Instil

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the director of software development at an electronics manufacturer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Instil?

We needed support to design and implement a UI for one of our next-generation platforms to have new capabilities and ultimately increase sales. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, we spoke with Instil about our project's objective and the type of staffing we needed. We also defined the deliverables and process to follow. Instil has designed a new UI for our product and worked on UX and implementation, using JavaScript, TypeScript, and Node.js for custom software development.

What is the team composition?

We work with around five software engineers and a couple of UX designers. We've also worked with a QA tester and a project manager.

How did you come to work with Instil?

My company had previously worked with Instil years ago. When I joined the company, my team told me Instil had done a good job, so I went back to them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Instil in the fall of 2021, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Instil's development process is quick and has helped us save time, meeting our expectations. 

How did Instil perform from a project management standpoint?

Instil meets the project's milestones on time and communicates well with us, updating us on the project status via Jira. We also communicate through email and instant messaging in Microsoft Teams and Slack.
Are there any employees from the service provider's team that you would like to give a shout-out to in this review?

I want to shout out Neil's (Principal Engineer) work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Instil is capable of working with ambiguity, being able to work through it, and coming up with good proposals. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Instil's prices are a little bit expensive, and I'd prefer to have less oversight costs and more development costs. 

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I suggest providing Instil guidance to work on your project because they're very good at finding their way.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the Chief Technology & Product Officer of a Document Automation Company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Document generation and electronic delivery for financial service institutions including fully digital eClosing and other digital tools for both consumer and B2B customers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Develop new PDF renderer print engine to support doc gen platform
• Flexible, nimble and extracted for doc gen application
• Support for other verticals and use cases through standalone APIs

SOLUTION

How did you find Instil?

Referral

Why did you select Instil over others?

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

How many teammates from Instil were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Integrate third-party libraries with proprietary functionality to build a new "print engine" (PDF renderer) that aggregates data with proprietary HTML-based templates to generate documents. Requirements included meeting all current print engine functionality and capabilities while expanding with new mark-up to streamline template creation and editing as well as enhancing the Accessibility capabilities of the final PDF output. 
Additional functionality was required to also be able to produce SmartDoc XML outputs to match the PDF content and meet the MISMO SmartDoc standard.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Print Engine and SmartDoc products were delivered with the highest quality and on-schedule (sometimes ahead). The team was quickly able to ramp up and become familiar with the both the high-level objectives and the details needed to be effective. The team members operated in parallel with internal resources and in the process became very knowledgeable and able to guide the future roadmap.

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

Instil was great at project management with weekly meetings and written report-outs to track progress. They were willing to quickly adapt when needed and flexible to meet shifting priorities.

What was your primary form of communication with Instil?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Instil provided high quality resources who were able to quickly integrate with the teams - able to self-direct to come up to speed quickly and not be overly rigid in needing formal requirements to get started.

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

Nothing comes to mind.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CTO of Trafalgar Entertainment; we are a theater business. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Instil?

We have an e-commerce portion of our business that has primarily been built through acquisitions. We needed to create a new e-commerce site in a short amount of time and didn’t have those skills within our organization. We hired Instil for this web development. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We wrote a project brief to give Instil an idea of what we wanted to build and the technology stack we were looking to work with. Instil has been responsible for building the e-commerce website. We’ve launched the first MVP and are now working on rolling the site out for our other venues. Key technologies include Vercel, Next.js, and TypeScript. 

What is the team composition?

We work with about eight individuals from Instil. 

How did you come to work with Instil?

Instil was a recommendation. We sent a brief to multiple companies and had them respond with their ideas. We also sent out brand guidelines for the companies to work with and eventually decided to move forward with Instil. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about £250,000 (approximately $310,000 USD). 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2023, and the engagement is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Instil’s work has certainly met our expectations. They’ve been able to handle everything that we’ve needed. 

How did Instil perform from a project management standpoint?

