Devlights

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of Korl

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

SaaS platform that syncs and summarizes product roadmap data in a single place, then auto-generates consumable product presentations, each tailored for a specific use case and audience.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Develop and ship our initial "MVP" product offering
• Continue post-MVP development to support progress toward our v1 launch

SOLUTION

How did you find Devlights?

Referral

Why did you select Devlights over others?

• Good value for cost
• Time-zone overlap

How many teammates from Devlights were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

The scope of work included helping develop our initial product from scratch. When we started working with Devlights, we did not even have a login page. We now have a multi-page web application that supports several key use cases for customers and includes multiple integrations with external tools and services (e.g. Jira, Confluence, Google Drive, GPT-4).

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We shipped our MVP to our first design partner customers within 6 months, which was within 1 month of the stretch goal we set upfront at the start of the project. We've continued to make great progress since then and are on track for an initial public launch in about one month. We've been so happy with the velocity, quality of work, and culture fit that we entered into a longer-term commitment to continue working with Devlights.

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

We agreed upfront that we would own project management on our side (in terms of project managing toward the MVP launch). That being said, the people we worked with at Devlights have demonstrated very good velocity on the engineering front and have been communicative if things start taking longer than expected, which allows us to make informed decisions about how and when to adjust scope. 

We do a daily standup and track work in Jira, and the Devlights team members are very good about posting their updates and communicating status as the work progresses.

What was your primary form of communication with Devlights?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

I have been really impressed with the quality of the people we are working with, both in terms of their engineering output and also ease of working with them. In addition, the Devlights CEO was really responsive and collaborative when we needed to unexpectedly swap in a new person for one of the initial engineers they provided (who ended up taking another role at a different company). It has just felt like a true partnership, which I think is unique.

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

This is a small thing, but there were a couple times where the invoices they sent were slightly off (e.g. didn't reflect when someone had taken a day off, or didn't include a discount we had discussed). They always corrected these discrepancies right away when I flagged them, but obviously it would be better if they hadn't been there in the first place. Overall, we've been very happy with their service. We haven't run into any major areas for improvement.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Product Owner of SITA

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

SITA is the world’s leading specialist in air transport communications and information technology.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Migrate code from an older technology
• Modernize our user experience

SOLUTION

How did you find Devlights?

Referral

Why did you select Devlights over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Devlights were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Migration of UI front-end and associated back-end services to a current technology stack + improvement of user experience.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Features and stories being closed as per our "definition of done" (DOD). Meaning UI windows being implemented, qualified, and delivered.

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

Project management was fit into our agile development practices. Progress was slow at the beginning because of a challenging transition from a previous team and technological ramp-up. But Devlights was willing to learn and adjust, and the work picked up with the good practices and design patterns that we expect from a mature provider.

What was your primary form of communication with Devlights?

Virtual Meeting

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

I'm impressed with their willingness to adapt and recruit very strong people for the project we had. Challenging designs and ideas to lead to better designs or technical solutions.

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

I found it difficult at time to work with people that were recruited on the fly for the project, without Devlights having a previous experience with them. I would have hoped for Devlights to propose people that they knew and had experience with beforehand. However I know that's tough to do with the current market situation.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Soy la directora ejecutiva de una empresa de educación en comunicación y oratoria para mujeres hispanohablantes.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Para desarrollar el MVP de la aplicación móvil de nestro producto.

SOLUTION

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

Por recomendación del product manager que trabaja con nosotros, fue decisivo el compromiso e interés mostrado en nuestro proyecto, como así también la infraestructura y el equipo humano de Devlight.

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

Se utilizó una metodología llamada SCRUM, es un marco de trabajo de desarrollo ágil de software. Un conjunto de buenas prácticas para trabajar colaborativamente, en equipo y obtener los mejores resultados posibles. Se realizaron ciclos cortos de 2 semanas en donde se realizaban entregas parciales de la aplicación. En estos ciclos se realizaban reuniones de DEMO o Revisión de no más de 1 hora, donde dabamos feedback y señalabamos qué cambios se pueden hacer para mejorar la aplicación.

Se realizaron reuniones de Retrospectiva en donde el equipo analizó su forma de trabajar identificando qué problemas nos impedía progresar y que aspectos se podian mejorar. Además, se hicieron reuniones de Diseño UX para poner en consonancia las cuestiones de diseño gráfico de la aplicación. En cuanto a tecnología utilizamos Angular para realizar la parte visual de la aplicación con la que las usuarias interactúan. .NET Core 6 Microsoft SQL Server para almacenar los datos de las usuarias y cursos. Y Azure para alojar la aplicación.

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

Un desarrollador full stack jr y el asesoramiento constante de los lideres de la empresa.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

En 4 meses logramos desarrollar el MVP del producto y presentarlo al mercado en la fecha prevista. Realizamos un evento de Early Preview donde el 100% de las participantes accedió a la plataforma y disfrutó de la experiencia.

