Lvivity

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a project lead for an IT consulting firm. We sell IT consulting services to big companies and corporations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Lvivity?

I had a standalone greenfield project that didn’t connect to our company’s legacy projects, and it was less risky to outsource the work. Back then, I was running our internal IT development with only four developers, and I wanted to scale the team. My initial thought was that it would be easier to find a team somewhere while I managed the project.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Lvivity provides us with development services. They’ve built an advanced web application for us using .NET Core and Angular. Initially, we spent a few days with Lvivity’s team. They first developed the app as an external application. When that stopped serving our purposes, the team started building our internal application. They worked for one year on the external application, and they’ve worked for two years on the internal application. 

The app involves everything that has to do with a consultant’s lifespan, from becoming a consultant, mapping  CVs, finding a job to working with the GDPR process, selling a consult, making a contract, and automated hourly reporting. 

What is the team composition?

We started with three developers, and I then needed to scale up on a few positions. They helped me find developers for those positions. One of them went to work on a different project, and then we had a developer who was a little too junior, so we had to replace him. Otherwise, I'm still working with the people that I started with. 

In total, I’ve worked with seven people from Lvivity. We’ve had one developer who’s partially backend and partially architect, a frontend developer, and a full stack developer. 

How did you come to work with Lvivity?

I did a Google search and interviewed several agencies to ensure they were serious businesses. Some of the candidates were small companies, some were larger agencies, and Lvivity was among them. 

We flew some of their team to Copenhagen, and I talked to their CEO. They were so interested in the project that they didn’t even want to bill me the hours. However, I didn’t want them to spend three days here and not get paid for it. The fact that they came from Ukraine to look at our prototype showed me how serious they were. I chose them because they had experience with the ASP.Net Zero framework that I wanted to use.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent roughly $300,000 a year. We’re closing in on three years, so we’ve spent close to $1 million so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2019, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The application is our livelihood; if we don’t have it, we don’t have a business, so Lvivity’s work has been quite important. When the engagement began, we were in a big transition between a legacy system and the web application inside our ongoing business. We had many challenges in terms of having enough time for the project, and Lvivity was willing to do what we needed, whether it was meeting a tight deadline or working until 3 a.m. 

The team has extreme diligence. Moreover, they’re punctual, hardworking, and flexible, probably the three qualities I value the most when working with offshore companies. Their developers are working as part of our internal team on equal terms. If there have been any bugs, they fix them and then put them into code review for our in-house architect.

How did Lvivity perform from a project management standpoint?

When we have tight deadlines, I don’t need to ask them twice to put in extra hours as needed. I’m also satisfied with the developers I work with, using Jira for project management. When we were in the stressful environment of our transition, they were super flexible. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed with Lvivity’s work ethic, which is their biggest quality, in my experience working with them for almost three years.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s always room for improvement. There are junior, mid, and senior developers in Lvivity’s team, and when we ask for senior developers, they are often mislabeled. This probably happens with every consultancy because it’s almost impossible to screen everybody thoroughly enough. Additionally, they can sometimes be a bit slow in providing us with CVs. However, they’re excused in many ways right now, given the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

One of the ways you succeed with having nearshore or offshore teams is by giving them flexibility but still asking them to be very responsible. Include Lvivity as much as you can so they won’t feel like they’re just the arms and legs doing a job that is completely written out. In my experience, one of the keys to success is to involve them and ask them to be participants instead of workers.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at a software development company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Lvivity?

We needed help with some of our software development projects.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Lvivity provides us with software development services. They've helped us with a couple of projects using .NET and C#. For one product, they did the development from scratch; for the second one, they updated and maintained a product. Lvivity will work with us on more projects down the pipe. 

What is the team composition?

We had four full-time developers for one project. For the other, we worked with one full-time developer.

How did you come to work with Lvivity?