We work in an Agile environment. We meet weekly to plan, and Instil has hit deadlines. 

Are there any employees from the service provider's team that you would like to give a shout-out to in this review?

We’d like to shout out Matthew (Principal Software Engineer); he’s been phenomenal to work with. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team is extremely talented and knows exactly what they’re doing. Instil has been extremely helpful throughout this process. Instil has helped build a culture in our organizational systems that has enhanced how we work. They have been extremely collaborative, and their team is relaxed and easy to work with. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing we can come up with. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Trust the Instil team; if you let them solve the problem through their processes, you’ll be successful. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I serve as an Engineering Manager for one of the top observability software vendors.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our product works with Java Virtual Machines (JVM) and while we have the in-house knowledge to support our customers using the Java language, we have a dearth of technical experience with the Scala language. Through professional contacts that knew about Instil, we engaged them to initially provide Scala engineering expertise and over time, expanded that to include Java, augmenting our team's overall capacity.

SOLUTION

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

One of our software architects had worked with Instil previously, so we initiated discussions on that basis. We agreed to an engagement because we determined that their engineers had the right technical depth needed and because their management style seemed to ensure that we would have a productive, efficient engagement.

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

Our Instil engineers wrote Scala code perfectly designed to integrate with out product. They took the time to understand and master our codebase and they were even able to offer improvement suggestions on sections of code that have not been frequently touched by even our own engineers.

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

We had two engineers working with us full-time. Their levels of expertise were at the lead/senior level.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to exceed our Scala related deliverables - we were able to provide our customers with support for more than 12+ Scala-specific frameworks, 10+ database drivers and implemented more than 15 + internal product tests. These were all net-new deliverables and enhancements to our product - functionality that did not exist prior to our engagement with Instil.

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

They seamlessly adapted to our style. They were added to our Slack channel, attended the meetings we requested, etc. For the most part, we had them working side-by-side with our in-house engineers and they were flexible enough to accommodate all our requests.

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

The technical level of expertise of their engineers. Great engineers are hard to find and the two we had working with us were clearly top-notch.

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

We would have loved to have permanently hired the two engineers they assigned to us!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the senior engineering manager for the high performance versions of multiple developer tooling products.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

The goal was to accelerate product development and support existing dev teams with expert engineers that could hit the ground running and quickly ramp into the technical stack. The overall goal was to accelerate delivery of features across multiple products.

SOLUTION

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

The Instil team have a strong reputation for quality and technical excellence. They were flexible with timings and comfortable integrating into existing team structures.

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

We got the Instil team into the standard company development practices. They were fully treated like existing staff and participated in feature kickoff, scope definition, build, test, communicate to community, define success metrics and measure post release.

The key deliverables were sets of features across multiple developer tooling products. The Instil team was super useful in feeding into scoping features and managing risks. The tech stack was JS, Java, Spring, OSGi, Tomcat, jUnit, Git etc. The general Java tech stack.

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

We had between 7-10 staff from Instil working as a team with us over the course of the engagement. The positions varied from 'developer', 'senior developer' and 'principal developer'.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The deliverables were to a very high quality and performance standard. As the overarching goal was to ship more value for customers across multiple developer tooling products, we eventually experienced an uptick in CSAT and as a lagging metric revenue and renewals.

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

The Instil team participated in the company development process, so they adhered to the version of Agile delivery that we practiced. They engaged directly with other teams to manage dependencies and ensure communication was strong. We found them to be proactive, responsive and asking the correct questions and the right time.

They were indistinguishable from a full time employed team. In terms of tooling, the primary tools were Jira Software, Confluence, Atlas, Slack etc.

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

We were impressed with how well they integrated into the internal team's ways of working. This meant that they acted and behaved as a team of full time employees. Their technical ability shone through and the speed at which they ramped on the product challenges and tech stack, meant that they were effective quickly.

