Codium S.A.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder as well as the innovation and business strategist at BIZBUD. Our company has an ERP mobile app for the cannabis industry, which aims to help farmers keep track of their money while they’re doing payroll and farming work.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Codium S.A.?

We needed help with mobile app development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Codium is providing developers to build our mobile app. Meanwhile, our internal team is in charge of the app’s design, structure, mathematics, product backlog functionalities, and more. We supervise everything, and their team is focused on providing software development. They use a project management tool to keep their own team on track with our needs.

They have a full team, but we don’t have to hire them all at once. If we have them on our own payroll, that means they’ll render their service five days a week and we have to provide them with other benefits. In our case, they only provide resources to us as needed. For example, we may only need 50 hours per month for a lead developer. We can also request for a full time junior developer and full time mid-level developer all at the same time. We’re now in the production environment of our mobile app, and they’ve provided a part-time project manager who can supervise their team.

What is the team composition?

Codium’s team is composed of lead developers, mid-level developers, and junior developers who are working remotely. We’ve been in contact with a lead developer from their team, and their working hours depend on the task we give them. Since publishing the app, we’ve shifted the way we work and we’re now communicating frequently with their project manager.

How did you come to work with Codium S.A.?

I worked for a company who had hired them because of their good rates. As a result, I figured I should talk to them and see where it goes. In the end, we found Codium to be the best option for us. When they described themselves as a software factory and a partner capable of finding engineers according to the needs of our external clients, we knew they were the best fit. 

In 2013, the US started to hire a lot of engineers, which made it harder to compete with prices. Instead of hiring internally, it made sense to sign a commercial agreement with Codium.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $45,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing collaboration started in March 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Codium has provided what they’ve promised. Thanks to them, we’ve been able to publish our app this month. Other than that, we’ve had normal issues that are in every project. Their lead developer is also very good, but sometimes he’s very busy on different projects. As a result, if you’re a startup and are already in the post MVP phase, you need to consider having your own lead developer and working with an internal team.

Overall, Codium’s service is good while you’re developing your product market fit. They can offer you with a diversified team while not necessarily forcing you to keep people if they’re not the right fit.

How did Codium S.A. perform from a project management standpoint?

We’re working in an agile way, and we’re always in communication on Slack, Trello, Google Meet, and more. Moreover, we have design sprints together. After that, they send me an invoice of their development hours every month.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their pricing is good.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Codium has a lot of mid-level developers. It’d be good if they could have more senior developers because I’m not sure how they’d work with more complex software. However, I must say that they’re very suitable for MVP development.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have your own UX/UI, product backlog, and all structure defined before starting the process of coding. In addition, you should iterate and validate ideas during the design phase and not during the programming phase.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I was the lead Design Researcher and Engineer of the project, which was developed as part of our research on civic technologies for participatory democracy at the Social Apps Lab of UC Berkeley.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Codium S.A., and what were your goals?

We had limited funding and no human resources to develop a digital platform for participatory democracy based on the conceptual models, principles and initial prototypes we were producing together with Prof. James Holston at UC Berkeley. We need to bring our prototype to a more stable and usable version to engage in real life use cases at the City of Vallejo.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Mainly through my contacts and their good references with respect to CODIUM past work.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

They developed the backend and frontend components of our platform, based upon an initial prototype developed by myself. We hired them by the hour, as our design was emerging as we learned more and more about the processes we were studying.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Most of the time, only one developer was working with use. Sometimes they would be in 2 or at most 3. We had always the support of at leas manager as well to keep track of the work done by the developer, but it was mostly managed by myself.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We were able to launch and use the platform successfully for over 5 years. All the code is available under open source licenses: https://github.com/socialappslab/appcivist-pb-client https://github.com/socialappslab/appcivist-platform https://github.com/socialappslab/denguetorpedo

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Their style is agile, agreeing on weekly defined deliverables. We managed all through GitHub. Response was always timely.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

We liked their ability to learn fast and their impressive talent pool of engineers and developers, all capable to compete with the highest qualified software engineers in the world.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Nothing in particular. Perhaps they could incorporate more UX Research/Design skills into their talent base.