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

Participación activa en todas las reuniones programadas con el personal asignado. Seguimiento por Slack y mail del proyecto por parte de los dueños de la empresa, como así también disposición ante cada necesidad planteada.

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

Sus habilidades de gestión de recursos, flexibilidad y manejo del tema.

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

Estamos muy a gusto con el servicio ofrecido.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Virufy is a California nonprofit corporation recognized by the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a tax-exempt public charity under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. I am a Head of Global Operations & Management.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Devlights?

Global, cross functional and technical projects to build, utilize, integrate, customize the right content, technologies, frameworks and automate business processes to accomplish the goals that we’ve set forth. Devlights has provided to Virufy with back – end developers to simplify the web application development process, making it easier, faster and secure interactive tools and technology to get relevant, high quality and professional software for our Website.

SOLUTION

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

We make a deep research and analysis to find a development team with flexibility to collaborate with other teams around the world, technical capabilities, improve user experiences, customization, and integration to create the perfect, seamless approach to how we utilize our software. Devlights is a Company with an important reputation and high standards that become in the best options.

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

Medical project that is developing technologies and valuable content to identify Covid – 19 and other diseases, in collaboration with professionals and prestigious institutions around the world.

Summarize: We define and share with the key stakeholders our strategy of what the project aims to accomplish to help us clarify larger issues with our plan.

Define: We describe the problem or opportunity and how the project will address it. Set goals: In this stage we identify SMART project objectives, defined as Specific (Answer who, what, when, where, and why), Measurable (Include metrics for defining success), Achievable (We set goals that are possible to accomplish with the available resources) and Relevant (Our goals should be aligned with our organization’s mission).

Time-bound: We negotiate and agree with cross functional teams intermediate and final deadlines for each goal.

Explain: Briefly we explain our agility methodology. Normally we Include any key technologies or project management techniques we’ll use and why they’re appropriate.

Measure: In collaboration with our development team and stakeholders we identify the project deliverables.

Schedule: Include a general timeline, with project phases and milestones.

Budget: We include the total estimated technical and human resources. Is important remember that Virufy is a nonprofit corporation.

Get feedback: Seek feedback from key stakeholders, customers, and anyone impacted by the project for feedback. Ask them to explain the project in their own words to get a sense of how clearly we’ve communicated the vision.

Proofread: Have someone else proofread the project description. In addition to spelling and grammatical errors, ask them to look for missing details that are significant to the project and translate in different languages.

Revise: Update and revise the project progresses.

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

At this moment we are collaborating with 2 developers with the intention to grow up the team for future projects.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We start to integrate new technical capabilities into our existing website, enabling us to add and edit we content without needing to rewrite or update any code. The Devlights Software Development Team working with HTML and other technologies to fix SEO technical and content issues to ensure optimized usability, navigation, and functionality, improving the experience for our supporters and followers. The quality in our content, performance and speed improve in 75% in the first stage.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Proactive development team with the ability to work with other cross functional teams around the world, communicate effectively with superiors, colleagues, and staff. Professionals were able to manage the internal tools as Slack and Jira, speak other languages, respect the enterprise environment and integrate existing processes and technologies.

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

The fast adaptability to work with other cultures that include different time zones, speak another languages and coach another coworkers. Motivated staff that learn and explore new technologies, support and coach other colleagues who are under stress. We are impressed by their capacity to face challenges under different conditions, assuming greater levels of responsibility.

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

We have the intention to incorporate more developers to our project and have the opportunity to work with designers, PMs and other professionals to expand our collaborations.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I`m the Director of a nonprofit organization in Corrientes, Argentina. Since 2019. Mas Voces is a non profit organization, Whose objective is to work with projects and programs to achieve quality education for the most vulnerable sectors in Corrientes

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Devlights worked together us in the development of the website. The home web update and especially the creation of landing pages for fundraising campaigns for the foundation, key tool for our programs.

SOLUTION

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

We selected DevLights because is a model company in the northeast region of Argentina. Its innovative profile, professional and oriented to the needs of its clients, is a key value to work together

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

Steps. 3 Meetings to understand the needs; share and organization of the information to show on the web; and the schedule of work and goals. Key Deliverables.

• Copywriting of the foundation´s information
• web model
• landing models

Technologies used? Don´t have that information

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

3 persons involved 1 Project Manager 1 UX Designer 1 Fullstack developer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our found raising campaings had a better performance with the news landing pages. This landigs were friendly, fresh and with videos, images and asertive cominication.

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

We had a good experience. The communication was permanent and questions were well delivered. The schedule was successfully met. The tools were mail, whatsapp and phone.

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

The special atention to the client. We are a non-profit organization, and the devligths accompaniment was optimal. I don't feel differences or delays.

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

No. Excelent service

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am CEO of an Optimus in Ecuador, we are a digital marketing company, where we have several clients from different sectors.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired the company Devlights to create different applications for the health sector here in Ecuador, generating easy-to-use applications for health doctors and users, generating modernization in their daily processes.