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

Nothing specifc.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of development for a software agency that produces a POS product. My job entails providing implementation of software roadmap direction, managing developers, and providing resources that the business needs to develop its own products.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Instil Software?

We were trying to rapidly build a product for a new market opportunity. We needed an Android version of our product, as we already had a newer version of it running on iPads.

We did some explorative work on other companies but Instil was the clear winner in the process. They proved that they had the skills to work with us to build the product we needed.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Instil Software collaborated with us to build a POS product for the Android platform. Our requirements were for it to be cloud-based, high-performing, and extremely reliable for people to use to run their businesses — it’s not a new concept, but its execution was critical. There are multiple versions of the product on the market.  We already had an iOS version which is regarded as an excellent product.

We needed to ensure the Android version had the same quality as the iOS version, but initially, we didn’t have any Android developers. We added a number of Instil developers to our team as we hired our own and they helped us build the first version. We set up a number of lab sessions where we worked on the specifications of the product for five days.

One of their values as a partner is that they transfer knowledge over to our team. They don’t just help develop the product and walk away. They helped train our team on the Android platform to ensure we maintain their good practices and high-quality code — this is helpful from a business point of view because we ultimately provide support for the product.

What is the team composition?

We initially talked with the CEO, development manager, and principal software developer for the exploratory phase. We set up a number of lab sessions where we worked on the specifications of the product for five days. On the last day, they presented the first prototype of what the product would look like and were blown away by their flexibility.

How did you come to work with Instil Software?

I previously worked with them on other projects, but I found them the first time through a recommendation.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2017, and the partnership is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have metrics that show the number of crashes and incidents or problems raised by our customers' experience, but the results are so low, it’s almost negligible which is excellent. In addition, we also had a target to launch on the Google Play Store, which was a big milestone for us. As a software leader, I know that there’s no universal scale of measuring the architecture of a software. I know when things are architected well when the software is easy to change and make additions to. 

They’ve been very flexible, and they’ve been able to provide more developers when we needed them. Instil has top-quality developers with good attitudes, and that’s why it’s been such a pleasure working with them.

How did Instil Software perform from a project management standpoint?

Since they’re in the same city as one of our offices, the developers came to work in our offices a number of days a week. When they couldn’t, they would be in touch through Slack, which we use as an internal communication tool. We also use Jira, GitHub, and Zoom, and Google Meet for meetings that can’t happen face to face.

They’re also committed to our project planning process. They make it with us and really strive to deliver the amount of depth and quality — I’ve seen them go the extra mile.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m very impressed with their attention to detail and how invested they are in our success. They’re a very impressive team that’s generous with their knowledge and if you get that for a development partner, you’ll be very lucky. 

Instil Software are not looking to take your money and build a minimal version of your product. They build extraordinarily high-quality software that’s well-tested, automated, and well-architected - they want you to be happy with their work. They’re an interesting company for developers to work with because they provide challenges all the time. They want to impart the knowledge to you and leave you with the ability to support your own product.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve had such a good relationship with them that nothing has ever come up. There’s never a point where we need to sit down with them because they’ve always handled things very professionally.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to be as transparent as you can about the project. You should absolutely work with them and you will not regret it. Your team and your business will be better for it.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.
 
I’m the senior manager of global software development for the professional division of a consumer electronics firm.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Instil Software?
 
We had a partnership with a customer for a project. We needed to develop a new software application for an emerging aspect of our business. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Instil Software was responsible for this app — they helped design, develop, and write the code for it. They worked closely with our designers and our customer to create something new and different for the industry. They internalized all of the information and developed the software.

What is the team composition?

I worked with around 11 people from Instil Software’s team, but my involvement was more at the executive level. I worked directly with Tara (CEO) and the product management team. I only interacted with the development team at the beginning of the project. We discussed scope and details about how the team was going to work and what needed to be done. 

How did you come to work with Instil Software?

