N-iX

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the director of the software development department for an organization called cleverbridge a.g. We provide global billing for B2C and B2B software customers around the world. The solution takes care of everything that occurs after clicking the checkout button, including compliance, fraud detection, and billing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We were looking to scale up our company. Because of the requests we have, we can’t foresee how much work there will be in a single year. In Germany, it’s difficult to scale up quickly because there is a prolonged recruiting process.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were looking for partners in the software industry that could provide full teams that could work together on a single part of code. N-iX was our nearshore software development team. Critically, they had already worked together, as we wanted to skip the team-building aspect of development.

Eventually, they worked on a part of our software development that wasn’t in the core product. We have a GraphQL that fed information to N-iX. They consumed the information and built new modules around it. Their team works in two-week scrums.

What is the team composition?

The full team is nine people. We have a lead developer, QA tester, two UX designers, a product manager, and three full developers. There is also someone who works as a scrum master and developer.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

We had a recent graduate who had extensively researched nearshoring, so he had a full list of partners in Europe that we contacted. Eventually, we settled on N-iX.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in August 2018 and the project is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our chief metric is based on scrum. They have an agile team that works along two-week iterations. Every two weeks, we are presented with what they did and we review the work they’ve done. We are constantly discovering insights on which direction we go.

They continue to work well in this framework and there are no questions on what they’re going to deliver. We have dedicated programmers that are very transparent on how the next iteration will go. The deliverables depend on what the clients want.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

From a budget perspective, we pay an amount of money that ensures there will be people working and enough skills to achieve goals. If one person stops working, they will automatically fill the gap. I’ve been in constant contact with them. There’s great connectivity between our offices. I go over to Ukraine once a year.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The amount of communication is great. I have a weekly call with their business counterpart, which is outside of the team. The developers are in daily communication with our in-house team and give weekly updates to product owners. Their English is amazing.

I also appreciate that they do a good job of feeling invigorated and integrated into our company. They're part of our staff meetings and are on our communication channels.

Are there any areas they could improve?

When we initially hired them, they didn’t have a standard scrum process or QA system in place. It would be better if they had clear standards from the beginning.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s very important to give them as much transparency and openness regarding communication as possible. If you trust them, they can actually work in an independent way. There’s far more incentive to give 100% if you’re completely open and handle them as if they were part of your company.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the development manager at Orbus Software. We make enterprise architecture software, that helps companies transition from their current state to their future. We provide a desktop offering to process all the needs a business might have while undergoing that process.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

When we first engaged them about four years ago, we initially engaged them to help bolster our QA staff. Our testing was very stretched and not very advanced at that point and hiring in London at competitive salaries is very difficult. We started with 4–5 QA engineers and now we’ve evolved to have 50 plus employees with them.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our team with them now ranges from QA to automation engineers, full-stack developers, support staff, product owners, scrum masters, and technical writers as well.

They’re very good at being able to screen and pre-select candidates for us. That helped us recruit much more quickly than we would have been able to otherwise. They’ve helped us especially target the areas that we want, which allows us to get people with specialized skills depending on what our needs are.

What is the team composition?

We are a little different from their normal clients, but they’ve been very accommodating of that, which we appreciate greatly. We have various members of our N-iX teams working with other developers in London directly. We really don’t have two separate hierarchies, so it’s much more like we have an overall integrated development team.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

My CEO found them when we were looking at several different outsourcing options, and they stood out to us at the time.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together sometime in 2014 and are continuing to do so together.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It’s difficult to say, because we don’t give them specific chunks of work to complete themselves, since they are integrated into our in-house teams. However, our recruitment has certainly been more effective, but our overall business processes have become much more efficient and easier to launch as well.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

I find that their work ethic is very good. They’re very committed and highly intelligent and it really shows in their ability to provide us with a large pool of very qualified people.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They take their customer engagement very seriously. They always try to accommodate requests we have and do everything they can to improve our satisfaction and engagement with their company.

They’re also very engaged with us, so I’ve probably spent over 6 months actually working in their office across different trips, and it’s really helped to build a more solid relationship between our two companies.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything off the top of my head. They’ve been so accommodating that if we ever had any issues, they handled them and did whatever they could to work with us better as quickly as they could.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I can’t stress the value of meeting their team directly enough. The more closely you engage with them, the better their motivation and understanding they’re going to have about your company, and vice versa.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CIO of BikeShare Danmark, the operating company of the brand Bycyklen, the official bike-sharing service in Copenhagen. At the moment, we have a fleet of bikes operating through an IT system.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We needed them to provide and manage an extended team of resources. Previously, we were collaborating with a smaller company, and we wanted to develop a better-structured process and find someone more professional in dealing with business requests.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have an extended team model with N-iX, meaning that we don’t differentiate between internal and external resources, and instead work together as one team. We rely on a scrum agile process with product ownership provided from our side and development, QA, and scrum master roles by N-iX.