SOLUTION

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

Effective communication directly with the CEO of Devlights, has made it possible for him to understand our needs, and all the professionalism of the team has easily resulted in the objectives set.

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

Three applications have been made, all for the health sector in Ecuador. In each of the projects, meetings were established with the client, their needs, objectives, etc. were analyzed. We proceeded to generate a layout of the final product, later the client's approval and start-up for development. All projects had to be done in Ionic, .net core as API, Mongosdb database, cross-platform, angular front end.

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

There were 4 people, a project leader, two developers and an executive analyzing the needs of the final client.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project was well received by the Ministry of Public Health of Ecuador and UNICEF, since these applications help optimize the processes of health doctors in their day to day.

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

The management of the project was excellent, they met the deadlines every time and we never had communication failures or unexpected delays. For fluid communication, we kept in touch by whatsapp and email.

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

Professionalism, always willing to collaborate at any time and in any situation, everything is excellent.

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

All excellent with the company and its team

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I was the Product and Technology Director at Entravision. Entravision is a diversified global media, marketing, and technology company that reaches and engages Latino consumers in the U.S. and other markets.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired Devlights to develop the new version of our O&O Website “Todo Bebe”. The main goal was to align the content with the rebranding.

SOLUTION

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

After an extensive research, we decided to hire Devlights due to the easily way to align and manage the expectations of the project.

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

We had a kick-off meeting to define deliverables and expectations. After that, Devlights created full documentation of the project scope and a mock-up of the Website. The development was over Wordpress, including several custom libraries and plugins.

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

The CEO was full involved during the process. Also a Project Manager and two full stack developers participated across the development.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Clients loved the updated design, the traffic increased by 30% and the Ad Sales grow by 2x.

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

We had daily stand ups sessions and also milestones check meetings to adjust deliverables and progress. We used Slack, Skype and GitHub.

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

We're impressed by how clear and easy our communication has been with them.

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

Maybe they can improve their level of English to expand their footprint worldwide.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the co-founder of Behaviour Sense. We are a Behaviour Management platform for schools to track and analyse behavioural patterns.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

When a member of our team had to reduce their time commitment to the project, we needed to buff out our engineering capabilities to get the beta version of the product up and running.

SOLUTION

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

Cost and Quality were important to us. On the cost side DevLights were competitive against other options we were looking at. From the quality perspective we had a recommendation, and the team were flexible in working on a trial period.

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

The key areas of focus were

• User authentication and accounts
• Setting up the schools with their bespoke data easily
• Capturing and mapping the behaviour data
• Displaying the analysis in an easy to understand manner

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

1 Full Stack Developer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have now launched into our beta phase, are pushing marketing and have taken the first step towards commercialising the product.

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

We used a pretty lightweight framework - talking about weekly goals we wanted to achieve. Ad hoc communication via a shared slack

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

A lot of agencies you can work with feel like any issue is an opportunity to squeeze the client for money - There was never this feeling with DevLights - when issues were raised, they were fixed in a collaborative and pragmatic manner

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

I think we should have been clearer on the priorities of some of the outcomes to be ruthless in prioritising.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an engineer at a data visualization company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Devlights?

We needed someone to build an admin portal for our platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Devlights built a series of features to streamline the UX on our existing web portal’s admin platform. We met up with their team weekly to discuss progress and develop new features and deliverables for the site. In terms of technology, they used JavaScript, React components, Aurelia, PostgreSQL, and Node.js.

What is the team composition?

We worked with two members of their team, including a developer and a manager.

How did you come to work with Devlights?

A former coworker hired them for this project.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $50,000–$100,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from January–July 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They helped us implement all of the features that we needed for our platform, which was great. Overall, our admins were extremely happy with their new workflow and used the new service daily — they couldn’t get by without the features that Devlights created for them.

How did Devlights perform from a project management standpoint?

They were great; communication was always in sync, and their team didn’t need that much directon. They were able to get a grasp of our needs and the requirements we had in mind. In terms of tools, we used GitHub and Microsoft Azure.

What did you find most impressive about them? 

I was impressed with their ability to go from the concept discussion to the MVP, which reflected quickly what we asked.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO of a healthcare platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with Devlights?

We needed some development support.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed our web and mobile platforms. We provide health care services via text and/or audio messages, and the team installed various functionalities including messaging, image sharing, and more. There’s also a guarantee of data confidentiality. 

What is the team composition?

At least 5 people were involved.

How did you come to work with Devlights?

They were recommended by an industrial designer I worked with on another project. 

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent about $60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working on this project around August 2019 and our collaboration is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The development is great so far. We don’t have extensive results yet as we just started using the platform, but it works perfectly. We’re completely satisfied with the results. 

How did Devlights perform from a project management standpoint?

Everything was met in a timely manner. I don’t have any complaints on that side.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Devlights was always available to solve any setbacks that came up.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing that comes to mind. We’re satisfied.