I worked with Tara and other people from Instil Software at a previous organization. My impression of them was high enough that I recommended them as a potential development partner for this new project. We objectively evaluated, critiqued, and graded them against another development team, and they came out to be the top pick for the job. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from approximately October 2019–May 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We put together a development plan that was agreed upon between our company and Instil Software; it included specific deliverables based on dates. They delivered what they said they were going to deliver and more — they always over-delivered on what they committed to. I was satisfied with Instil Software's services and would definitely work with them again. 

How did Instil Software perform from a project management standpoint?

Instil Software was very good at meeting deadlines. We had daily meetings with them — communication was never a problem. I wasn’t necessarily involved in the day-to-day development of the software. However, my team that was responsible for that had nothing but good things to say about Instil Software’s development team.

They were very experienced, capable, and high-performing — just a really well-run organization. Also, the product management team was very knowledgeable and understanding. They were able to drive the project and get the information needed for it to grow and go in the direction that we wanted it to.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The project was extremely complicated because it had very extensive requirements. However, Instil Software did an absolutely fantastic job and exceeded all of the organization’s and our customer’s expectations. 

Tara was a very good person to work with — he was, understanding, willing to help, and accommodating. From a business perspective, he was always fair and willing to do the right thing. I have nothing but respect and trust for Instil Software. Our partnership was a fantastic experience.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were a couple of times when they were collecting information for us, and we didn’t hear anything back from them for a while, which was concerning. I knew they were working on the project and coming up with estimates and plans. However, it would’ve been nice if they’d let us know that they were still working on the project or asked if we had any questions just to make sure there were no long periods of silence. 

However, after these long periods, they always came back with the exact and right answer. That was a pretty minor complaint. Overall, they were the right combination of everything we wanted.

Any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that Instil Software gets as much information as they can. Based on that information, they’ll be able to come up with a fantastic solution. Even in the absence of information, if you describe what you want or need and trust them, they will come up with a good solution.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior technical lead at an IT company, and I lead our digital banking engineering teams. I primarily work in the London office. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Instil Software?

The most recent kind of business challenge that we’ve worked with them was launching a new product to market. It was a large complex technical platform, and we hired Instil to build a banking app for one of our clients. We wanted to finish the project within six months. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Instil primarily provides software engineering capability. They’re augmenting our teams and providing experienced software developers to help us deliver our proposition quickly. They also provide QA on all our deliverables.  

Currently, the team is focused on building our mobile app. They've provided mobile developers that are in charge of the app’s architecture and design. There’s a lot of cloud technology, Kubernetes-based software development, and other technologies that are involved in the project. For example, we’ve used Java Microservices and Swift as our two main technologies for iOS mobile app development.

The team already finished the iOS app, and they're set to complete the Android app too. Furthermore, they help us with the technical problems we’re dealing with and in creating new features for our platform.

What is the team composition?

At the peak, we’ve worked with five people from Instil. We continue to work with two people from Instil today. 

How did you come to work with Instil Software?

I worked with Instil for a number of years. They had a good reputation in the local market, particularly for their quality work above all else. That was something that was really important to us because we wanted to ensure that our products would be done exceptionally. The market recommendation was the primary reason why we started working with them.  

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent roughly $750,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2020, and they’re still working with us today.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve been able to have initial releases within six weeks, and that has been impressive.

How did Instil Software perform from a project management standpoint?

We had a kickoff session, and after that, we got together and planned our activities. Now, we use Slack to communicate, and we use Jira for reporting. Everything’s been really good from a project management perspective: they’ve been integrated with us, and they provide regular updates.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of their work has been fantastic. If they don’t believe they can deliver a piece of work in the time we want them to finish or if there are cost constraints that they identify, they’re open and honest about that. They clearly tell us if they can do something or not. Furthermore, they’ll explain the limitations why they can’t provide the solution. 

