Develandoo

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the co-founder and CEO of jobspottr. We’ve built a marketplace to match backpackers and students with jobs posted by employers on a global scale.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Develandoo?

We’re developing an app in iOS and Android, but we lacked the resources to finish the frontend. We engaged Develandoo to build the apps’ frontend.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted a fully functional app to go live in February or March 2019.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I was introduced to Albert (CEO, Develandoo). After we checked their service offerings and past projects and held a couple of calls, we decided to work with their team. They demonstrated flexibility and dedication to customer service.

Describe the project in detail.

We set up a roadmap and weekly goals to meet. Develandoo then built the frontend of our Android and iOS apps while our internal team developed the backend. We already had a UI/UX design in mind. However, their team suggested new ideas to improve its implementation, which we found valuable.

What was the team composition?

We worked with two frontend developers, one of whom was our main point of contact.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Develandoo produced a completed frontend in eight weeks, meeting our deadlines perfectly. They polished some areas after delivery, which is expected for any project. We’re highly satisfied with their work and our collaboration.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The team made communication over four time zones as straightforward as possible. Their developers got along well with our CTO, showing excellent initiative and giving feedback on ways to improve the project. We had weekly calls to provide progress updates. Develandoo was flexible in scheduling these check-ins and responded quickly to any inquiries we had at any time.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Develandoo delivered high-quality code on time and at excellent value. They adapted their service offerings to our project needs. They also completed work and communicated entirely remotely. Develandoo felt like an extension of our team even though I never met them personally. I had complete confidence in their work, which allowed me to focus on other aspects of the business while they finished development.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No, I can’t think of anything.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of 3back.ai, a startup that is redefining the way customers give feedback. We are re-shaping the way feedback is understood, used and implemented from a company’s perspective. By putting the people first, we create consistent and easy-to-use AI-driven customer experiences. 3back is working to optimize the customer feedback process to benefit both consumers and vendors. We found that consumers often have trouble contacting or getting the attention of big vendors. Our goal is to create a communication channel using AI technology that delivers customer feedback to businesses. Ideally, this will help vendors address immediate issues quickly and go on to offer products that better fit their audiences’ needs, ultimately strengthening customer loyalty.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Develandoo?

We plan to offer this experience to all industries in the future, but we decided to start in the automotive space. Consumers spend a lot of money on cars, but there isn’t a direct way for them to provide feedback to the relevant people in the organisation that have the power to make changes based on their customers’ reactions.

We’re developing a system that can work either from a phone with a mobile frontend or as a car’s voice assistant. The app will listen to what customers say about the vehicle, collect the comments, and deliver the insightful information to the company, with specific comments triggering an active response.

The core element of our service is the AI technology, which needs to comprehend complex, technical, and qualitative information at a large scale. We needed help assembling a dataset that’s extensive enough to train our AI system, analyze with data science, and create algorithmic models, allowing us to build an automated system that’s capable of understanding all kinds of content. Because we plan to offer our services on a wide scale, everything we do ideally has some built-in flexibility to adapt to fit other industry needs.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our company is gathering automotive data from the internet and sharing it with Develandoo. Their team has supported us in applying data science processes to that content and developing statistical models and algorithms. With their experience in the AI space, they test our system to help us determine how plausible our idea actually is. So far, the models are producing positive results.

What is the team composition?

Albert (Founder & CEO, Develandoo) guided the project, but I also worked with their lead data scientist.

How did you come to work with Develandoo?

Develandoo is an international company, but they have an office location in our area. Albert and I connected on LinkedIn, and we started a conversation. We met for coffee, discussing my business plan. He was interested in the project and thought his company could help, so we engaged in a long-term collaboration.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent between $30,000 and 50,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

At this point, all outcomes have been positive. Each of the models we’ve worked with so far are producing the results we expected. The models that Develandoo provided are capable of gathering and understanding data, which proves that our ultimate vision is possible. Now, we’re just working to get our business off of the ground.

How did Develandoo perform from a project management standpoint?

We met in person a few times, but we mainly communicate over Slack, and they’re consistently responsive. Develandoo provides senior staff to work on our project, so we feel like one of their top priorities. The team is also always available to take care of any issues that come up.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are highly collaborative, seamlessly working alongside my staff. We’re happy with the quality of their services and the pace of their work. Additionally, I really appreciated the freedom to decide who I wanted to work with from their company.

