Mobile-DI

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Brand Manager foR a mobile application with a robust web based dashboard that enables your employees to document, rate, and review operations activity in real-time. The solution streamlines communication and data collection by digitizing inspection checklists and surveys and storing results in the cloud.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Mobile-DI?

Mobile-DI was hired to support the mobile app and web dashboard, build and incorporate new features, maintain app functionality and offer ideas and suggestions for moving forward.

What were your goals for this project?

Keep the mobile application functioning smoothly for current clients and help build new features for upcoming projects.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

After transitioning from a different software developer, we had conversations with a handful of companies that were referred by colleagues. Mobile-DI had the expertise we were looking for. They understood our vision for the product and were confident they could deliver what we were asking for.

Describe the project in detail.

We created a project discovery agreement with Mobile-DI to design, develop and support the mobile application and web dashboard. In this process, they reviewed the existing code and server infrastructure and proposed tech update strategies and new customer on-boarding processes. We created a plan together to set the app on the right path for growth. We are currently working on a new contract to enhance the application's code to support tech updates coming down the pipeline.

What was the team composition?

Initially, we had Mobile-DI working with our previous software development team to take over the project. Since that transition finished, we have been working with Mobile-DI's team (project managers and developers) exclusively.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Since Mobile-DI has been maintaining the app, we feel confident when bugs need fixing or updates need to be made. We feel comfortable communicating with them about changes in software trends or recommendations for the best ways to move forward.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Workflow has been great. Everyone is kept in the loop and conversations are honest and straightforward. Issues are resolved quickly and Mobile-DI is easy to stay in contact with.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The Mobile-DI team members are experts in their field. They are easy to communicate with and offer helpful recommendations.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We are still working through the nuances of designing the Master Services Agreement for the next stage of our partnership with Mobile-DI. We are close to finalizing the agreement which will move us into a larger project scope, but the contract negotiation has taken slightly longer than anticipated.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

The app allows customers to find Pawn and Title loans in their area for free by simply uploading pictures and a description of the item. Lenders respond with their offers and customers choose the right loans for them.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Mobile-DI?

To develop the mvp

What were your goals for this project?

to have a tool that customers want to use to help find pawn and title loans more efficiently. I wanted to get a customer to submit a loan request and have the lenders respond with their offers and have the customer choose the right loan for them. My goal was to get a customer to enter their store and finish the transaction.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Referred by Daniel Langdon

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They developed the web and app mvp and provided timely updates

What was the team composition?

I think 4

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

This is the first milestone that is essential in moving the company forward. Without an app that the customer can download this company wouldn't be possible. I will continue to prove the concept as I still have work to do in adding customers and vendors.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Industry standards were used in the project management. Using web conferencing and providing weekly updates and a detailed list of items that are being worked on

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They are actively involved in helping other businesses get started. They don't just write code, they understand your business needs and have experience across many industries.

Are there any areas for improvement?

More emphasis in the early wireframe from the lender's perspective

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the director of technology at BetterNOI. We are a software development company focusing on the multifamily real estate market.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Mobile-DI?

About a year ago, our executive team decided we were going to pursue development in the mobile space. I decided that we would be better off by hiring an outside vendor with experience in producing successful mobile projects rather than us trying to accomplish these goals in-house.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We elected to produce native applications for Android and iOS. Mobile-DI also built a web app that supports the mobile apps. The web app utilizes a Java backend and an Angular frontend along with MongoDB and MySQL databases. Mobile-DI created an AWS infrastructure to host all of these products.

What is the team composition?

We work with a team of five people at the most. David (Director, Mobile-DI) is our main point of contact, and he’s supported by two dedicated Android and iOS developers along with two other engineers.

How did you come to work with Mobile-DI?

We interviewed several firms, but we wanted to work with a smaller team—not a large agency where we’d risk getting lost in their shuffle. David convinced us of his team’s abilities by being hands-on during the interview and traveling to Chicago to discuss our requirements in person. All of our costs and schedules were identified from the beginning.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $250,000–$500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement began in November 2017 and remains ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We hoped to introduce the product at a prominent industry conference in June 2018, and we dedicated the last month of development to QA testing. Mobile-DI delivered our apps ahead of that deadline. We had to shave off some features to meet that initial goal, but we are working with them now to fill in the gaps.

How did Mobile-DI perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Jira and Confluence for our project planning with their main team and their India-based development staff. We have one central repository for our project tickets and another for our online communication, which helps to streamline our processes.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have many clients, but they’ve always made us feel like we’re their only responsibility. We’ve never felt neglected. They’re responsive, and it’s nice to see that they have partnered with us so closely.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they’ve been great to work with. There’s no doubt we’ll continue working with them. We’re already discussing the next evolution of the mobile app with their team.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of an email advocacy system called Capitol Contact that associations use to communicate with lawmakers and other policymakers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Mobile DI?

I wanted to build an email platform that was different from others that existed in the market.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They built a complicated platform for me from scratch. They currently manage the server and continue to develop the platform.

