Cogniteq

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the lead data-scientist of Medstone. I also do project management of most IT projects within the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Cogniteq, and what were your goals?

We wanted a new platform for connecting players in the pharmaceutical industry in the Netherlands: pharmacists and medicine manufacturers. The platform is called "Medstone Connect", we needed some additional development power for the Frontend. After meeting with a few companies we decided to employ Cogniteq for this work, much to our satisfaction.

SOLUTION

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

An online search for frontend oursourcing in Europe yielded three candidates: two companies from Ukraine and Cogniteq (Lithuania & Poland based). The Ukrainian companies fell through for obvious reasons (war), but Cogniteq felt good after meeting them. The IT lead was approachable and knowledgeable. Cogniteq was also really flexible in terms of starting the project very soon after the first meeting.

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

The project skeleton was already set up for Cogniteq: a Vuejs 3 project with Naive UI as a component library. Cogniteq had to theme the UI kit, design the landing/homepage, and also the frontend after the login for three user types: pharmacies, manufacturers and admins. All get a very different dashboard. We approached the project in three stages:

1. Basic theming of the site
2. Building the pages behind the login (contracts, invoicing, user managment, etc., etc.)
3. Building the landing page

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

We three core people working on the project: Vladislav (designer), Yauhen (frontend dev / Vue.js) and Elena (project manager). I also had contact with Anastasiya (contract and payments) and Nadya (sales). There was also Aleh for QA but he mostly communicated within Cogniteq I think, at least I didn't speak with him.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project is delivered fully to satisfaction. We stayed within budget (both money and time-wise) , the code they wrote is "clean" / not messy. Very happy with the results!

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

They internally had daily standups with the team managed by Elena. We communicated daily via Slack and about once a week via Teams. Project management was done via Confluence / Jira.

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

We were impressed by their flexibility in terms of scheduling the project and changing the features a bit along the way. Very capable designer, frontend dev and good project management.

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

The first meeting was with a lot of people from their company who didn't all introduce themselves. It (initially) wasn't clear for me who I had to reach out to for e.g. project requirements related discussions. Also note that not all of the employees speak English (or only a little bit), not a big issue since management people do speak it, but for direct communication with the devs you need a translator.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Managing Director at a computer software company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Cogniteq, and what were your goals?

The task for Cogniteq was to develop a cross-platform mobile app that would provide access to key information about players at a soccer academy. It was crucial to make the application as easy-to-use as possible.

SOLUTION

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

We usually hire external developers when we do not have the necessary expertise. Earlier, we already communicated with Cogniteq and we knew what expertise their team has. That’s why when we got this project that presupposed the development of a mobile application, we decided to ask Cogniteq to help us.

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

The app was built using the React Native technology. It is an application for coaches that has a row of different and technologies used. features for recording players’ enrollment and graduation data, saving each attendees's personal information and scheduling training in the calendar.

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

The team included 4 specialists: 1 React Native developer, 1 Project Manager, 1 QA specialist, 1 Account Manager

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The app underwent multiple testing and can be already used by sports schools.

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

We were fully satisfied. And we are already considering variants to continue our cooperation with this team.

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

We were impressed with the excellent quality of the mobile app. The team needed just 2 months to create a high-quality, feature-rich application.

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

Actually, we didn’t notice any problems at all. The project was not large and the team easily dealt with all the tasks and managed to build a product that fully met all the requirements.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CTO of a company that provides a customizable platform for selling books, ebooks and audiobooks on the web, iOS and Android, as well as options for monetization of previously published media content.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Cogniteq?

We needed help in mobile and web development

SOLUTION

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

As a rule we get a lot of emails/LinkedIn requests from nearshoring development companies. Even though many of them feel spammy, certain companies (like Cogniteq) are good at standing out. We decided to choose Cogniteq because of the short lead time and high competence of developers.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

We needed to speed up the work on the mobile application and web platform, so we needed additional resources.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

After briefing the account manager on our project, their team quickly provided what they thought to be the most suitable candidate. In both cases, we were happy with the proposed developer and went with them after the initial interview.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We has previously hired a different web developer to work on the web project, but decided to terminate the agreement due to lack of progress. Cogniteq's web developer delivered the entire first iteration of the project in the time it took the previous dev to set up the basic framework. We were very happy with the efficiency shown by Cogniteq's team.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

I really liked the communication with the team. The guys always responded quickly and as a rule, I got all the necessary information.

