Django Stars

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

I work for a start-up in San Francisco that is focused on creating a new, better mortgage experience, starting here in California and then ultimately, we hope, [throughout] the United States. We’re about a one-year-old company, with about 20 folks, that has just launched.

What is your position?

I’m the chief executive officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you first approached Django Stars?

The Django Stars relationship came from a set of investors that we have in Switzerland who have used Django Stars in building their business. We were essentially referred to them early on when we started the business. At that point in time, we had no technology leadership in the company, so it made a lot of sense to just to piggyback, and leverage their resources and team that our investors in Switzerland had utilized. We basically needed to find a development resource.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of work in greater detail?

They’ve been front and center for the development for online platforms. They’ve been primarily responsible for building our website, which includes the ability to build a rate quote tool, and provide clients with pricing and rate information. Also, we’re essentially creating a consumer portal wherein a user can understand where they are in the mortgage application process and all the remaining steps to be fulfilled. While we’ve spent a little bit of time on our end sort of designing what we want, they’ve been the team implementing and building our online platforms. They’ve really been our technical arms.

Could you provide a general cost estimate for this particular project?

Since inception, I would say we’ve spent somewhere around the order of $100,000.

Is this relationship ongoing?

It is. They continue to support us with three or four dedicated programmers. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of their work?

We’re just launching, so other than being satisfied with the work that’s been done thus far, and certainly the cost and timing of the deliveries, there really isn’t anything else I could offer. We haven’t really been in market yet, so it’s sort of early to provide any metrics or figures around the user experience and conversions, and things like that.

When working with Django Stars, is there anything you’d consider unique about their approach and development methodology?

I’m not necessarily in the greatest position to answer that. Our technology people here that have been working closely with them could probably answer that with more accuracy. I do think that they’ve been very well positioned to deliver our solution since they’d worked on a very similar deployment with some of our counterparts in Switzerland.

They were already up on the learning curve regarding the types of systems and things that are needed in the mortgage industry. Granted, Switzerland is different from the U.S., so being able to piggyback on some of that learning and expertise they already had was great for us. The other side of things is a comparative advantage regarding the economics and billing rates of talented Django and Python engineers. They’re more than capable of delivering high-quality, tested code, and they’re far less expensive than their American counterparts.

In retrospect, are there areas in which you think Django Stars could improve as a service provider?

I think the most challenging thing is the 10- or 11-hour time difference between Kiev and San Francisco. Perhaps having project management folks themselves here in the United States, in San Francisco or New York, would be ideal. It would be easier from a project management perspective to have their project leads working in our same time zone, rather than having to figure out how to engage across the 11-hour difference, which can be complicated at times. To some extent, that’s just the nature of using offshore developers to augment and support your technology needs.

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

I don’t work for the company that had employed Django Stars any longer. But, that organization was called Digital First Ventures. It was a part of a much bigger company that owned a lot of newspapers in the United States. We were coming up with new technology products that would leverage the audience and the relationships of the bigger media company to accelerate the growth of these products. We had to come up with a new technology, new websites, new mobile apps, and then deploy them using the audience of the newspaper company.

What was your position?

I was the head of product. I was responsible for product development and life cycle management.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you first approached Django Stars?

Our biggest problem was that we had a large number of complex projects that we needed to get finished, but had very little additional bandwidth. We didn’t have enough internal resources, to meet our deployment timelines. We started to look for other companies, both offshore and onshore developers, to help augment our team. Django Stars was one of the companies we reached out to. The reason we reached out to them was because they’re primarily a Python development shop. All of our technology was in Python and Django, so they were an obvious choice.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of work in greater detail?

We got a couple resources from them. One was a full-stack engineer, he did both front-end and backend, and also information architecture. The other guy was a front-end specialist, so he worked primarily on HTML and CSS. The third guy was also a front-end specialist. Their work as really ad hoc. It depended on what client projects were a priority at the time. In general, they helped with most of the technical elements and then finalized designs.

How did you select Django Stars as your solution partner?

We were searching Django development companies on Google, and we came across them. I guess their reputation for Django development is so good that they naturally turn up. They were one of the 20 or 30 different companies we reached out to for development services. We gave them a trial project; in the Django Stars case, they were willing to do a trial project for a week or two, entirely for free. At the time, they said that if everything turned out well then we could then consider bringing them on full time.

Could you provide a general cost estimate for this project?

We worked with them for approximately five or six months at about $10,000 a month.

When was the project completed?

[The] most recent project was completed in April [of 2014].

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of their work?

I don’t have specific metrics to share with you. I can say that I was incredibly impressed with the work they did and the professionalism that their developers brought to the table. When we were engaging with them, we had a couple other developers, other offshore companies working with us, so they weren’t the only ones we were working with. I had the best experience working with them compared to the others. Their developers were able to deliver all of our assignments on time and within budget, which is difficult to achieve on a consistent basis in the technology space.

Their overall knowledge of Django and Python was also very impressive. It’s hard to find that many proficient developers at the speed that we wanted because the other alternative we had was to hire people in-house, and we just didn’t have enough people to do that.

