LeanCode

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CTO of welliba. Welliba’s EX+ platform enables organisations to measure, predict and manage employee experience. At the same time, it provides on-demand, personalised insights and advice to employees.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed support in developing a new service consisting of a web application and an app. We wanted to develop a market-ready product with a small, flexible team in the shortest possible time. The development was to be done in collaboration with our development team.

SOLUTION

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

We became aware of the provider through several technical articles. The professional presentation and large overlap of the Tech-Stack convinced us.

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

The product is made up of several components. The most important is a web application developed with React and Tailwind CSS. In addition, there is a native app developed with Flutter. The app is used for continuous user interaction and visual presentation of the results. All systems are multilingual and support RTL languages. The CQRS backend is written in C# and uses PostgreSQL as a database. The entire system runs on MS Azure in a Kubernetes cluster. The infrastructure is set up and maintained via Terraform.

Communication with the user is done via a flexible notification system that includes email, push notification, in-app notification, Slack and Teams.

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

A total of 6 people are involved in the project. 1 frontend developer, 2 backend developers, 1 flutter developer, 1 QA specialist, and a scrum master. They work together with the developers from Welliba.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

After a few months, we were able to set up the first projects on the new platform. Currently, new features and improvements are being developed and are being delivered as scheduled.

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

We have very open and constructive communication. Daily stand-ups and weekly retros help us to optimize the processes. We use Slack and GitHub for communication.

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

We're impressed with their very high technical expertise and engagement.

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

No.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Product Owner in company that develops digital products and ventures

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our goal was to develop a web platform in the FinTech area that optimizes the discounting and billing process. It brings value to each party engaged in the transaction. Suppliers can get paid before the due date. Buyers can get a decent return on invested cash.

SOLUTION

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

Leancode has demonstrated very good communication. They analyzed the project thoroughly and did an efficient cost estimation addressing each of the project elements

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

Project was run using Scrum framework and it works well. We started with kickoff with entire team and stakeholders. Essential task was to build an MVP of the fintech platform with key features such as creating offer templates and accepting offers.

Technologies:

• React
• Node.js
• GraphQL

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

• Team Leader (Full stack developer)
• Regular Developer (Frontend)
• Junior Developer (Frontend)
• Scrum Master
• UX/UI Designer Analyst

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We made the whole MVP from scratch, modeling the entire process and carefully selecting essential features at every stage of development. Thanks to the careful feature-choosing process during refinements, we delivered the product faster, within only 4 months. The above-mentioned things allowed rapid implementation with the first customers and satisfy the stakeholders.

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

We had daily stand-ups with entire team and also refinements once a week.

Tools:

• Slack
• email
• Jira
• Figma
• Miro

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

The project was run transparently with good communication and pace of work

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

No, everything in the project was implemented appropriately.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Technical Tribe Owner in Seamless Banking Tribe and Deputy CIO in Credit Agricole Bank Polska SA

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We wanted to deliver a new, modern mobile banking app build from scratch in Flutter with MVP1 delivery in 9 months (for F&F testing)

SOLUTION

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

We were looking for experts in Polish flutter market that were open do deliver a team and end-to-end vision, capabilities to enable Flutter development.

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

They deliver developers/architects and framework of flutter@scale project organization. Developers were allocated to the business scrum squads and also technical squads.

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

There were around 15 developers/senior developers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to start implementation at full scale of the 14 squads after a month from they appear. We were able to deliver mobile banking app (MVP1) on production to start F&F phase and deliver the stable functionalities with additional functions after 2,5 months

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

LenaCode was alligned with scrum/agile approach that we were using in the project.

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

LeanCode is open to learning a new domain of banking business and open to deliver the effective solution for specific cases. They were very committed to keep the project in flutter clean and pure to limit bad technical decisions

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

No comments

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a software and app development company that is also a medical product producer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with LeanCode?

We were new the app development at the outset of the project and needed someone to help us make the correct technology decisions, as well as how to structure the app to get us an MVP.