As a result, when they receive work, I’m confident that they’ll deliver excellently. Instil is a trustworthy company, and that’s the reason why we’ve worked with them for a long time. They’ve repeatedly proven that they can deliver their promises.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’d love for them to scale with us because sometimes it’s challenging getting resources from them. They don’t have a lot of developers, but apart from that, I’m very happy with their services. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you use Instil’s experience well. They have a huge wealth of experience, and they have the ability to produce high quality. That works best when you’re open and honest about what you’re trying to achieve.

You need to work with them as a partner to deliver an outcome rather than being very contract-specific to what you want them to do. I still think they’ll be able to deliver good results, but I don’t think you’ll get the most out of the engagement.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Body Worn Video camera manufacturer and direct supplier to end user customers. Founder, Managing Director.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

To develop a ground up, all new Digital Evidence Management software system for review of secure video files. It was essential that the software was user friendly and scalable for the end user.

SOLUTION

How did you select Instil Software and what were the deciding factors?

We had met in 2013 and had a good impression of the Instil team and management.

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

Initially Instil prepared a detail elaboration report in order to assess the viability of the proposed project. This gave us a clear idea of costs and realistic time frames for the new software development. All key deliverables were met on time, often exceeding expectations.

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

There were four people in the core Instil development team. We had regular weekly meetings that also included two additional people from the Management team. We had good access to the commercial team when appropriate.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project was completed and software was delivered on time. Very professional throughout.

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

Project management and communication with all the team at Instil was excellent. Very respectful to our team and very professional with the highest software development ability based on our experience.

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

Communication was excellent. Professional consistency made for a very calm and enjoyable experience for us. At no stage did we have any doubt on the complete success of this rather extensive development project.

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

None that I can think off.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a software developer and architect for a wireless company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Instil Software?

Our primary need was to engage a leader in the software development arena to design, create, and test value-added service applications based on our specifications. We wanted a partnership with a team that was able to work both alongside our internal staff as well as independently. Instil also went a step further and provided both leadership and training to augment and improve our team’s knowledge and understanding of new, relevant technologies.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Although our department took care of deployment into production for the multitude of applications in which Instil was involved, their team covered nearly every other stage of work. They conducted research, created designs, implemented the code, tested the results, and deployed the end product into our staging platforms for unit integration and end-to-end testing. Their team provided documentation and 24-7 support for all of the above.

The products on which they collaborated with us ranged from mobile apps to server-side development. A common assignment was for a certain type of application that allowed users to enter into a system and provision features for a cellular customer.

How much have you invested with them?

During our overall work with Instil, we have invested between C$2-5 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with Instil in 2011, and we are currently in the process of wrapping up our final projects.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Due to the varied nature of our work with them, I do not have any concrete metrics to share on the results of their work.

How did Instil Software perform from a project management standpoint?

Their organization was particularly impressive, with each project having its own clearly defined schedule to which their team would adhere—even when our timeline changed with little notice. It was very clear that our priorities were of the utmost importance to them. If their progress was going to be delayed, they would indicate so with advance notice.

Instil always delivered their assigned work in a timely fashion, the products were consistently of the highest quality, and their responsiveness to queries or issues was thorough and constant, despite them being located on a different continent. If ever there was a problem, their team was immediately available to assist with our concerns.

To assist with our collaborations, we used Confluence, Slack, and Google TV, in addition to holding daily telephone calls, as well as stand-ups for some of our Agile projects. Every quarter, their team’s management would fly over to our office for three or four days.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their competitiveness and their intelligence make them stand out from the crowd. Instil’s sheer breadth of knowledge makes their software services very desirable. Although they were located across the pond, our team developed a close bond with them on a personal level. Despite the distance, they worked with us exceptionally well.

Additionally, we occasionally compared their pricing system to other, larger software development vendors, and Instil was usually one-half to one-fifth of the cost.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In an ideal world, they would open up an office in Toronto. New contractor guidelines at our company regarding the distance of collaborators have meant that we have had to part ways with Instil on future projects, even though we would prefer to continue to work with them.