When working with Django Stars, is there anything you’d consider unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguish them from other vendors?

When you employ an offshore developer, you’re typically assigned a project manager that is then responsible for delegating tasks to internal resources. What I really like about Django Stars was the fact that they granted us direct access to their developers. They would integrate directly into our team. This helped us remain agile and nimble throughout the deployment and testing phases.

In retrospect, are there areas in which you think Django Stars could improve as a service provider?

I had a very good experience with them. One critique I have for every offshore developer, and this is not specific to them, but it does apply to them as well, is that the communication skills simply aren’t equivalent to their American counterparts. They don’t all speak English. It wasn’t an impediment for us because we could still get work done, but that’s a development item for them to expand in the future.

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

Diviac is an online cloud-based platform for scuba divers that allow them to log and track their diving. We're in the process of developing a web application with Django Stars to extend our platform's usability to smaller devices. We'll be offering mobile native apps sometime in the near future. It also functions like a trip advisor for scuba divers. For instance, it offers some detailed information about certain diving sites and locations. It's a place where divers can consolidate all of the relevant and value data they need to have convenient access to.

What is your position?

I'm one of the two co-founders and currently the CEO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you began the relationship with Django Stars?

It wasn't really a business challenge, per se. It was more of a need. I've been working with Django Stars since December 2012. When we first considered hiring a technology partner, we were preparing to devise and develop our solution for the first time, which meant the very core functionalities. We had our conceptual design and business strategy arranged, but we needed the engineers to build the solution for us.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of the work they've delivered over the course of the relationship?

I originally hired them to develop the whole functional platform from scratch. This has been a full-service project, from initial conception to eventual deployment. We've worked together on the visual design of the site, and they've handled the technical implementation. They cleaned, prepared, and migrated all of our data before configuring the entire system and organizing the business logic. They've also been dealing with incremental upgrades and some custom functional enhancements on the backend. We retain them for monthly support and maintenance.

How did you select Django Stars as your solution partner for this endeavor?

It wasn't a very scientific extensive process, to be entirely honest. It began with the technology. We were advised by a trust business associate to build our solution with Python using the Django framework. Once that was decided upon, we began to conduct some research into the leading Python and Django firms. We investigated a number of past conferences and identified the sponsors, and keynote speakers, and then reviewed their sites. We also received a recommendation from another Swiss startup, informing us that Django Stars had a great reputation. We submitted our statement of work and received a very compelling proposal. We invited them to demonstrate some of their capabilities and then proceeded to commission them.

This is some ongoing relationship, correct?

Yes. That's correct. At this point, we've clocked several thousands of development hours with them. We use them exclusively as our development arm and they operate as an extension of our team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback you've received that might demonstrate the effectiveness of their work?

We've received some very positive feedback both from our investors and from our users who see and use the platform on a daily basis: Clean code, fluid and intuitive usability, [and] very contemporary. It's a combination of both factors outside of Django Stars' circle of influence such as design decisions, but also in terms of the custom development on their end.

When working with Django Stars, is there anything you'd consider unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguishes them from other vendors?

First of all, they're very flexible with their contractual arrangements. We've gone back and forth between the pure agile mode of simple per hour, and also fixed project prices. They've been very flexible in accommodating our needs, our desires. They've also been very responsive. Overall, I'm very positive about Django Stars, and I can recommend them without any problem.

In retrospect, are there areas in which you think they could improve as a service provider?

Areas we often allude to are the time estimations for various pieces of work. Like many companies and many individuals, they tend to be on the optimistic side and, sometimes, underestimate the amount of time required for certain pieces of work, which is fine so long as there aren't other external dependencies involved.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CPO of Liom Health

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Liom is a deep-tech startup from Switzerland employing ca. 80 mostly scientists that is developing the "ultimate wearable" combining established vital sign tracking functionality (heart rate, respiratory rate, etc.) with needle-free biomarker monitoring, starting with glucose.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Django Stars to accomplish?

Build a health and wellness app should designed for health seekers focusing on nutrition and exercise to promote healthy weight maintenance and reduce the risk of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease

SOLUTION

How did you find Django Stars?

Referral

Why did you select Django Stars over others?

Referred to me

How many teammates from Django Stars were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Develop MVP for health and wellness app designed for health seekers focusing on nutrition and exercise to promote healthy weight maintenance and reduce the risk of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

MVP app build

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

Django Stars assinged a dedicated project manager from the start who ensured on-time completion of the deliverables in each sprint. They communicated extremley well, with a response time of less than 30mins during time zone overlap and less than 12hrs outside of time zone overlap.

What was your primary form of communication with Django Stars?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Their responsiveness to our needs with regards to quality and capacity of the engineering team. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Partner of Novalytica AG

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Data Analytics company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Django Stars to accomplish?

• Plattform for data collection

SOLUTION

How did you find Django Stars?

Referral

Why did you select Django Stars over others?

Referred to me

How many teammates from Django Stars were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Django Stars supported us in UX Design and FE development. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have a working plattform.

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

Good and clear communication 

Delivery as agreed 

What was your primary form of communication with Django Stars?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

A very experienced team that brings their ideas into the project.