From there, we needed developers with Flutter skills. This is a relatively new framework, and they already had experience with it.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We provided the designs and specifications and brought in our own team later on to help with the transition. They used .NET for the web backend.

In terms of key features, they developed a video management tool for testing purposes and cases around video recording issues. If a user has an internet issue or another problem while working with their video, we built in some features that will prevent the footage from being lost.

What is the team composition?

Initially, they assigned two mobile developers and one backend developer, and then a third mobile developer joined later one. The majority of the project has been done with four developers.

How did you come to work with LeanCode?

We interviewed and received proposals from six other providers in addition to LeanCode. After meeting with them, we decided they seemed energetic and were willing to do provide samples of their work.

Additionally, they are solely focused on Flutter technology. They really wanted to understand our product from a business perspective and provide suggestions to improve it. They were also communicative and help us plan everything. We felt very comfortable working with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $350,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from September 2020–December 2021. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re not marketing the app yet, as we’re waiting for one supply-chain piece; we’re a physical product. We were under budget for the initial MVP and then decided to continue working with them.

Internally, we’ve gotten great feedback in terms of the function and speed of the architecture. We had it independently audited, and the results were that it was structured well and demonstrated good technology choices.

How did LeanCode perform from a project management standpoint?

There was an assigned project manager who I was in-touch with throughout the week. We communicated via Slack and met over Google Meet either once or twice a week. There was no communication barrier.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were able to look at what our problems are and at our solution should be from a business perspective. Their owner has some startup experience and knew some of what to expect from our partnership.

LeanCode’s team really cared about the success of the product even after our cooperation ended too, asking us how things were going and checking up on how they could help us.

Finally, they were very open when started we hired our own internal team and ensured that they got our new employees up to speed. They remained available to answer or questions, which helped the process be very smooth. They were great with planning.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Many things went well; the only thing that could have been better was communication around the timeline of the engagement and how many developers were needed. This wasn’t a major issue, and when we brought it up, they bent over backward to make us happy. I was very satisfied.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure to ask a lot of questions about the experience and technology and include everything that needs to be included in the technology. Plans to implement the wireframes are also very important to possess. From a business standpoint, be open to their suggestions about how best to implement something. They have a lot of young developers with lots of ideas.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

CTO of software/hardware company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

The project's main goal was to build a mobile application that would enable the efficient management of sterilizers remotely. The app needed to provide access to both static data, such as information about the address and the exact room in which it is located; and dynamic data, such as the device's current configuration, external influencing factors, or mode of operation.

SOLUTION

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

We decided to choose LeanCode after talking with them and with other several companies. LeanCode was chosen because we felt that their development workflow was well established and suited us. Also, we recognized their deep knowledge of Flutter-based apps.

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

We asked LeanCode to provide two applications: STERYLIS - an Internet-connected device management app, and STERYLIS Pure - a Bluetooth companion app to our sterilizing devices. Development included using cross platform Flutter framework for building the apps and it was connected to our .NET backend in Azure. STERYLIS Pure app also used BLE connection to control the device.

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

Flutter developer and mobile app tester.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

LeanCode prepared for us 2 applications, as promised.

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

They use JIRA, google meet and Slack as base communication channels, and all of these work very well. We had short daily meetups with a developer to check the progress and settle next steps.

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

They knew Flutter very well and they basically prepared everything on their side (ie. build, repos etc), so that clients can focus on managing and defining business requirements. The developers are well prepared, give great support and really commit to the project.

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

Hard to think about something.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

IRD Group provides business intelligence service to a variety of companies in the media marketing and technology spaces. We provide insights that are sales triggers for business development managers to win new business. I am the owner of the company, we have 15 staff.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our web application had been re-developed around five years previously but was relying on using TLS 1.0 which was going to cease to work on browsers by August 2020 – we had a very hard deadline to review, update and replace the application before it stopped working for our clients.

At the same time we wanted a system that used modern search, UI and cloud based hosting with regular development sprints so it was a significant departure from the old system and way of operating.