Are there any areas they could improve?

So far, everything has been fine. My company is accustomed to working with remote teammates. Internally, we have employees from a lot of different companies. With that in mind, if a client is looking for a more on-the-ground partner, they should discuss this with Develandoo so they can send people on-premise.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of Sylkar, a company that develops AI-driven B2B consumer platforms. Our products enable buyers and sellers to interact in a digital marketplace.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Develandoo?

We needed a partner to develop our platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

After hiring Develandoo, we discussed our project and specific challenges, and they told us exactly what they could offer. They explained the variety of solutions that existed and helped us choose the best one for our business. They then built the product and are currently doing final updates and maintenance.

What is the team composition?

We mainly work with the CEO but also have an account manager.

How did you come to work with Develandoo?

They were a referral.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since October 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We haven’t launched the platform yet, but Develandoo has done high-quality work. They quickly fix any flaws that pop up.

How did Develandoo perform from a project management standpoint?

They have open communication and a transparent workflow. They’re extremely responsive and require minimal oversight. All of the documents and resources we need are easy to find, making our work much easier. Overall, Develandoo is a great partner.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re much more transparent and responsive than other development companies I’ve worked with. We can contact them any time of day, even outside of regular business hours. They’re flexible and willing to accommodate to our changing needs and requirements.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they've done everything we've asked.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Liquid Newsroom. We’re a hybrid organization in both the media business and IT development business.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Develandoo?

The challenge was to build a deep learning model to identify concepts in political news articles, which also could be generalized to be used in other domains as well. It was the task of Develandoo to do the full product development cycle for this prototype. It was crucial that all decisions were scientifically validated, on solid mathematical and statistical ground achieve a higher than 90 per cent accuracy, when running the model with test data.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We built a core team of one data scientist with PhD level and a senior Python programmer and one from Liquid Newsroom to implement a team which can execute any kind of task from first research to model creation to implementation very fast and highly independent. They were involved in all necessary steps to create a final solution and to complete the planned prototype phases including the creation of a frontend to make the model accessible for non-technical staff.

Develandoo built a solution that uses machine and deep learning techniques to understand concepts in news articles. The prototype is complete, and I’m now working with the team to build another core project.

What is the team composition?

There was a senior Python developer and a data scientist.

How did you come to work with Develandoo?

I met Develandoo and they were highly engaged, knowledgeable, and eager to get things done. I liked their portfolio. We experienced a wonderful sense of cooperation as a team.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2018 and recently completed the prototype. We’ve since moved on to other projects.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The Develandoo team is composed of highly talented individuals with extraordinary skills. They succeeded in achieving all the goals and milestones that we set. We also worked with them very well. They’re very engaged and energetic in suggesting ideas. It was encouraging to see them build on their own expertise and knowledge throughout the project, going above and beyond what I initially proposed.

How did Develandoo perform from a project management standpoint?

We used a SCRUM development model and usually started each day with a “standup” 15-minute meeting (a virtual conference) to recap the previous day. We discussed the status and the challenges we’ll have to address. It was a very transparent relationship, and I didn’t have to micromanage. The whole project was meticulously documented and everything exceeded my expectations.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We love people. In our collaborations, we aim for a balance between expertise and geniality. We like having fun while working hard. We had so much fun and laughter in the morning meetings. Overall, the team spirit was great.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. It was a pleasure working with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They can deal with many different types of clients. If you want to get the most out of working with them, leave them some creative space to apply their knowledge.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a co-founder and the CTO of a company that provides banking services to retail clients in the form of a mobile application interface for expense and bank accounts.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Develandoo?

We’re a new startup, so our challenge was setting up our entire system—including frontend mobile apps and backend systems.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Develandoo is developing our Android and iOS app, as well as the backend system. We’re using a hybrid approach based on AngularJS for building the app. It’s day-to-day solution for banking operations that has connections to the core banking system, microservices for the contact list, the mobile engine, third-party fintech providers, and a couple of other items.