We were looking for an offshore team with specific experience in the tech stack we were working with, and I found Lvivity through a recommendation from a colleague. When I talked to the owner, I felt like our goals aligned as far as their type of developers and their process. I also had good conversations with their development team, and they had the experience that we needed. Additionally, their rates were great.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent around $100,000–$125,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around February 2019, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

What’s great about Lvivity is that I can work directly with their developers, which I was looking for. The client we did the first project for folded, and our latest project will go live next week, so we don’t have metrics yet. 

How did Lvivity perform from a project management standpoint?

I manage the project, and we usually communicate via Skype. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciate that I can work and communicate directly with Lvivity’s developers, which is key. Additionally, there isn’t a lot of overhead.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There isn’t much they need to improve. However, I wish they had better US coverage. It would be ideal if they could have someone working during US hours; then, I could have people working around the clock. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Recommendations depend on the situation. I'm more hands-on with our projects and don't need a lot of oversight from them. All I need is to talk to the developers about what they need to do. However, I’ve never relied on them to manage a project, so I don’t have any suggestions in that case.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m a project manager at Sgame Pro. We’re a mobile games publisher and aggregator where players mine crypto-tokens while playing their favorite games. We provide an engaging UX to players, a new revenue stream for game publishers and influencers, and an easy and cost-effective way for merchants to promote products online.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Lvivity?

Lvivity was initially brought on to develop a blockchain service that connected our mobile application with the Ethereum (ETH) network. After that, we continued the relationship to develop our app’s back office and do backend QA.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted a completely functional service that allowed our platform to communicate with Ethereum.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We found them on Upwork

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The blockchain service they’re developing performs token transactions to an ETH address using our smart contract. It checks that the address is valid and calls back to our backend for transaction status changes. The tool also has secondary functionalities regarding data recording and authentication (HTTPS requests, authenticated by a TLS client certificate).

What was the team composition?

We’re working with two .NET developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

This project has had a widespread impact on our app. We’re now able to reward users with the token (SGM) we created.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We provided them with all the needed documentation detailing our architecture and service design. All our communication is through Slack, email, and conference calls.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I enjoy working with Lvivity. Petro (CEO, Lvivity) is really professional and always available in case of issues. Their code is well structured, and its overall quality is great. We’re quite happy with them.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No. They’re managing everything very well.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

BTKM Digital is a software development company that operates in the real estate market. We're predominantly realtors and associate brokers who understand how to help others become more efficient and productive.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Lvivity?

Lvivity designed and built our web, iOS, and Android apps.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted realtors to use our app daily to run their businesses and interact with their clients. 

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I had worked with Lvivity before, so I knew that they provide high-quality design and development work. 

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

Lvivity took our general thoughts and brought them to life. We didn't know much about custom software development. They gave us solid feedback on our goals and help with achieving them.

What was the team composition?

We had four developers. One was a lead senior developer; the others were also excellent.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The app was exactly what we wanted and needed it to be. We were thrilled with their professionalism and the quality of their work. I can't say enough about how pleased we were.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Their project management was terrific and their communication was excellent. We managed tasks with Jira. We actively moved tasks across the board, provided feedback, and tested results before completing a task.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They were easy to work with. We had an 8-hour time difference, but they were accessible during almost our entire work day. They did what they said they would and found a good, cost-effective solution.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

I can't think of any areas for improvement. They did, and continue to do, an outstanding job.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I own an IT consultancy that specializes in delivering software and projects for Dutch companies. We develop programs, websites, and web applications.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Lvivity?

I have a lot of projects and not enough time to develop them.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

One large project was building the web application for an e-commerce website.  My customer wasn't technical, so all payments and products all had to be automated. I gave my customer's requirements to Lvivity’s developers, and they integrated a payment provider and an API. They used .NET, C#, and an SQL server. They're still developing more projects.

What is the team composition?

I work with five developers. I've met the owner in person.

How did you come to work with Lvivity?

When I worked for another company, they hired a developer from Lvivity. I stayed in contact with Lvivity's owner.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent €50,000 (approximately $57,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2017 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

My client was really happy and still uses the system. The code is better than we expected, and they solve bugs after each sprint. When we find bugs, the developers fix them.