What is the team composition?

N-iX has provided 6–10 people to our project, including software developers, QA testers, data scientists, and a scrum master.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

We wanted a mix between the structured, professional, and reliable approach that’s normally provided by bigger companies and the quick decision-making process and flexible organization and customization that we’d normally get from smaller companies. We looked at a number of companies, and it was quite hard to find a business partner that could fulfill both criteria. However, N-iX proved structured and reliable on one hand, and flexible and transparent on the other, so we chose them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’re spending about $300,000–$400,000 per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with N-iX in January 2018 and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our bike sharing platform has operated reliably and I don’t remember any significant downtimes during our engagement that have been caused by software. The high reliability of their service stands out to me.

Also, we’ve just released Android and iOS apps, and those have become an integral part of our overall architecture. Now users can operate the bikes through the apps, whereas previously they were using tablets integrated into the bikes. That was a big step forward for us.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

We’re very satisfied with this company and their team. They’re very flexible and we have an efficient collaboration using a scrum process as opposed to a classic project management approach. It’s generally a challenge to have a distributed scrum, with different parts of an organization working in different countries, but in this case, the work was very transparent and efficient.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They bring an open-minded, transparent, and flexible approach, combined with a highly professional and structured company organization. This is the unique aspect of N-iX in my opinion, given that, in many other cases, we only get one of those two. In this case, we have both. We have a structured company we know we can rely on, and an agile, quick, flexible delivery process.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I hope N-iX grows further and remains flexible and quick in the decision-making process. I also hope they’ll take on more product development and ownership as a company, which they absolutely have enough potential for. In my opinion, it would be great if they used that potential.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Be clear about your requirements and specify what kind of team profile is required for the task, then have an open discussion with their managers to find the best possible structure for the project. Once it works for both sides, I’m sure it will continue to work for quite a while.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the principal engineer at a global agricultural products and services provider. We have a significant presence in Europe and are just starting to expand into other regions. Our agronomy advice is based on the science behind the products that we sell. We advise farmers on how to get the best yields from their crops. In my role, I'm responsible for the vast majority of web-based technology that we're developing. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We had developed some applications in Ireland both in-house and with outsourced companies. We were looking for an offshore team with expertise in web development that could provide high-quality development services at a more economical price point. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our first project together was an online application that streamlines the complicated process of purchasing our seeds. It’s compatible with any device and allows customers to easily select the right seed for their region based on relevant characteristics. After pricing the selection, it submits the order through our ERP system for processing and delivery. We've progressed into the next phase of development and are currently enhancing its capability. 

N-iX has been heavily involved in two other product builds for the precision farming market. They leverage very advanced technology and capabilities that allow farmers to make informed decisions about what to do with their crops using satellite imagery, nutrient and spray planning, and weather data. 

We asked N-iX to work with the technology stack we primarily use internally. They enhanced that selection of tools with their additional areas of expertise. Java is the primary language for the backend PostgreSQL database. The frontend uses Angular.js. They’ve also developed several mobile apps using Apache Cordova and Ionic. 

What is the team composition? 

One of the fantastic things about N-iX is the way they structure their teams. Using a very Agile approach, they have multiple scrum teams. Each one has a scrum master who might act as a proxy product owner because they're located offshore.

They assign us teams with several frontend and backend developers. Depending on the project's complexity, they might include a DevOps or database administrator resource. UX/UI designers draw up our initial concept for the developers to convert into the applications. 

How did you come to work with N-iX?

Our company has a presence in multiple European countries. As we considered potential outsourced companies in other regions, we narrowed our search to Ukraine, our largest market in Eastern Europe. After researching many vendors and meeting with a few when I traveled there, N-iX was the most attractive option. They seemed culturally aligned with the way we operate. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working together for one year now. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

N-iX invests substantial thought into every product they develop. They use an extensive process for requirements gathering and conduct in-depth customer feedback and engagement sessions. They enthusiastically incorporate input and help us tweak minute aspects of our products for the best outcomes. All of their deliverables have been exceptionally well received. 