The app is targeted to the Swiss market. Paying a bill in our country involves going through a payments list and tediously typing in a reference number, which can have up to 27 digits. We’ve jointly built a scanner that automates this process, which involves image recognition, validation logic, and various optimizations for making the process go quickly.

The app itself is hybrid, but the scanner requires highly specific native code. Using their native iOS and Android teams wasn’t in the initial scope of work, but they’ve provided the service free of charge.

We’re still in the development phase, so we’ll need their support for setting up a build and production environment, defining targets, etc.

What is the team composition?

I’ve been in communication with their project manager, CEO, and CTO.

How did you come to work with Develandoo?

We received a recommendation from a former colleague. We chose Develandoo instead of two other candidates based on a mix of budget and perceived competence. They’re not the cheapest option, but they are highly qualified.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in December 2017. The project is set to finalize in October 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our image scanner is up there with the best alternatives in the market, so it’s quite an achievement already in the early phase of development. The app is progressing nicely so far even though we’ve had to make some compromises in order to have a hybrid approach.

We’ve done a lot of testing with our QA team. The specs haven’t always been perfect, but this is a normal part of the process.

How did Develandoo perform from a project management standpoint?

We use the Kanban project management method. I give them a perfect score for commitment. We’ve had a lot of back-and-forth in terms of email communication, which is very good. Develandoo is based in Armenia, which has made the collaboration harder. Their communication could be more intense.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve appreciated their flexibility, commitment, and speed of onboarding. They were able to accommodate our need to increase our team by two people within one day, which I thought was amazing.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their communication is the only area in need of improvement. It’s not a critical aspect, but it would increase my score of them. If I had to do it again, I would still choose Develandoo.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CTO of a fintech start up that does customer advisory. Our main focuses are mortgages and insurances products through our advisory platform and branches. We started this project 5 years ago and now we are the largest mortgage broker of Switzerland.

Last year we were acquired by an insurance company (for what is probably the biggest deal for a fintech start up in Switzerland), but we remain an independent company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Develandoo?

We already have a technical set-up in place with an internal development team and a nearshore partner. Our challenge for them was to support the marketing team with a separate punctual project. They had to be agile and fast to deliver for an advertising related project.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? Specifically, what were the services they provided?

Recently, they worked on our ad display campaign. The banners show current interest mortgage rates using data crawled from the web. Each banner displayed will trigger a call to our crawling server in order to display the rates. They have also provided the full solution for the project to be successful. We just had to create a proper work specification, then they did everything, including a task-tracking environment, management of the developers, and server configuration and deploys.

How did you find Develandoo, and why did you decide they would be the best fit for you?

I found them by searching on Google for some Python/Django company. Then we had a call and we thought they were a good technical partner for our needs.

What was the month and year you started working with Develandoo?

We began working with them in January of 2016 and the collaboration is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project we had is not publicly accessible. Its purpose is to crawl/aggregate data on regular basis so we could use it in some places. The solution should also support reasonably large number of requests to serve the data without performance impact.

How did Develandoo perform from a project management standpoint?

They did very well. We delivered the specifications and had a call to clarify everything, then added all comments in their ticketing system. They have managed their developers so they deliver high standard code. We had feedback discussions on a regular basis and everything was communicated openly.

What did you find most impressive about Develandoo? Was there anything particularly noteworthy about the services they provided and experience they gave you?

What I have appreciated is the flexibility they offered with a strong management. It has really helped us so to scale our development capacity for the required time.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Unleash 12 was a small startup based out of Lucerne and Zurich in Switzerland. As a startup, our goal was to provide a platform for soccer clubs in Europe to connect both their sponsors and their fans in a commercially viable way. It was essentially like a Groupon-style platform where the sponsors of the soccer clubs would be providing products to the fans of the football club. Our role as the middle man was to bring all the various parties together and provide an e-commerce platform that allowed the sponsors to sell their products, to promote the clothing, and the particular soccer club in question.

I was the CTO. I was responsible for the development work that was being done at the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Develandoo?