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

From my side, it worked well and we keep collaborating. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am an executive at New Horizon 8 AG

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Digital Insurance Application

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Django Stars to accomplish?

• Develop a digital Insurance Application for the Swiss Market

SOLUTION

How did you find Django Stars?

Online Search

Why did you select Django Stars over others?

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

How many teammates from Django Stars were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Scope of Work:

• Design and develop frontend and backend of the application.
• Implement core features
• Ensure security and compliance with data protection regulations.
• Conduct thorough testing and quality assurance.

Key Deliverables:

• Fully functional web application with intuitive user interface.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Fully functional MVP of our digital insurance application.

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

Django Stars exceeded our expectations on every metric—always on time or ahead of schedule.

What was your primary form of communication with Django Stars?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

I am particularly impressed by their swift response, proactive approach, extensive expertise across various domains, and excellent communication skills.

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

No

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Researcher of ETH Zürich

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Public university that conducts research as well.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Django Stars to accomplish?

• Biuld a user-friendly website that queries a database.

SOLUTION

How did you find Django Stars?

Online Search

Why did you select Django Stars over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Good value for cost
• Full life-cycle

How many teammates from Django Stars were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Django Stars was responsible of designing and developing a user-friendly interface that queries data from a database and displays it in maps with different projections.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Not Applicable

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

Yes, they always delivered the items on time and adapted to the project's needs.

What was your primary form of communication with Django Stars?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

It was super easy to communicate with the team and exchange ideas. They provided feedback to the project to improve its implementation.

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

I would have liked to have more feedback of the project before the project started, so I could evaluate whether the budget could be enlargened to adapt to the project's needs.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of a financial services company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Customer experience and automation platform for financial services

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Django Stars to accomplish?

• Roadmap Acceleration
• Technology Expertise
• Django

SOLUTION

How did you find Django Stars?

Prior Relationship

Why did you select Django Stars over others?

Excellence in Software Engineering

How many teammates from Django Stars were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

End to end development of a customer experience platform

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

On time delivery and high quality work product

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

Djangostars follows a comprehensive program management methodology.

What was your primary form of communication with Django Stars?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Exceptional software engineering talent with deep expertise and strong communication skills.

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

They've been a phenomenal partner to work with.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder of a financial services company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Digital family office for everyone

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Django Stars to accomplish?

• MVP development

SOLUTION

How did you find Django Stars?

Referral

Why did you select Django Stars over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Referred to me

How many teammates from Django Stars were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Development of a working web-app (MVP), incl. support with UI/UX, back-end, front-end and implementing on Azure Cloud own architecture

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Product MVP was used for testing with clients and for fundraising

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

timely delivery, fast response time, understand needs

What was your primary form of communication with Django Stars?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

They were a great team, helpful, and supportive.

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

all in all highly recommended

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a project manager at Veda Holding. Veda holding is an incubator in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia that supports startups and mature companies by providing value and growth capital. We have multiple projects, and we chose Django Stars to create a digital marketplace where Saudi designers products could be represented.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed to build from scratch a fully-custom e-commerce platform that meets our target market’s (Saudi Arabia) specifics.

SOLUTION

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

We were looking for a reliable technical partner to build several products for our holding company. We were looking for such a partner on the web, and found Django Stars. Also, they were referred by a trusted Saudi Arabian fintech company they worked with previously. After meeting with their COO in person, we’ve decided to choose them.

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

As I mentioned, we needed a fully-custom product from scratch, so Django Stars had to handle everything. They did pre-development research, validated our idea, and did market research to ensure our product fits the market and gets customers.

They developed our platform, engineered UX/UI, did Quality Assurance, DevOps, and maintenance. In a word, they put everything on track for us. Speaking of technologies, they use Python & Django on the backend, and React on the frontend.

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

They provided us with a full-cycle team: during the discovery phase we worked with Business Analyst, UX/UI engineer, Project Manager, and Backend engineer. When the development process started, there also joined two backend engineers, two frontend developers, QA engineer, and DevOps specialist.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We got a well-shaped e-commerce platform that meets our customers' needs. It’s live, it serves our customers in a predictable way, and we have full control of everything that happens. Django Stars did their job exactly in a way we expected them to, so we are sure we did the right thing choosing them.

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

We worked within the Scrum framework, and used Jira, Confluence, and Slack — that’s pretty much it. Django Stars stand for clarity and transparency, and they organized management and communication in a way we didn’t need a lot of tools. Though, we always knew what happened and what to expect.

We could contact anyone from the team they assigned and discuss things directly, which also had a positive impact on our working process. They have a strong experience, and are not shy to apply it during every phase — they drove us through the pre-development stage, and demonstrated a solid understanding of our business needs through the development process.

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

They do well in terms of management, organization, development. But their strongest advantage is that they focus not only on the product needs but our business needs. They think of functionalities, features, architecture, but they also analyze such things from a business perspective — like ease and costs of scaling, meeting user requirements and specifics, etc.

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

I believe that in case you trust them, share all the information needed, and keep your finger on the pulse, you will not have any issues with them during the whole process. From our perspective, everything was ok.