How did Lvivity perform from a project management standpoint?

The scope was nine months and they delivered on time. We use Azure with VSTS and communicate through Skype. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have so much knowledge. They know a lot of programming techniques.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend them because they’re really good.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of a small consulting company. I use hybrid development models where I provide product management, management, system architecture, and high-level development services on our side. I then hire developers from partners in Eastern Europe to do the development work to optimize the cost for my clients.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Lvivity?

One of my older partners didn’t have the proper technical expertise I needed for Xamarin development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provided me with Xamarin developers. They’re working on an IT project that consists of two major parts. One part is a web application with dashboards and configuration administration frontend for multiple types of users—either administrators or for building managers. It’s related to water consumption and water control. There’s also an interface for the back office and an interface for end users who are tenants in buildings.

The iOS and Android mobile application is a use version of the same, but in addition, there are components for Bluetooth control to configure and control it. It can turn off and on water using your phone. It was basically a .NET cross-platform for mobile applications to develop native applications using C#.

They also provided QA. On this particular project, because it’s a green-stamped and fast-moving, it was manual. They also built test plans. They provided QA regression steps, which is a list of tests that need to be run to ensure the regression.

What is the team composition?

There was one developer and one QA.

How did you come to work with Lvivity?

We found people who matched the profile of what we needed and selected three to five to interview. We picked Lvivity because they came on top.

How much have you invested with them?

$100,000. It was 11 months of full-time work at the rate they requested. QA started about four months ago.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2017 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It was good. It wasn’t perfect all the time, but they have the ability to deal with problems well, recover, improve, and compensate. If there was a period of misunderstanding, they were extremely good at recovering and getting back on track. I’m happy with them. They were able to understand my concerns, address them, and work with me in every aspect, whether it was technical, time-based, or financial. I have no regrets working with them.

How did Lvivity perform from a project management standpoint?

We had an integrated team. I served as a product manager, communicating to them and giving requirements through short definitions in Jira. Together with developers, they’d understand the requirements in collaboration with the clients. By the time we would start working, we had a full understanding of what needs to be done.

Every morning, we have an agile standup. If everything is fine, we talk about what’s being worked on. If there are issues, we continue to solve them together and stay on the call longer. We do brainstorming and question/answer based to deal with any questions they have regarding the requirements for technical implementation.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a very solid partner. They’re good and they have good quality developers. They’re fun to work with too. They solve problems and often impress me with their persistence. Most of the time they achieve the goals. They have a good work ethic and are technically advanced.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Like any partner based in a different country, interview them thoroughly. Do your due diligence. Make sure at the beginning you speak to the developer that will work for you. After two weeks of work, they had to switch our developer and then everything went fine. Our first developer wasn’t working for us. He’s a good, but not specifically for our project.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a partner of Earning.com and I play the role of VP of international operations. I work with vendors like Lvivity. The Earning.com platform is intended to help people providing transactional labor to earn money.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Lvivity?

As a normal company of this type, we have a crazy amount of change and different tech challenges. We were looking for a partner in this area who could work as an extension of our company.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Lvivity was entrusted with a few of our client development projects. They have provided .NET and mobile development, database architecture, and QA. We have a few products that form a family of products and complementary products. Lvivity developed product integrations between all of them, including the mobile application level. We’ve required technology for demos and investors and partners.

What is the team composition?

The team size has varied with its maximum size being 20 people. We were assigned a project manager, and we have technical team leads for each technology in the form of lead developers. The project manager coordinates between those departments. We’ve also used a few business analysts from Lvivity.

How did you come to work with Lvivity?

Back then, we were trying different vendors, but every attempt cost us a significant amount of money. We found Lvivity and saw that they had a good technical level. The company was well connected in the city and was able to attract more talent at the same level.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost of their work has been around $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Lvivity around January 2017. Our scope is getting bigger at the moment.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality of the work can be determined by the level of client using the applications. The product we’ve developed is being used by large store chains in the U.S. Everyone’s been happy so far, and Lvivity’s team has been helpful. The product is also being launched to different countries in Africa.