We had limited resources. A lot of our development work was done with outsourcing teams. We had been working with an outsourcing partner in Ukraine but were having some quality issues and the relationship had not gone particularly smoothly. We were looking for a strong, reliable partner who was able to meet our quality requirements and was able to provide us with the kind of service that we expected from an outsourcing partner.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our platform was based on Python and Django. We were looking for a smaller team of about four people who would be able to do both frontend and backend development, as well as help us maintain the platform. It wasn’t just a single platform; there were a lot of different platforms since we had contracts with various different clubs, for example, Real Madrid in Spain, PSV Eindhoven in Holland, S.L. Benfica in Portugal, and Mario Götze as a player website in Germany. Each of these platforms had different requirements; they all had a slightly different look and feel and slightly different functionality. We also had the constant need to be able to update the platform to meet the needs of the individual marketing campaigns that we were running.

What we were looking for specifically from Develandoo was a team that was able to deliver high-quality results in a very short amount of time. I was the day-to-day manager of the team and it was based on time and materials. We were able to run our Agile development process with them directly, while they had the overhead of an onsite team. They had their own laptops, their own computers, and their own facilities where they would actually be doing the work. We were able to collaborate with them as if they were essentially a dedicated team for us. They could meet our requirements for quality and professionalism and were able to deliver what they had promised on time and per specifications.

They did things I would expect an Agile team to be able to do, but with the added advantage of being able to interact with them on a regular basis. We had our chat channels set up for the developers, so we were in contact all day every day. They were an outsourced bodily team that was able to provide the high-quality services that we were looking for.

How did you come to work with Develandoo?

One of our marketing team members was at a marketing conference in Ireland and ran into Albert Stepanyan, the CEO of Develandoo. He mentioned that we were having problems with an existing team, and Albert said that his own company could be a solution for us.

The teams which we were working with were in Armenia, and there’s a three hour time difference between central Europe and Yerevan, where their team is actually located. Develandoo provides a local manager who, in this case, was working out of Munich and was able to be a liaison between me and the team outsourced in Yerevan. It wasn’t necessarily something which we needed because we have the technical expertise to be able to oversee the process ourselves, but it was nice to have somebody who would be participating in the process. He was present in all of our regular meetings, on our daily calls, our specification sessions, etc. He was able to ensure that the team in Yerevan understood what was required of them and deal with any potential language issues or problems which arose.

Every once in a while, there would be something that I wasn’t 100% happy with, and I was able to address that issue with the manager on site rather than having to go through various hierarchy levels. There was somebody specifically designated as our point of contact for any kind of administrative or operational issues.

The manager, together with Albert, came to meet us in Zurich and sat down with us and discussed the goals of the project. We tackled what we needed from them, the scope of work that we would be looking for, and what kind of resources we would need. With that, they were able to provide an estimate of what the monthly cost would be. Once we had agreed on the financial part of it, we were able to ask them to do some sample work. I provided them with a project that was a mini-implementation of something which had some kind of relevance to our platform. They took that on board and had their senior individual work on it and give us the results. Based on the results, I knew that I would be happy working with them and was confident that they had the level of engineering expertise, experience, and attention to detail that I was looking for.

How much have you invested with Develandoo?

Over the four months, we spent around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January, but unfortunately, the company went out of business in April.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Unfortunately, I don’t have any metrics because the company shut down. I can definitely say that the quality of work was very good. We had two frontend developers and two backend developers working on the team. We were able to tackle a lot of work and every single ticket was written with unit tests and with integration tests. With every single implementation, we had to make sure that there were no regressions, that nothing was broken, and that we were able to deploy it essentially immediately once the iteration was over.

Their approach to software engineering and web development in terms of following best practices with regards to Agile development, including all the stuff which you would typically associate with dev ops including continuous integration, unit testing, integration testing, and continuous deployment, ran very smoothly. They were absolutely able to work within that framework.

How did Develandoo perform from a project management standpoint?

Our main platform for collaboration was JIRA. We also communicated via Slack for our day-to-day communication. The nice thing about Develandoo’s approach is that they have someone who is your technical account manager. He’s not just someone who is responsible for sending you the bills but is also responsible for the smooth running of the team. There was also access to the CTO, who would take care of conceptual architectural work had that not been something which we were able to take care of ourselves. Those resources were always present and available in case we needed them.