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

Our cooperation with Cogniteq exceeded our expectations. Having talked to nearshoring companies in several European countries, lead times are fairly long and offer few benefits over using traditional recruiting solutions. Cogniteq, on the other hand, were able to find excellent candidates at short notice and with minimal friction.

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

Some miscommunication arose from the fact that one developer's level of English wasn't very high. Overall, this led to far fewer problems than one would expect, however.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of a software development company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Cogniteq, and what were your goals?

We needed help in web development.

SOLUTION

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

The Cogniteq specialist contacted me via LinkedIn. We carefully analyzed the portfolio of the company, the technologies that they work with and realized that we are very similar in the way we develop our solutions. So, we decided to have a look at how we could cooperate with the Cogniteq team.

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

We worked with Cogniteq on 2 projects already where we needed assistance in our development efforts.

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

We have our in-house software developers and from the side of Cogniteq we worked with 1 Senior .NET developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Everything was great. We received the necessary help in development. One of the projects is already at the stage of customer testing. And as for the second one, we are already finishing up our final testing. So, thanks to Cogniteq we managed to meet the schedule.

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

Though it was our first experience of working with an outsource company in such a way, we absolutely like it. All the set tasks were fulfilled perfectly.

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

We had absolutely positive impressions for them. And we will definitely turn to Cogniteq in the future when our team will be overloaded with work and we’ll need staff augmentation.

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

Actually, I can say that there weren’t any things that we can classify as problems. But we noticed that we should pay more attention to documenting some complicated aspects related to business logic, for example,more in detail. If something is not clearly stated in specification, we usually verbalize it. But probably because of a language barrier, we should have initially stated complicated things in the documentation. However, it didn't affect the time frames of the projects. Everything was okay and it was just a kind of learning experience for us.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am an CTO at the computer software company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Cogniteq, and what were your goals?

We were looking for a company that would help us with web development.

SOLUTION

How did you seleCogniteq and what were the deciding factors?

The Cogniteq expert contacted me via LinkedIn some years ago but at that time we didn’t have any projects that we could work together on. When we were looking for a development team this year, we were considering 3 variants, including Cogniteq and one company that we had worked with before.

We provided our existing code to Cogniteq and received a lot of comments on how it could be improved, and what could be done in another way. We liked the approach that Cogniteq had and what they offered to us and decided to start our cooperation.

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

We had a web app and wanted to introduce some changes to facilitate data analysis.

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

The team from the side of Cogniteq included 1 front-end developer, 1 back-end developer, 1 Project manager, 1 QA specialist, 1 Account Manager

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

All our requirements were fully met and the platform was enriched with all the necessary features.

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

In general, the interaction that we had with Cogniteq was a very pleasant one. Everything was quite good. Even despite the fact that we had a rather long project, there was a holiday season and some specialists had vacations, everything was okay. The guys dealt well with all the tasks, and their communication was good.

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

We are very happy with the quality of the software that Cogniteq developed for us. Of course, there were some very small issues but there are always. But I could give 9 out of 10. Yes, maybe not 10 but very-very close to it. We are absolutely satisfied with what we got. And we think that we will definitely work with Cogniteq on some new projects as well.

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

Actually, there is only one point that I can mention here. I think we were missing a bit of communication. The guys went a bit too far without talking to us and it was difficult to keep on track. I wish we had had more communication, maybe some daily updates on what had been done and what would be done the next day.

At that time I was very busy with some other projects and when I wanted to track the process, it was not easy to understand what was going on. But I think that it can be easily improved in the future.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Active in the secondment of IT specialists for over 20 years. In recent years, we have developed further, whereby we now accept, execute, staff, monitor and deliver software projects in accordance with pre-agreed quality and planning standards. As a Business Resource Manager I'm responsible for finding the right IT specialist for projects and monitor/manage software projects. In addition to our specialism in ICT, we would like to contribute to sustainability and corporate social responsibility.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Cogniteq, and what were your goals?

We didn't have our own mobile development team at the time, so we were looking for a company to partner up with to develop a mobile app for us.

SOLUTION

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

The sales manager contacted me. After chatting, we had a call and discussed the details. And there was a click. The communication was very pleasant and productive. We got all the information that we needed. We had a very good feeling, so we decided to try to work together. It was not only the first time we decided to work with Cogniteq but also the first time we started cooperation with a team from Belarus. But as we have excellent results, I believe that in the future we will continue our work with Cogniteq.

