought it was and they took a lot of care and built it out perfectly. They are more focused on quality and doing things right the first time than they are getting things done quickly. We’re happy they made us wait for certain things, because the end result was well worth it. They’re willing to do what’s required to get things done the right way.

How did Code Runners perform from a project management standpoint?

They give us access to a defect tracking system, so we can interact with their development team. They provide regular status updates. When they push code, it’s very well commented and controlled. We took part of what they wrote and transitioned it off to an internal developer and he was shocked with how easy it was to pick it up because of how well-documented the code was. There was very little work required on our part as a customer other than design. The design was really intensive but it was because they were being thorough. Once the design was complete, they would encounter an issue, and would present us with three or four solutions.

Most of the meetings we had were via telephone or GoToMeeting. They provided us with really good clarity and understanding of where we were in the project. A lot of vendors tend to be overly verbose and it’s because they’re trying to be politically impressive while their work product is not impressive. Code Runners is not so much focused on being politically impressive as they are impressive in terms of the work product. There’s that saying, “big hat, no cattle” or “a lot of cattle and a small hat.” This team has a lot of cattle and a small hat. It works well for us.

What is the team dynamic?

I interfaced with Dimiter the entire time. He was pleasant and professional the entire time. We told him what we wanted, the team produced the results, and we got exactly what we asked for. The only collaboration that happened on our side was when we had access to the defect tracking system. We entered information into JIRA and responded to questions that the developers had. It was very straightforward. I never felt like there was decentralized communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was impressed with the speed with which they responded to emergency requests. When we found bugs that impacted the security of our system, they would have a turnaround in the same day. The other firms we worked with had turnaround times of one week or one month. Being a security company sitting with a critical vulnerability for a month is a real issue. Code Runners is incredibly responsive.

They do anything Ruby especially well including the documentation, the style, and clarity of the code. They’re really good at what they do. Having worked with other firms, the others were slow to respond and they produced bad code that took them forever. The code that we’re seeing is fresh code, compact, incredibly efficient, and it’s secure.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could move to the US to be in the same time zone but even that doesn't seem to matter because they’re pretty much responsive 24/7. They’re doing a much better job than we see elsewhere so I can’t think of anything to improve. We’ve been satisfied.

Do you have advice for potential clients?

They’d be silly not to give them a chance. Allow Code Runners to give you a walk-through of your own application, and they can show you what they do differently. Strongly consider what they’re pointing out and compare that to what’s been provided to you before. Ask yourself why Code Runners can point this out but other people haven’t. That will give people the insight that they need to understand the value that Code Runners can bring to the table.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an Austrian software development company with an online product for law firms. It’s a daily workflow system that provides communication with courts. In Austria, this type of service is provided by subcontractors like our own company.  I am the head of development for the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Code Runners?

We had a web project and didn’t have resources or a lot of expertise in that area.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Being a software development company ourselves, we had quite accurate specifications on what we wanted. We didn’t need that much project management from Code Runners’ side, but rather web design and development expertise. We used JavaScript for the UI part and C# for the backend.

Code Runners built a separate SAP page, focusing on its user interface and integration with our REST services and other APIs, including SOAP and direct HTML parsing. They’ve also integrated with our payment service. Users can query the official company register in Austria.

How did you come to work with Code Runners?

We conducted research online for the available companies in the field and somehow came to Code Runners. We had a phone conference and were happy with Code Runners’ open communication.

How much have you invested with Code Runners?

The cost of Code Runners’ work was around $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Code Runners in March 2016. Both of our projects with them have been completed, the last one in October.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The service is online, which is a reference in itself. Code Runners’ project ended in a productive web page. It’s working out well, and it’s successful. There were some minor issues in the beginning, but everything’s okay now. We have taken over software maintenance.

How did Code Runners perform from a project management standpoint?

This worked very well. We had weekly calls, and Code Runners provided everything we needed from them. We mainly communicated with Rumen Manev, their business developer. He speaks German, which was nice. In the later phase, when we needed to speak directly with developers, it was done in English. Code Runners’ time estimates were accurate, and the timeline was met.