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

N-iX is highly skilled, transparent, and very well structured. They're one of the best outsourced teams I've ever worked with. The Agile, scrum and sprint process they undertake and manage gives us clear visibility on our progress regarding deliverables at any point in time. They excelled in all aspects of project management.  

They work together quite collaboratively with our in-house developers. We've used both mixed and separate scrum teams depending on the project at hand. At times, they've handled everything from requirements gathering and project management to product delivery and support. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of the individuals that N-iX employs, their team structure, and the Agile process they have in place most impressed me. I admired their adaptability. They seamlessly worked with our technologies while educating us on best practice for other areas. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We have an open working relationship and provide them with feedback on a daily basis. As we collaborate very closely, we're growing together. Almost any way that they could improve, we could as well. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Thoroughly engage N-iX. Handing a project over and getting results back won't yield the same results as going through the product lifecycle together. The primary factor in our success was close and constant collaboration.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the founder of a service that enables customers to find and book cooking classes, food tours, and corporate team-building events.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We wanted to expand our engineering team's capacity by hiring additional resources to assist with frontend and backend web development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

N-iX provided us with two full-time engineers who work on frontend and backend development, as well as performance optimization, using Laravel.

What is the team composition?

We work with two engineers from their team and manage them on our end.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

A friend of mine had been working with them and suggested I reach out. I was considering one other company, but felt N-iX was a better fit.

How much have you invested with them?

We invest about $100,000 annually.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2016 and the relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We're very happy with the work N-iX has done for us thus far. They've developed a lot of custom features and improved web performance overall.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

They're great about following up with us to make sure we're happy with the work from the two assigned engineers. Project management is mostly handled from our end, but I also had the chance to meet with their team personally in Ukraine. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I'm most impressed by the quality of work their engineers produce—they're highly experienced and competent in their field. Despite their distant location, their English speaking skills are very strong, so communicating is never an issue.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing comes to mind.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

N-iX is a great company to work with. Make sure you introduce yourself to their team of engineers, so you can feel out which people would work best for your team.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Cure Forward essentially involves technology-enabled logistical services where we help patients connect with different emerging therapies that are being promoted through clinical trials. I’m our chief technology officer, and I’m responsible for all of the product development, security compliance, and corporate IT for our company.

My company initiates digital-based marketing that targets Stage 3 and Stage 4 cancer patients who register through our site, and then we provide them with high-touch services and a rich personal profile that includes their demographics, lifestyles, clinical laboratory, and genomic characteristics. We then identify opportunity sets for the patients to participate in different clinical trials and guide them all the way through the final enrollment. We’re engaged in one model with patients and caregivers and another model with recruiters, pharmaceuticals, contract research organizations, and entities that are providing these trials. We work with them to move the patients through the funnel. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

There was a move to bring N-iX in to execute more effectively with direct controls from Cure Forward. Before that, we'd engaged three other contractors and they had all struggled.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The work N-iX was doing was all web-based: distributed systems and building multiple portals for personas of patients, recruiters, and site managers.

N-iX also handled design and delivered a lot of the rich API services that would connect with our different modules. When we staffed the N-iX teams initially, we were running with a team of 13–14 that included a mix of Java and Python developers, a project manager, some architects, and UI designer. 

When I joined the Cure Forward staff, one of the first actions with N-iX’s treatment of our product was in maturing the SDLC process. The N-iX team was extremely responsive to that. We shifted the composition of the teams to include integrated testing engineers without any real delay or issue. Most recently, as we’ve been continuing to build out our Boston team, we’re starting to further expand the N-iX team into 3–4 smaller teams that are specific to certain modules. N-iX has been extremely responsive in adjusting and adding new members through the recruitment. 

Our director of engineering and our head of product management have visited N-iX for one week each. We’re going to be bringing an interchange of folks from N-iX here to work with us to continue our close collaboration. We made the decision in November to start increasing our team size and accommodate multiple teams. We’ve increased to 20, and we anticipate staying at that level or slightly increasing this year, and then staying at that level or slightly increasing in 2018. N-iX also has aided us with members on the operations side to bring us to full capability.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

The original project predates me. The previous head of development had a longstanding relationship with these Eastern European countries, and he brought the N-iX team in to start in 2015. They inherited the initial work and have advanced it ever since.