A couple of times, the process didn’t go as smoothly, probably because I wasn’t clear on who had the responsibility for a certain task. Their model is that they have a person on the ground who is essentially responsible for taking the requirements from the clients and then translating that for the team. I took on some of that role, but when I did have any concerns, I would go to him and he would report back to the team about anything I needed. That was not hands-on enough for me. As soon as I brought that to their attention, they worked with me to address my concern. There was always a good level of responsiveness. They were open to receiving feedback and making sure to alleviate any issues. 

What did you find most impressive about Develandoo?

It’s the fact that they have someone local. They don’t just send the account manager, and when it actually comes down to the implementation, you have to see how you can communicate with them on your own. They have someone who is there, who is able to travel and meet with you, even if the team is far away. This set up allows the whole process to run more smoothly and enables them to be more responsive to their customer's requirements. 

Are there any areas Develandoo could improve?

Everyone can always be better. They had two developers who were very strong and two who were less strong. You always hope to only have the strongest developers, but that’s not realistic. One thing they could have done better was to be more proactive in communicating the progress of the work. Although they have a local representative who's meant to address any issues and ensure the process is running smoothly, I sometimes felt that I as a client had to do too much of ensuring that the process was going smoothly. I had to ask about testing and make sure they had thought of everything. I had been expecting more of that from Develandoo, but, by and large, that was a minor quibble.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am VP of software development at WeLocalize. We are primarily a localization services provider, but we also do other kinds of content transformation tasks across a global supply chain. My teams mainly build infrastructure, workflow systems, talent management systems, and data science around moving tasks out to about a 150-country global supply chain, analyzing risk and putting the right person on the right task.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Develandoo?

Develandoo did a couple of things for us. One was helping us with flexible capacity. Because I've had such a good working relationship with Albert [Founder, Develandoo] over the years, I trust Develandoo to do serious research and development work. It’s great to be able to launch a project, and then pass it on to Develandoo. They put really good talent on it, talent who I trust just as much as onshore resources. Anything we can compartmentalize to the point where it’s easy to hand off, I trust Develandoo to do it.

The other thing we hire Develandoo for is help with hard maintenance problems, the kinds of challenges we’re going through when there’s change, or we’re deprecating a product. Maybe we need someone to shepherd it through those parts of the life cycle where it's hard to recruit someone to get excited about it. Develandoo can put solid, capable people on it, take care of the resource management problem associated with that, and make sure it gets done well.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Develandoo has helped us with a few projects. One of them involves the ongoing life cycle of a project. We originally built it as a pilot in service of one of the world’s largest software companies. The purpose of this pilot was to use data science to identify tasks that are at risk of failure, such as being late or having quality issues. That involved ETL-ing [extract, transform, load] an incredible amount of data from different legacy silo systems and joining it all together. The project works very intricate, nit-picky, detail-oriented data management stuff. They then applied some machine learning models to that data to pull out risk cohorts. Then, provide reporting to a quality management team who’s then doing day-to-day interventions to help that supply chain and that resource pool do better at their jobs. That project started out with an onshore team in the United States. Over time it needed help from Develandoo, specifically some senior level Python development help to work with both the stakeholders in proving that system and keeping it going forward and then maintaining that system over time. After the pilot, it ended up being a production system. They continue to maintain that today.

The second thing is that Develandoo has just started getting involved in doing some research and development for us on our new platform. With that project, we’re using senior JavaScript talent, and they’re going to help us build components that relate to managing the workflows that are part of our core business. For the third project, Develandoo is going to take on some maintenance and support around one of our legacy project accounting platforms. It’s a .NET platform, a fiddly legacy system that’s risky to meddle with. Nevertheless, I trust that Develandoo will be able to help keep that supported, handle burning issues, and make production fixes. Develandoo also did another .NET project for us, a new quality model to one of our language quality management systems.

How did you come to work with Develandoo?