We can use the platform to set up what is known as a “call to action”, which is a form that allows individuals to input their messages to Congress or to state legislators. That form collects the data and uploads it into our system. The advocacy campaign manager can review the messages and select which of those messages they want to package to send to legislators as one email containing many messages rather than many separate messages. The platform also includes a tool for legislators to use one form to select and reply to all the people who have contacted.

What is the team composition?

There are four developers, each working on doing different elements at various times.

How did you come to work with Mobile DI?

They contacted me and wanted to know if I had any projects. I happened to have this one and it worked out great.

How much have you invested with them?

I’ve spent probably $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2016 and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our clients say the product is amazing. From my point of view, it’s a work in progress. I like to think that the concept came for me but the actual work came from Mobile DI. It was an ongoing, challenging project to get all the pieces working correctly so that the whole system works smoothly. But from my client's point of view, it's a great product.

How did Mobile DI perform from a project management standpoint?

We used a tool to communicate about glitches or problems we find. When something is complicated, we handle it via conference call. During the main development stage of the project, we had weekly conference calls to go through priorities. There are always glitches and times when things are harder to do than we anticipate. But we worked through it together.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I most appreciated the team’s ability to visualize how something could be done better. We didn't always come up with the right solution on the first try—so we'd have to reconfigure things—but everybody was good about that.

They were also able to figure out the American government process, even though the team is based in India. As a result, they've helped me figure out better, more efficient, and client-friendly ways of doing things. They were very good at that.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The most difficulty we had was trying to figure out how long it would take to build a particular part. It’s always hard to figure this out—and this isn’t the only project where that’s been an issue. But it makes it hard to understand how many resources—people, time, money—are needed to make something happen.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the Systems Architect for the Mental Health Center of Denver. We're a nonprofit that serves Denver County for mental and behavioral health issues. At any one time, we serve about 11,000 people and have 850 employees.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Mobile-DI?

At the time, I was our lead job engineer. Our medical records system interface allowed us to customize the tool according to our needs using web service calls, or Java web services. These were done and maintained by our agency. The customizations are actively being used in our medical records system. We discovered there were some issues with potential collision of threads, if calls were made simultaneously.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Some of technologies we used were JBoss (now WildFly), and Java 8. We also used the Spring web service SOAP framework and SQL servers for the backend.

What is the team composition?

We just worked with one developer on that project.

How did you come to work with Mobile-DI?

We did a search and they popped to the top. The person they sent was the highest caliber, as far as experience and ability to communicate.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $50,000-$60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them since June 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our code went from being error-prone to being error-free. It’s a dramatic improvement in the quality of our code regarding a pretty touchy area of thread safety and collisions of objects and memory. User's didn't see much, other than the right data come up in the right medical records, which is an enormous value for a healthcare company. If you can't have quality in your medical records, you should go out of business. You could say that he helped us save the business, although that's a little overstatement. It's of that order of magnitude though; we were putting the business at risk by having this issue and he helped us.

How did Mobile-DI perform from a project management standpoint?

In this project it was mostly one-on-one. The architect spent a lot of time in my offices because it was a pretty intense, high-pressure situation. We communicated verbally, but he also used other tools like Lucid Chart and Word to help us understand what was going on and make presentations to management. Since then, in the other projects, they've used a whole range of tools to make presentations and manage projects.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The best compliment you can give a technician is to give them more work, and that's what we did. We engaged them for the following year after this project concluded, and there's a whole team of folks we're working with now. We expanded the services as a result of this project and we're budgeting to do the same next year.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing comes to mind.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of a mobile app development company. We also offer design and marketing services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Mobile-DI?

Despite our web development experience, we’d never built native apps before. We needed support from a local vendor with mobile development credentials. In the past, we’d only worked with offshore teams.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Developers coded in Java on the API and Android backend side and used Swift for the frontend iOS side.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a project manager and six software engineers total between the two teams.

How did you come to work with Mobile-DI?

My former colleague provided a referral.

How much have you invested with them?

This project cost $27,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Mobile-DI between February and October 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Describe the impact this engagement has had on your business.

They didn’t complete the entire project. They delivered a minimum viable product that included code with dead ends. It was basically done, but it wasn’t a fully finished app. For now, we’ve taken the product out of the App Store and Google Play to remove defects.

When we first started working together, I rated their services. They asked me to leave a review before we defined all the requirements. The first three weeks of our engagement progressed smoothly. I wasn’t pleased by how differently the final stages occurred.

How was project management handled?

They used an internal project management system and had touch points on occasion.  We struggled with their communication style. They didn’t supply source code to our repository. Instead, they used an internal code repository and sent us .zip files. Their workflow method was ambiguous.

Is there anything that the vendor did well or that you would consider a strength?

Mobile-DI as a whole is set up to achieve success. They have talented developers.  Most of my issues pertained to management, like conveying my requests. Our graphic and functional requirements may have been lost in translation to the programmers. I worked directly with the owner, who’s also the director of development. The deliverable was not what we were expecting.

In what specific areas can they improve?

They should improve their communication style to better convey milestones and delivery expectations, including the final handoff stage. When I sign off on something, I expect to receive a code dump. That wasn’t included in their methodology outside of .zip files.

What advice do you have for clients with similar needs to yours?

I don’t have any advice.