SOLUTION

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

We knew we wanted something like Flutter for the mobile app development component of the new job and we knew that developers who had been working with Flutter were exposed to the latest ideas on use of cloud based services and modern design principles. This team had a strong reputation in Europe as a leading Flutter developer so we reached out to them, amongst others, to see if they are interested in a task like this.

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

We started with a very quick prototype test of rebuilding our prime search facility in a modern structure. While there were few other pieces of data or functions, this gave us the ability to sense how the entire system would look and feel post the rebuild.

We then commenced a more structured program working through major functional points within the system and identifying points in time that we could expose this to clients and staff for testing. We had a hard stop of August to provide sufficient functionality for our clients to continue paying us so the focus was strongly on making sure of a functioning operational login, usage, and alerting system that was ready to go as clients started to fail on the old system.

After we had successfully replaced the old system with the new one we then commenced looking at the functionalities that have been skipped to meet the deadline and after those have been completed we then moved on to functionalities that had been considered over time on our wishlist but had been limited due to the underlying technical platform.

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

We had a project manager, a UI specialist a senior backend developer and two backend developers , as well as a senior frontend developer and two developers and a number of other staff who were added as the situation required it.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We successfully migrated off the old system just as the old system was starting to fail clients, yet all the clients saw the new system as a massive improvement in functionality and capability compared to the old system so it was a very smooth migration for clients rather than being a major business failure point.

The new platform has allowed us to dramatically improve both the depth of the information we provide as well as the functionalities to help people identify key targets. It dramatically lifted our competitiveness and people satisfaction with the office.

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

We mainly worked with two week sprints including a meeting each fortnight looked at upcoming features, test results, and production deployment plans. This allowed our business to focus mainly on its work throughout the program. The team provided clear timelines that allowed us to know we were going to hit our target

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

They always develop with an eye for usability and for a crisp professional and modern look which means that we have now got a system that presents as a very current and capable platform despite providing little or no guidance to the team on how it should look or operate. The team not only delivered what we needed, but they also improved on what we wanted.

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

No.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Maspex is an international food company. It is the biggest private company in Poland and the renowned manufacturer of consumer goods and groceries ranging from fresh juices through sauces and pasta to coffee and snacks. It was developed mostly through acquisitions in Central and Eastern Europe and has become the owner of more than 20 companies and one of the largest food producers in this region. We are a distinct leader in the market of juices, nectars, and beverages in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and the leading manufacturer in Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Latvia. In Maspex I am responsible for leading the innovation, currently in the role of a Project Manager and Business Developer.

I am working with Maspex' partners within the European Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC), known as EIT Food, which was set up to transform our food ecosystem. By connecting consumers with businesses, start-ups, researchers, and students from around Europe, EIT Food supports innovative and economically sustainable initiatives which improve our health, our access to quality food, and our environment.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We’ve hired LeanCode to build the new digital platform for the logistic system which enables our trade representatives to order new marketing materials at the local headquarters directly. Until the project was deployed the whole process was managed by emails and complicated internal processes. We wanted to improve the communication by building a system that will help to facilitate the communication between different departments in different regions and countries so that to optimize the production of the marketing (POS) materials for the stores supplied by us directly.

SOLUTION

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

This was already our second project with LeanCode, so we invited them to submit their proposal on the final solution as we were really satisfied with the previous work. They prepared a detailed analysis with our team during the 4h workshops and prepare their recommendations on how the new process can look together with the price estimations. We’ve selected LeanCode because it offered the most complex and tailored for our needs solution at a reasonable price.

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

The project started with the workshop where all business needs of various stakeholders have been analyzed. LeanCode prepared the Stakeholders map as well as the User Flow diagrams from the perspective of different actors in the system. This was the founding stone for future works. After the workshop, they prepared the initial low fidelity mockups and gathered feedback from the team to the proposal. In the final stage of the preparation, the branding and UI have been created that were based mostly on our CI guidelines. The development part started with the official kickoff and the team worked in sprints on delivering the key components sequenced by the priority for the marketing department.