They address bugs and crashes immediately. Lvivity’s team understands the nature of our challenge, and they’ve been willing to work on it including during the weekend. We’ve had to ask them to slow down given that we had a longer run and we wanted to maintain maximum energy. Their CEO is always trying to help us with extra effort.

How did Lvivity perform from a project management standpoint?

We initially ran the collaboration as an experiment. I try not to put too much trust in vendor project management. We later decided to give them more independence, and their CEO offered to hire additional project managers on their side at their expense. We started to work like that and saw that the level of communication was good. We started to trust those project managers, and we continued to use them. We’ve reached the point where their project managers are good enough to help us with wireframes without us becoming too involved.

Online messaging platforms have some drawbacks. We started with Skype, and we switched to another system in 2017. It was good to see Lvivity following our constant change. We’re currently using Telegram, Slack, and Jira. We also have phone calls. There’s a system in place by which we can send them audio recordings that they transcribe and use to create feature lists. We also visit them in-person sometimes.

We’ve changed our requirements from one week to another. Lvivity was able to staff in different technologies, and they also had some available people internally. We’ve sent our CTO to work on-premises with their team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They stand out in terms of professionalism, willingness to help, and willingness to understand our business challenges. Rather than being a team that executes what we tell them, they understand the level of challenge we have and they help us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would like for them to grow a bit so that we could have a longer bench of available people who could be instantly used. I like working with bigger vendors as it makes it easier to staff our initiatives.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Try to see Lvivity as an intelligent partner, not just a doer working on code. This will lead to more than what one could get from a regular vendor.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO of a software solutions company that has done development in Ukraine and Russia for the past 20 years. We mostly work in web and mobile applications, and at any given time we will have 50–150 developers working on internal and external projects.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Lvivity?

We were looking for staff augmentation on a project we were doing, which was a mobile app for remote data collection.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have worked on at least 10 to 15 projects together. The biggest project we have worked with them on is a multi-case long-term program. The platform is designed to perform facility inspections where you design ad hoc forms of any composition, and then use them in the field for remote data collection and aggregation of business intelligence.

It is a platform for remote data collection, audits, and inspections. It is a very robust platform and includes a fully integrated workflow engine for customizable business logic. The robust workflow engine allows someone to make dynamic business rules based upon the data captured. They also built a reporting engine, so that we can do ad hoc reporting and create report templates, and then tie the report engine to the workflow engine so that you can generate reports on demand.

It is deployed on Android and iOS and is used nationwide. We have actually gone further and implemented virtual reality features into it such as 3D walkthroughs with clickable assets. There is .NET on the backend with a lot of stored procedures on the SQL Server side and Transact-SQL. We have MongoDB for our ObjectStore. On the frontend we use jQuery and Angular, and the mobile app is in Xamarin with some native components such as mobile Xamarin Plus Native.

We have a lot of program specific projects around this one large project, and we will have a product development roadmap, as well as multiple simultaneously executed customization projects tied to very strictly timeboxed initiatives. They are presently building an Excel generation tool which allows you to create any Excel template you want and generate it from the workflow engine.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 4–12 people. The average staffing size was around 7 people. We have a project manager, a fractional business analyst, 2 QA people, a fractional UI/UX [user interface/user experience] person who also does some design work for us.

Fractionally, on the mobile side, we have between 3–5 mobile developers, and 2 architects (with one on the workflow side and the other on the portal side), developers, and a customer service representative.

How did you come to work with Lvivity?

I found them through a crowdsource labor site. Petro Kovalchuk’s [CEO, Lvivity] English is excellent which helped a lot. Their engagement at the beginning of the project gave me a lot of confidence as there was complete transparency around who was doing what. I was able to directly interview and skill test the team members. In the initial meeting, they demonstrated a very high level of not only technical expertise, but business savviness too. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in July 2015, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We are going to be providing SOAs [service-oriented architectures] starting in February, and subsequently Lvivity will be providing me with SOAs. At that point, we will become very metric based.