I’ve known Albert since about 2009. He worked with me at Learning Objects, so I knew that he was a solid technologist and a good technology project manager. When he got involved with Develandoo and started building out, it really gave me peace of mind to know that if Albert is vetting these engineers and saying they’re good, and he’s helping to address any issues, then I'm confident that things were going to work out well.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around March 2015, and our work together is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I use Develandoo as collaborators in larger effort initiatives; I view them as an extension of our team, so it’s hard to pick out metrics that directly impact on their work. I’m a former developer, so I'm a little skeptical of measuring code quality in any way except code reviews, peer reviews, and the code’s acceptability to the wider group and the architect. From that sense, it’s a little bit binary for me: The work is either good enough, or it’s not good enough. We’re not going to spend a lot of time reworking or training anyone. We expect people to hit the ground running and produce code that’s as good as what our team produces. That’s what I've gotten from Develandoo.

How did Develandoo perform from a project management standpoint?

Develandoo has done really well from a project management standpoint. The way I measure that is through escalation. How often do I have to do anything? Almost never. Develandoo works directly with stakeholders inside our business, just as a product manager on my team might work. They have been well received by the stakeholders whose feedback to me is that Develandoo is responsive, they solve issues, and they address requirements. The system is on autopilot. I spend almost no energy dealing with any escalations related to Develandoo’s work. The relationships are intra-team. Our product managers and our developers work with them, and they use a variety of tools. We use Slack, Git, and other standard tools.

What did you find most impressive about Develandoo?

I trust Albert’s judgment, which allows me to delegate the decision making. I don't have to second-guess or deeply interview the candidates because he finds good workers. There’s less churn. We’ve found that the people Develandoo puts on projects fit right in with the team. They’re high performers, and it’s low stress. Also, they’re good with stakeholders. Even when we’re working with the different time zones, they’re still a big help. We don't have to buffer them as we might with other teams.

Are there any areas Develandoo could improve?

No. I’m super happy with Develandoo.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Kichink is an e-commerce platform with a diverse interest in mobile applications. One application, called Kash, is connected to our site. It is a mobile management platform for pre-paid cards and provides an extra level of security. I joined Kichink in December 2016. I’m currently the project manager for such applications in which Develandoo has been assisting us.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Develandoo?

We needed a development team who could meet the expectations of our CEO, Claudio del Conde. He has high standards for user-friendly and creative solutions in mobile applications.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

For some applications, they are in charge of the backend and frontend development. They have even provided design, performance, and security solutions that have made our applications better and easier to use.

How did you come to work with Develandoo?

Claudio found them. He described them as a team that would be able to fulfill his expectations. They could provide the proper attention to detail and wouldn’t need constant supervision to meet the required standards. Since working with them, I can attest this is 100% true.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have ongoing projects and some that have been completed to our satisfaction.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have new builds changes set up every week, as well as due dates for modules. Generally, we use Trello and JIRA to track progress. Every build not only comes on the scheduled date but comes with a clear explanation of what has been added and how it works according to the requirement.

How did Develandoo perform from a project management standpoint?

Perfect. They follow a Scrum methodology. However, they are open to any new standard or guide like PMI-PMP, using any platform provided. The team had to be responsive in terms of time and quality, which they are able to do, much to our satisfaction.

What did you find most impressive about Develandoo?

They adapt to our schedule even though we are physically on opposite ends of the world. They still meet us at appropriate times, and output delivery also arrives at our time.

Are there any areas Develandoo could improve?

From my point of view, I haven't found any area they could improve—outside of the possibility for them to grow and add professional designers to the team who can give clients more aesthetic solutions. But then again, that could be a bit of a reach, given they are focused on technology.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Senior Director of SaaS Engineering of Sorenson Communications

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Sorenson Communications is a leading provider of accessible language services, primarily focused on facilitating communication for Deaf and hard of hearing individuals

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Develandoo to accomplish?

• Accelerate our software delivery process

SOLUTION

How did you find Develandoo?

Referral

Why did you select Develandoo over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from Develandoo were assigned to this project?

20

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We worked with Develandoo on many projects, but the most important project was accelerating our work throughout the company by creating projects that any team could use.  Develandoo was instrumental in delivering this high-quality acceleration framework. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We were able to take the non-functional requirements of a new SaaS project from 2 months down to 1 week.  

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Develandoo never missed a target deadline, whether a sprint or a more significant target date.  They hit every single one.  They were phenomenal to work with. 

What was your primary form of communication with Develandoo?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Develandoo's expertise and professionalism go above and beyond what I've encountered at most consulting companies.

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

No.