After each sprint there was a demo organized, initially, those demos were very short and of a lower value, however, the 4 last sprints and demo sessions demonstrated great progress and we were able to witness how the complete process works. The server-side was built with MCV.NET frameworks, the frontend app facing the marketing department was created using ReactJS and the mobile application used by the trade representatives was build using Flutter, a very interesting framework what allowed us to get both iOS and Android version at the same time and within the same budget.

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

LeanCode’s team was headed by the product owner, who was in charge of the product specs as well as the development team. He was responsible for getting the vision from the team during the workshops together with one of the LeanCode’s partners and transferring that to the project's specs.

The product owner was also gathering the feedback and was working as a point of contact for us along the way. Except for him, there were other team members participating in the project who was also in direct contact with us during dailies and planning & demo sessions. The most active person was from the UX/UI, who was working on the overdosing of the system. The development team consisted of 4 ppl, 3 developers one for each platform (mobile, frontend, and backend) + the tester.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The most important outcome was the fact that the project was delivered on time and within the budget estimated by LeanCode. There were certain additional requirements identified after the initial deployments, which resulted in for example an SAP integration, and those were added to the scope slightly increasing the budget. From our perspective, the key result is that the system is widely used in our company and all stakeholders were really quick to adopt it as they were participating in the building phase.

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

The project was delivered using agile methodology, SCRUM in particular. The team was working on Sprints, most of them lasting for two weeks and each sprint consisted of refinement, planning, and demo sessions. We were able to communicate during dailies which greatly streamlined the feedback loop. What was particularly useful was the JIRA board, where we could track both the backlog and the time spent on the project.

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

What is unique about LeanCode is that they are not building the product based on the brief and some initial vision but work intensively during workshops and afterward, sometimes even challenging our team to find the best scenario that matches both the business need and the budget. They are also very independent in a way that they can organize the interviews and sessions with other stakeholders without actively involving the rest of our team and this approach helped us to eliminate the bottlenecks in the communication

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

The feeling is that the project meets our high expectations.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Maspex is the largest private Polish company in the food industry and one of the largest in Central and Eastern Europe. We are a distinct leader on the market of juices, nectars and beverages in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and the leading manufacturer in Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Latvia.

We are also a leading manufacturer of instant products in Central and Eastern Europe. Maspex is also a leader on the market of pasta, jams and sauces and a leading producer in the segment of ketchups, ready meals, and vegetable preserves in Poland.

The company is also a leading player on the Romanian water market. In Maspex I am responsible for managing innovative projects, currently in the role of a Project Manager. I am working with Maspex' partners within the European Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC), known as EIT Food, which was set up to transform our food ecosystem.

By connecting consumers with businesses, start-ups, researchers, and students from around Europe, EIT Food supports innovative and economically sustainable initiatives which improve our health, our access to quality food, and our environment.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We were looking for a partner which can provide us a full range of services starting from the design, through the development and implementation of the system, up to the maintenance after the deployment to production meeting our high SLA criteria. LeanCode proved to match all important requirements and we’ve outsourced to them the task of building the very important marketing tool that streamlines the operation of all our marketing departments in 28 countries.

We wanted to build the platform for our marketing department to exchange the communication with all external media agencies which will substitute for email exchange, where it is hard to understand what was accepted, what is the stage of production of different materials and who is responsible for the next steps.

SOLUTION

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

We’ve selected LeanCode because they offered us a great analys of our needs and helped to structure them as a product. Initially, we just used them as consultants to design the system during the workshops and when they proved capable of building the required platform we decided to outsource the complete project to them, including the infrastructure and the maintenance.

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

The challenge in the ContentBox project was to understand the workflow of the marketing materials and create the unified pattern that would match the needs of different marketing departments in different regions with their idiosyncrasies and often unique structure for the decision making process.

Eventually within the scope LeanCode has created the system tha covers the whole content path, from the bief (idea) that is sent to listed agencies (external companies), through inicial projects for communication and feedback loop based on chats, file versioning and the final acceptance workflow as well as integration with the social media to monitor to publication.

Except for the workflow the ContentBox system provided us with some very useful views, which help to organise the work like the calendar view enabling us to make plans for more advanced campaigns across different brands and geographies.