I first got involved with N-iX when I started as the acting CTO in May 2016. I came on full time in mid-July 2016. I’ve been working closely with the N-iX team since I began working with Cure Forward.

What is the status of this engagement?

We first started working with N-iX in January 2015 and the engagement has been ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The N-iX team has been instrumental in the evolution of our patient portal and our administrative modules. We believe they’ve contributed to the greater stickiness on our site, as well as the increased number of patients that are coming through it. We’re consistently getting anywhere from 18–20 patients registering a day on our site. I’d say that was a strong plus because we weren't necessarily expecting that many. The N-iX team also has done nice, thoughtful work on incrementally moving us toward a unified data model. Their insight and their participation with our initiatives demonstrate our close collaboration; we’re all on an even playing field. Ultimately, we end up with synergies in multiple perspectives delivering a better, more capable software platform. In terms of overall stats, we’ve had over 100,000 site visits, starting with a soft launch in May 2016. We’re now kind of evolving our model to the next stage.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

I’ve probably been setting up and managing offshore partners since about 2001. Comparing our N-iX team to a number of the other models, I would say that they rank right at the top. I can tell N-iX is thinking about our project because they often bring back valuable input. That’s not always the case with offshore teams. We’re trying to engage them for autonomy, empowerment, and ownership, and they’re responding well to that model.

Our N-iX team is tightly integrated into our systems. We’re utilizing Atlassian’s JIRA Confluence as our primary Agile tools and knowledge management, which the N-iX team has embraced. We have Slack capabilities for communications, and we use a co-browsing video conferencing capability with Zoom. Traditionally we’re running a cadence where there are early scrums with the meetings with the teams, and then there’s the scrum of scrums every morning. We have technology leadership sessions, architecture sessions, joint sprint planning, joint sprint reviews. and joint retrospectives ... we include our N-iX team in as a member of our town halls. We view the situation as Cure Forward and N-iX moving together as one team.

Are there any areas N-iX could improve?

The one thing we’re always trying to tell N-iX is that we want open communication and that no question is a wrong question. There was some reticence in the past with some assigned team members not being fully engaged, but we’ve seen that model shifting, which we’re excited about.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with N-iX? 

It’s good to run a trial proof of concept. Sometimes it’s tricky when you're 5,000 miles away: you bring a cautious tone when you bring on an outsource. As that first team gains traction, then you can start to expand further. I think getting communication, practices, and conventions in place early will greatly help both teams.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a small startup company consisting of journalists, salespeople, and project managers. Our company is owned by one of the largest newspapers in Norway; however, we operate independently from the publication, setting our own goals and running the business ourselves.

In my role as a technology manager, my responsibilities are quite diverse, ranging from running development to acting as product owner in our relationship with N-iX. I also offer first-line support for our journalists whenever I am available.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

While working with another company in Ukraine, I came to know three people from the current N-iX team. When that company in Ukraine closed, I held interviews with other developers, with the goal of trying to bring my old team to a new company. N-iX fostered this effort by hiring my specialists. Later, we further expanded our team by adding more people from N-iX.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Product development is handled by our chief editor and CEO, and in our current process, it is my job to discuss our requirements with the senior developer from N-iX. The work has been run as a lean startup project, so we’ve tried to develop new functionalities quickly, determining whether or not they work without much prior analysis.

N-iX helped us to expand our development team by assigning an additional front-end developer, a designer, and a quality-assurance person to our existing group of three full-stack developers. I was a part of the hiring process for our original three developers, but these new specialists were recruited by N-iX.

We have created four different news sites with the help of N-iX. They have mostly done CMS work in WordPress and MongoDB, and they built a conference tool for us using Symfony. Beyond this, they have also worked on mobile development for our company.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

Once the other company with which we were working closed, I started looking for alternatives in a number of European countries. As we already had a team in Ukraine, I asked some of my contacts in that country for referrals, and N-iX was one of those referrals.

How much have you invested with N-iX?

The total development cost with N-iX has been around $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have an ongoing relationship with N-iX.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Because of our lean development process, we’ve tried to come up with new ideas and implement them as quickly as possible. N-iX delivers results quickly, and we were able to increase our average page stack, as well as the average time spent on the sites, by 50 percent.