We didn’t use any project management tools except for Git, as a source code repository.

What did you find most impressive about Code Runners?

They are skilled in the technologies they’re using, and they are very flexible, which was a crucial part. Code Runners listened to us, and were willing to change the workflow and communication style.

Are there any areas Code Runners could improve?

It was a small project, so I can’t state anything. For bigger ones, it would be good to have JIRA or another project management tool in place.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Gemseek is a data analytics company providing services to Fortune 500 companies around the globe. We focus on data analytics, collection, and visualization.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Code Runners?

We have deployed our solution in 30+ countries around the world, to a number of Fortune 500 companies.  We have an ongoing development process, building the next generation of the tool. Code Runners is our primary vendor for that development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have worked with Code Runners on the data visualization and the automation of data collection parts of our operations. They are our primary vendor for enterprise solutions and our customer experience platform. We provide a full suite enterprise application which enables clients to send out surveys, engagement messages and so on to their customer base, based on triggers set in the CRM and ERP systems. The system collects feedback from those messages and integrates them into the database. There, they can be overviewed in a dashboard, and have automated follow-ups set, either internally or directly to the consumers. Our clients can then analyze the state of that interaction through dashboard analytics.

We have started to outsource everything; we don't have any in-house developers anymore. We are using the .NET stack, and handle project management, QA and systems integration internally. Our data analytics engines are added to the frontend provided by Code Runners.

How did you come to work with Code Runners?

I had worked with Code Runners in the past, while I was the CFO of a business group of Philips Electronics. I was also the head of supply chains in the group. We had a number of partners in The Netherlands, where we were based, but I was looking to expand that base with some offshore options for additional scalability and lower cost. We were looking for a specific language, Ruby on Rails, and compiled a list of external vendors in Eastern Europe and India. We selected our partner from a shortlist of Polish and Bulgarian companies based on competence, track record, and work methodology. We decreased our bills by 50%, while still maintaining sufficient quality.

This project was a bit larger, since there were mobile, web, and extensive backend analytics components involved. We had in-house as well as external teams working on it. Code Runners was assigned one specific aspect related to web services, retrieving data from external sources and integrating it into our tool. Code Runners didn't manage this from start to end, but we used them to add competencies for change requests and next-generation features. All the work was done in Ruby on Rails.

Code Runners supported our internal development team, which handled the core parts of the work, as well as systems integration and QA.

I reconnected with Code Runners when I became the head of my current company, based on our past relationship.

How much have you invested with Code Runners?

I don't recall the total bill for our Philips engagement, since we were working with a number of developers at the time. The cost of Code Runners' work for our Gemseek project is on the order of several hundred thousand Euros per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Code Runners in February 2014, for the current engagement.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I run the company, not the daily operations, but I know that Code Runners is fulfilling what we're asking them to do. In terms of business results, we've been able to have fast iterations, and managed to develop from one generation to the next inside of three-quarters of a year. This is a major application being rolled out in 30 countries, so we have a fast and robust process, in my view. There are always improvement areas, but this is true for any outsourcing project. Code Runners has truly partnered with us, and the cost is quite good.

They need to continually improve on the technology side, but this is also a factor of our own architecture. Code Runners participates in the architecture discussion. We have fast iterations, and keep up with the market.

How did Code Runners perform from a project management standpoint?

We have our own project managers and a product owner who liaise with Code Runners' scrum master and developers. They follow the standard Agile practice, with daily standups and weekly scrum meetings. Sprints run every two weeks, and there is a standard scrum process of estimating efforts and looking at deliverables.

What did you find most impressive about Code Runners?

Code Runners' ability to scale in their partnership with us is quite good. I've never viewed them as a billing-hungry vendor. Our project managers are also happy, in the sense that they never feel like they're working with an outsourced party. Code Runners acts very much like an internal team, which is what we need. We are not a software company and do not intend to become one, but we do have software development activities, and business related to them. With a partner like Code Runners, we can sustain that path.