The final product consisted of the main web interface and admin app built in React, smartwatch app build using Flutter and a server side build with MVC.NET, all running on Microsoft Azure.

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

LeanCode’s work was initiated by the team consisting of one of the cofounders and the project manager. They were responsible for the workshops and drafting the main vision of the product. Afterwards the works have been taken over by the product manager, who was responsible for the business analysis as well as the overall communication. Except for him the team consisted of a UX/UI designer, backend developer, two frontend developers and QA responsible for testing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project is currently used in all our major geographies and involving communication with dozens of external agencies. Initially we were only aiming at the marketing agencies, but currently all our communication efforts, including PR agencies, are orchestrated within ContentBox. The LeanCode team proved to be 100% reliable not only while delivering the product but also during the maintenance phase, when they’ve been very helpful and able to solve all problems within hours.

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

The project was delivered based on SCRUM. Since we didn’t have an experienced product owner for this kind of a solution on our side we relied on a product owner proxy from LeanCode who was keeping the backlog and analysing the specification with our business owners.

What we appreciated the most was the constant communication during dailies and planning sessions as well as demo meetings. Thanks to that we felt safe at each stage of the project that everything would be delivered according to our expectations.

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

LeanCode took the responsibility for the product and its vision and brought it to life. There were excellent at interviewing the team and identifying the right problems so that they could solve them with the future product.

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

We feel that the project was meeting our high expectations

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Future Collars is one of the fastest growing company in Poland in field of edutech. We focus on granting tailored online education to people who seek opportunity of job changing, especially in shifting towards IT and Digital fields (like programming, digital marketing or UX). Comapny's USP are very flexible courses with ongoing Mentor support. I am Head of Business Development and a product owner for this project

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire LeanCode?

Our project was about building an online platform "all in one" where our students could have all information needed with extra support and automation. The vital part of the project was R&D which aimed at implementing machine learning and automation between other services and custom integrations.

What were your goals for this project?

The main goal was to build and publish ready-to-use smart platform for our frontend course. It included building platform with CMS from scratch with tricky integrations with zoom, gitlab, rocketchat and VS code. What is more, our goal was to create an environment for future machine learning implementation.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We had 3 major dev shops under consideration. We selected LeanCode thanks to their professional approach, open mind and especially because of the trust and relationship they have built. They guided us from day zero basing on best practices and their own experience. If not for their engagement, honesty and level of skill we would not have succeeded. Group which had a decision power consisted of me, founders (2), CTO and CFO.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We started on October 2019 with a team of 7 (2 backend devs, 2 frontend devs, UX designer, UI designer and QA). We used agile approach which helped me monitor progress and constrain budget. The biggest challanges where to integrate external services and keep it stable and safe at the same time plus developing custom-made solution to teaching programming issue.

We needed tool that our students could use in order to write their code and submit tasks and project. We also wanted for that tool to be able to check results and give instant feedback for a student submitting it. Lean Code helped us recognize what is needed and they created smart plugin to VS Code IDE to solve this issue. It was truly genious!

The whole work went smoothly, we had little troubles but Jakub Wojtczak (CTO and Cofounder) was always there if we needed something. We have published our platform in May 2020 and no critical bug occured which for me is a great display of quality LeanCode delivered.

What was the team composition?

2 backend devs, 2 frontend devs, UX designer, UI designer and QA, Product Owner, Scrum Master

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We have just launched new platform so it is to soon to evaluate impact on our financial side but as far as students are concerned we have noticed exceptional rise in consumer satisfaction as well as much more convenience to Mentors' work

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Budget was pushed a bit (30%) but it was all under control. Deadline was met. LeanCode was highly responsive. We used Slack, Jira, Github, Confluence, Figma, Google tools.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They are a very robust team of young but experienced developers who displayed honesty and transparency from day one. I am also impressed by how helpful and understanding top management of LeanCode is - it is truly inspiring!