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

The team developed for us a mobile app for iOS and Android. The design was done by a design team from a company based in The Netherlands, but all the development was done by Cogniteq.

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

One Android developer, a iOS developer, a web developer, a Project Manager, a QA and an Account Manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project is still ongoing. However, we have already done a few tests and presented our app to some customers and received their feedback. They seem to really like the idea of the app and have shared with us their thoughts about what can be added to make it better. I hope that when the app is fully ready it will be used by some large companies and agencies which will be very good for us.

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

In general, everything was good. We mostly communicated via Skype (chats and calls). The way of working at Cogniteq is different from what we are used to in the Netherlands. We are accustomed to get questions back regarding features to make sure the acceptance criteria of user stories are correct. The Cogniteq team is more straightforward, they aren't asking many questions and if they do they're usually asked by a project manager. But that’s the issue of approaches.

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

It was absolutely comfortable to work with Cogniteq because their communication was clear and very friendly. We've found a good way to work together.

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

Cogniteq is definitely a company to partner up with again in the future. I think an improvement would be to ask more questions to make sure every feature is clarified enough and to ensure that both sides have a clear understanding of what needs to be build. This will not only help Cogniteq but also the company requesting their help. Due to the language and distance barrier it can be more challenging sometimes to understand each other than in the case when we work face-to-face. The above will help in these situations. I believe that it will help all of us work faster and spend less time on getting things clear.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Im the owner and CEO of a digital agency in Sweden. We build apps and web solutions for clients mainly in the nordic countries.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Cogniteq, and what were your goals?

Our client needed an iOS and Android app. To be able to meet the need faster than we could deliver ourselves we hired Cogniteq as app developer sub-contractors and built the backend ourselves.

SOLUTION

How did you select Cogniteq and what were the deciding factors?

We searched for outsourcing partners in Europe and Asia and created a shortlist of a handful of companies. From these we hired Cogniteq based on their past projects, broad skillset and references.

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

We discussed the project with PMs at Cogniteq and explained that we needed to be in daily contact with the developers ourselves. We believed that to be the best way to get results fast in a dispersed team. Cogniteq had no objections to this and the communication with the developers was very smooth.

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

A project manager, one iOS developer and one Android developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The client loved that we were able to deliver on time, on budget and according to requirements.

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

We needed to manage the project with our own tools for issue management, repositories, and communications tools. Cogniteq were on board with this from day one.

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

Cogniteq has a great can-do attitude and won't shy away from any task. Apart from the project described here, we have used them for many other projects as well. They are always able to help quickly which is much appreciated.

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

The deliveries from time to time contained bugs but being developers ourselves we know that is part of the game. Cogniteq always corrected the bugs swiftly when reported.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

CEO in a company operating in strategic and technological consulting and web application development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Cogniteq, and what were your goals?

Web development services for several projects. My goal was to find an trusty partner to work with

SOLUTION

How did you select Cogniteq and what were the deciding factors?

The sales manager of Cogniteq found me on LinkedIn. After closer communication, we managed to find a good model to organize our work. That’s how our common journey began.

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

We had several projects that the Cogniteq team worked on. And while one of them supposed the development from scratch, the second project was already built by other developers. So, the Cogniteq experts had to understand the way we developed the software, its architecture and code. Though it was not very simple, the team managed to do it and fulfill all the tasks that we had for them.

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

2 web developers (Yii2 developers ), 1 PM, 1 QA, 1 Account Manager

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The work that Cogniteq did was really appreciated by me and my customer. And I have really no problem with the software delivered by the team.

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

I really like the communication with all the experts at Cogniteq. The guys always responded quickly and I got all the necessary information.

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

I am very happy that I’ve chosen Coqniteq to work with. I like the way the team works, I like the support and that the team quickly responds to inquiries. I enjoyed the communication with developers and I learned a lot about the code from them. I have only positive impressions and I will definitely contact Cogniteq in the future when I will need their help.

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

Actually, everything was great. But there was one period when the team was too busy on other projects and we had to work without their support. However, it was a very short period.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are an IT consultancy and Development company, specialized in the outsourcing business.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Cogniteq, and what were your goals?

We needed a reliable partner for the development of a website for one of our clients. Our client is an actor casting agency with a lot of internal processes and interactions with the many stakeholders like actor agencies and film producers. The goal was to design and develop a web application to support overall casting process.

SOLUTION

How did you select Cogniteq and what were the deciding factors?