They are the most productive team I have worked with as far as complexity of features delivered versus hours and calendar time spent.

How did Lvivity perform from a project management standpoint?

We’re close to a standard Scrum methodology. We do daily stand ups, we have a smart plan, and we have a demo. The day to day and internal communications are all in Slack. We also have phone calls, a lot of video conferencing, and the clients can communicate directly with the team in Slack.

Lvivity provides a high degree of transparency, and I can have direct access to whomever I want. They are always available at a moments notice, and have hands on deck if I have issues. This impressed me because they have a number of other clients, but still handle any critical issues.

Our mobile app is a team lead led project as opposed to a project manager led project. Our project manager, is an absolute genius, we love her, and we couldn’t live without her. She runs her team like a machine, which I believe is entirely Scrum based.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The speed at which they do high quality development, especially on the mobile side is impressive. The app they built for us is pretty significant and technically very complex. We ran into some very serious technical rifts, and the speed at which those risks were resolved and an amazing product produced is amazing.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They need to grow in their structured quality assurance program.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Lvivity is an excellent company if you are hands on. They are not a company where you are going to give autonomously. You need to be interacting with them. They are incredibly flexible and will bend over backwards to meet your needs, but you need to be hands on.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and CEO of a software business company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Lvivity?

My U.S.-based development team was at capacity, so I was look for an affordable external development team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We initially began working with Lvivity when we hired an American company who subcontracted them. That project went poorly and eventually completely fell apart, largely because of the American company’s inability to communicate expectations, so we decided to cut out the middleman and work directly with Lvivity. Our experience working with them since that decision has been good. 

They built us the frontend and backend administrative application database for a robust fundraising mobile web application for high school athletic teams. It allows users to easily activate and track the discount cards they sell to raise money using a barcode printed on the cards. It also allows users to take credit card donations and interact with donors through email. Another impressive feature is the text-to-give codes. For example, a school team can ask their supporters to text “Tigers” to 4521 to donate money. The donation will show up as a charge on the donors next cell phone bill.

While we used Lvivity for the development work, our own team was responsible for the app’s design.

What is the team composition? 

My project manager interacts directly with their project manager.

How did you come to work with Lvivity?

I came to work with them through the American company that subcontracted them while doing work for us.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in October 2016, and the engagement is ongoing. So far, they’ve input about 6,400 development hours into the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The app hasn’t launched yet, so we have yet to gather any definitive quantitative evidence. But so far, the code they’ve produced is clean and functional. I found that if we give them the proper amount of space, time, and direction, we get good work.

How did Lvivity perform from a project management standpoint?

Often times with third-party developers, there’s no accountability for time and quality of code. You simply get billed for a bunch of hours that no one can justify. I’ve developed a unique project management structure with Lvivity where the payment for their work is measured in Sprints. For example, let’s say I have 45 things I need done in a Sprint. They’ll quote me for that, and I’ll advise them to add a few extra hours to account for unforeseen issues. If the work is completed on time, I’ll pay an hourly rate that’s higher than their quote. If the work is five days late, I’ll pay their quote. If the work is more than 10 days late, I’ll pay less than their quote to compensate for lost time. With this structure, I’ve found that Lvivity’s performance is high, and all my Sprints are on time and quoted accurately. 

We communicate with Lvivity’s team primarily through Jira and Slack. We’ve also used Skype and Join.Me.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Despite the struggles they had initially working with the American company earlier in the project, they persevered and delivered to the best of their ability. They displayed a level of commitment and integrity that I wouldn’t anticipate from a third-party developer firm. They made sacrifices when need be and stood behind our project to ensure it moves forward.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve had to be pretty aggressive about getting a daily progress report on the project. It would be ideal if we didn’t have to ask to receive those.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Accountability can be difficult with offshore companies, so I’d recommend incentivizing their performance to protect everyone’s interest. They’ll provide you with accurate, on-time work, and you’ll be billed accurately.