Are there any areas for improvement?

i don't see anything I would improve, every little issue and obstacle along the way we managed to handle smoothly and we learned on that which make it even better that we had them in the first place as both organizations can learn on grow on that.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Activy Bike&Run Game - mobile app serving as a wellbeing tool for employers to organize fitness challenges for employees. The scientific gamification in cycling&running challenges helps people to build healthy habits and promote active lifestyle.

Corporates and startups use Activy Challenges in mobile app to drive engagement and promote health or CSR programs at their workplaces. Activy app was also used by city authorities to run city-wide bike transportation games as social campaigns.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire LeanCode?

Having a rough web prototype we started working with Leancode to build a mobile app which track sport activities and gamifies them to organize challenges for corporates, cities and free games for users.

The scope of the project also included web admin panel, game creator as well as web platform for end users. With this complexity we relies on Leancode not only with development but also ideation, UX, business model design, prioritizing features.

What were your goals for this project?

We run a B2B2C business model so the goal of the product is to serve both customers (employers, cities, brands) and also end users (cyclists, runners, etc.). Before building the product we already had clients like Google, Microsoft, Santander, DHL, DPD and many other well known brands.

This is why were particularly focused on the best-in-class solution with highest standard of quality. At the same time we need an extra usability to make the gamification method appealing for end users to achieve the positive impact on their health habits.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We talked with many potential vendors but there were 2 factors that led us to select LeanCode:

1. experience of founders and PMs from building their own products and startups
2. unique experience with technologies to lower the cost of building MVP and early stages of products Most important we decided to run pre-development workshop with LeanCode which helps us to understand the quality, values and principles of the team. And that makes all the difference!

Describe the project in detail.

From 2018 since now we built 3 versions of the product:

1. MVP: server app and iOS and Android clients, web admin panel (.NET, Xamarin, Azure). All UI was also delivered by LeanCode to make the development process smooth and cheaper
2. Activy 2.0 - adding Machine Learning module to detect frauds and automatically detect and track bike rides without even pulling the phone out of the pocket
3. Activy 3.0 - rebuilding apps with completely new UX and lots of new features based on user feedback (React Native), lots of development on server side, building web platform for end user (React Native). We also implement Google Cloud Firestore database to record activities. UI was delivered externally this time

What was the team composition?

The size of the team changes over time as LeanCode is known with their great flexibility and understanding of clients. Since 2017 we run 3-5 months of development process with a team ranging from 1 to 8 developers (usually 4 people). We tested many models of building product and maintenance so we really do not need our internal development team so far.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Since 2017 we've served over 400 customers (big employers) with names like Google, Microsoft, Santander, DPD, DHL, 3M, Robert Bosch, Hochland and many others.

The avg. rating of the app is 4.4 vs. 4.1 fo the pretty difficult category of health&fitness app. We have over 35 000 users across Poland, Germany and Netherlands.

The app wins the Imagine Cup Smart City 2017 competition organized by Microsoft, also with extra prize for design. Activy was also recognized as the best startup in Innovation 2018 competition in Poland and took part in Google Campus Acceleration program.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

At the beginning as a founder I was the part of the development team working as a full time Product Owner and Manager. At the next stages we included our in-house junior PO and backend developer.

It was experimental but works really well as guys from LeaCode are also very open to test new approaches. LeanCode taught us how to build great product effectively.

They introduced all the popular tools and frameworks to our team which had zero experience at the beginning. We learnt a lot from them and also got valuable technological inspirations. They are still very engaged in our business!

What did you find most impressive about this company?

If you decide to work with LeanCode you will experience a lot more than an usual relation between a client and a vendor:

1. they understand businesses, not only technology
2. they share their experience from building companies and products
3. they have empathy combined with responsibility And they are really lean - both for small and big clients. I experienced a long entrepreneurial journey with them.

Are there any areas for improvement?

From time to time they are too optimistic with booking time for you so be prepared to wait a few days more to start a project. I think it's because they really want to be flexible for you and other clients. If you want to design a simple website you'd better hire other folks as LeanCode should deliver a good piece of software rather than the trivial frontend.