We got in contact with Coqniteq, visited their offices, talked with their managers and developers and got a very good impression of their expertise and professionalism.

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

There was a good project description including diagrams for the processes. Based on that they implemented a website design with sitemap and graphic mockups. After refining the design, we planned the implementation in an agile way and stuck to that until the project was finalized and approved by the customer.

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

The team consisted of: 1. a product owner 2. two full stack developers 3. a tester 4. a devOps engineer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The website covered most of the client's processes in a semi-automatic way, leading to a higher work performance.

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

The project was implemented using Scrum, Jira was used as project management tool, Confluence was used as documentation platform. Dropbox was used to share files with the client and between the team.

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

They were very professional and very flexible, in that way we were able to react very quickly to any impediments and stick to our plan.

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

Not really.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are an international product development agency. We build beautiful and intuitive mobile apps and web-apps for our clients. I am co-founder and CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Cogniteq?

Being an agency, we are subject to a varying project workload that is not always predictable. For this reason we work with external partners (like Cogniteq) to provide burst capacity to plug into our teams, during high-demand periods.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to get top notch software engineers, under flexible terms, that we can plug in and out of our projects. To augment our existing teams.

We have the project leadership in-house (both on the product and the technical side), and we never outsource that part, but are often short-handed on the software engineer side of things.

SOLUTION

How did you select Cogniteq?

We follow a process that is initially rather liberal, in the sense that we do small trial projects with many vendors. Based on our experiences, we then double down with those partners that we made the best experiences with.

It was the same with Cogniteq, we hired them for a small low-stakes project, and were impressed with their performance, so grew it from there. We'll continue to do so.

Describe the project in detail.

We onboarded Cogniteq's software engineers into the team, and kicked it off like any other project. We discussed the customer goals, the technical and budgetary constraints. We planned the work.

And then we follow an agile software development process. Our in-house staff owns project leadership, and Cogniteq provided us with additional engineering firepower.

On some projects, Cogniteq provided a single engineer, on others the entire engineering workforce was from Cogniteq.

What was the team composition?

Our squads typically have a project lead and an overall technical lead. In multidisciplinary projects that involve usability, design, mobile, backend, etc. we typically delegate some technical leadership to these domain-leads (e.g. backend-lead).

Cogniteq's engineers typically filled the engineer role (working under the direction of the overall technical lead, as well as the domain-lead). Although sometimes they also filled the domain-lead role.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

With the help of Cogniteq, we can flex our engineering capacity very rapidly. This provides a huge boost to our productivity and our ability to deliver within our quality and timeline expectations.

Some projects would have simply been impossible without Cogniteq's help.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

It's been great. Cogniteq is flexible, which is important because each project is unique. So far, we've always been able to find a modus that works well.

When we needed to make changes to the workflow, we were always greeted with great understanding and willingness to work with us. This has made a big impact to us.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They have a seemingly endless pool of quality software engineers. We sometimes joke that they have a cloning machine that they are keeping a secret. They must be doing something right with regards to the talent they attract and their company culture.

Aside from the quality engineers, our point of contact is very friendly, helpful, understanding and dedicated to genuinely helping us. Communication is excellent and they never drop the ball.

Any criticisms, or request for improvement are always met with a positive attitude and implemented. This makes coordination a pleasure. The communication has always been extremely professional, yet personal and uncomplicated, which is one of the biggest compliments I can give.

On the engineering side, their team members are very dedicated and hard-working. Even though they are not directly employed by us, they really care for our projects, which is fantastic (and rare).

Are there any areas for improvement?

Building software is a challenging business. No project is ever perfect. What matters is the attitude, the trust and h

ow we deal with honest feedback. Cogniteq's engineers are technically very good. And on the rare occasion that there are issues, they are resolved quickly and amicably. After all, there is a reason why we are still working together intensively after all these years.

The one area that I would single out for improvement would be the verbal English skills of the engineers -- some of Cogniteq's engineers speak perfect English, others are a little less practiced.

It's not really an issue, because we are always honestly informed upfront with regard to the level of English proficiency that we can expect. But if there is one wish I can make, then it would be to invest in English in way way or another -- through training courses, or by making English the official company language also for internal communication, etc.

And I realise that this might be an unfair criticism because if we really wanted native English speakers, then we should go looking for UK/US-based agencies.

So on balance, given the culture/mentality, engineering quality and rates, we found a real sweet-spot with Cogniteq that we are very happy with.