Are there any areas Code Runners could improve?

Code Runners could continuously improve in terms of understanding newer technologies out there. This is the challenge we pose to all our vendors, and we seek to be continuously inspired in finding new solutions, so it's not a comment specifically for Code Runners.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Our company operates within the German healthcare sector, providing software solutions for long-term care, as well as products which are delivered to people in that situation. All of this is made possible through our online platform.

What is your position?

I am the CEO of the company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Code Runners?

Code Runners has been supporting us from our early stages when we were just starting to develop a custom CRM [customer relationship management] for our needs. We started out as a special type of e-commerce company in the long-term care sector and needed a specialized CRM solution for our back-office staff, enabling them to process the necessary workflows. We are involved with and generate invoices for health-insurance companies, so there are many documentation requirements, as well as data-security issues. This is a unique field of business, and we needed to build our own solution for it. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

Our initial developer left the company in the early stages. Code Runners took over and helped us develop the product further and implement the code in a production environment.

Our system was fully developed using Ruby on Rails. Code Runners used Git for managing the deployment, and we had a Scrum-like development process. I would also ask Code Runners' team to perform in-between tasks, and they reacted to my needs flexibly. The process was more a combination between Scrum and Kanban.

I didn't dive into the team operations very much, but I know that Code Runners had a project manager who was in charge of the developers. It wasn't a very big team, consisting of three developers and a product manager. On our end, we came up with needs and features, described them broadly, and had calls once a week with Code Runners' product manager, who translated our generic requirements into feature descriptions on their Kanban board.

How did you come to work with Code Runners?

Code Runners' CTO responded to a job description that we posted for the same position. He suggested that instead of a CTO, perhaps we could receive help from them. At the time, I was also speaking with other agencies, trying to find out what would be the best fit for future support for our company. Code Runners stood out through their more professional and flexible approach.

We didn't contact the really big IT providers, the ones that a large company would approach, because of cost reasons and because those developers would not be flexible enough to meet our needs; we are still a startup company and want partners to react to our speed. However, Code Runners had a more professional and able approach than the German companies we contacted. They could deliver a better service at a lower rate, so choosing Code Runners was an easy decision.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The cost of Code Runners' work was between €150,000 and €200,000 [$161,000 and $215,000].

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Code Runners in June 2015. The system is a work in progress. They took over the work, while I functioned as the product developer on our side. I was in contact with Code Runners' project manager and their developers. They didn't deliver a finished system in May 2016, but that was the first version we started to work with. Code Runners has had to continue adding functionalities to the production system. We've constantly added new features on-the-go.

After they left as a service provider, we continued the development. We only ended the collaboration with Code Runners because we found a CTO who brought his own team to the table. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

It was a continuous process, so I don't have any measurements of Code Runners' overall productivity.

Code Runners has developed APIs that we've used to communicate with our business partners on the logistics and health-insurance sides. They built the foundation of our system, but it would be hard to state exactly what each group’s involvement was. We continued to enhance the system, developing a 2.0 version later on. I can certainly say that many of the components we're using today in our communication are based on Code Runners' work, even down to the data model. They went deep into our platform and designed it.

How did Code Runners perform from a project management standpoint?

Code Runners is a customer-oriented group, which is why I would always recommend them to anyone else, especially in the startup world. We had mishaps on both our ends, but no matter who made the mistake and what the reason for the crunch situation was, Code Runners always reacted in the same customer-oriented way. They were aware of the fact that if the system didn't work, we would basically become unable to operate. This was fully accepted, and Code Runners didn't complain about it or charge extra hours.

What distinguishes Code Runners from other providers?

Code Runners always answered our needs, even the short-term requirements.

Is there anything Code Runners could have improved or done differently?

There is always the potential for improvement. My impression of Code Runners is positive overall, so I'm having a hard time coming up with something specific.