N-iX’s diversity allowed them to handle some DevOps tasks for us when we were forced to switch to Amazon Web Services from the dedicated ISP we had been using in Norway. N-iX’s involvement in this effort allowed us to reduce our networking costs.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

We initially used Pivotal Tracker for project management, but then migrated to Jira because of some structural changes within the team. Additionally, our team grew from the three original developers to a total of six. And while this growth didn’t change how we worked together, it was harder to manage the larger team; we should have anticipated that this growth would require some reorganization. More often than not, however, N-iX has delivered on time, and some of the delays we did experience were partially our fault, because they originated from our functionality orders.

What did you find most impressive about N-iX?

N-iX allows their teams to be self-organized. For me, the collaboration has been just like having an internal development department within our own company. We work together more like colleagues than consultants. This has helped improve the way we communicate future plans because we don’t have to worry about the information we share with the N-iX team.

Are there any areas N-iX could improve?

We asked N-iX to hire DevOps for us, as a shared service between projects. While they were able to partially accommodate us in this respect, we haven’t reached our goal. This has meant that our own developers have had to do the DevOps work. More clients could benefit from this service, and I’m not sure why N-iX hasn’t managed to offer it.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We have a suite of back-office service solutions for restaurant operators. The industry we service is restaurant-centric, and we're an international organization. We have a platform as a service offering, where the data from the point-of-sale systems in those restaurants is integrated into our platform, which allows for a few different things. One is that additional application can be built on top of that data, based upon the platform APIs [application programming interfaces] and additional services that it offers. The platform is then also there to disseminate data to our applications and services, such as the schedule and inventory management applications and others. Ultimately, that platform is meant to be where business analytics and other reporting services can be offered to existing customers.

What is your position?

I'm the vice president of project engineering.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We expanded to N-iX to have additional resources and capabilities. In some of the geographies that we're currently in, it's been fairly difficult to source reliably good talent – software engineers, quality assurance, and those kinds of positions. We were looking for another geography base that we could tap into and get good people to help work on our applications. Eastern Europe was recommended, so we began to explore the available options.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

They're working on a scheduling application. They are rebuilding one of the modules for the existing application. It's one of the key components. Our product management team, along with UX/UI [user experience/user interface] designers, started on this about a year ago [2014] to re-envision how that part of our system would function. They wanted to find improvements and efficiencies while also looking at how we could make our system work better for some other segments in the restaurant industry, such as quick serve. They basically re-envisioned that particular module and redesigned the user interface and the interactions.

When we enlisted N-iX, that was the project that we initiated them on. We are now about six months into that project, and it's been going very well. It's on track, if not even a little ahead of schedule. We plan to allow some of our customers to start beta testing it in the late November or early December [2015] timeframe.

We specifically designed the composition of the N-iX team. Initially, it was a fairly small team. We decided to get three software engineers, and we wanted one to be fairly senior so they could lead the team, provide some supervision, and do code reviews. Essentially, within that geography, that person would provide leadership to the team that was there. The other two developers are mid-level. Then we also put in two QA [quality assurance] engineers there to work specifically with that team on what they were developing, and those folks are mid- to senior-level engineers.

The initial team composition was five. We've since expanded and been actually augmenting other projects and other teams that we have. Here in Austin, we've been hiring additional team members at N-iX to augment those teams. I think, overall, we've hired four more software engineers, and a couple of those are mobile application developers as well as two more quality assurance. Things are going very well and, if anything, we're expanding with them.

They will go out and hire developers or QA, where necessary, for the position. Sometimes, they have folks internally already, who may not have an existing project, and they're able to reposition into a project of ours. Most of the people that we've hired weren't already working for N-iX. We went through interview processes with those folks. When they'd bring somebody to us, they had a salary expectation for that individual. It's always based on United States dollars, but then paid in local currency.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

From working at other companies, I was familiar with other folks who have used outsourced resources in the past. Eastern Europe seemed to be the place to be these days based on some research I had done. I found a few different companies that looked like good candidates. One thing I wanted to do was find one that either I or one of my contacts had direct experience with. I found N-iX through a company I had previously worked for. I was able to contact a former coworker and get a very good reference for them, and that's what closed me on N-iX.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

I can't give you an exact figure because it's confidential. But, once you factor in N-iX's overhead and fees, things like that, comparing them to the folks that we hire from a cost standpoint, I would say they come in at about two-thirds of the cost here.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started our search at the end of 2014, and we engaged them at the start of 2015. We started interviewing candidates at N-iX in the first quarter of this year, and we actually started the development around April of this year. The work is currently ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I don't have specific numbers, but I can say that overall we've been very happy with their velocity, and I'm stating that from an agile scrum and methodology standpoint. We basically do everything in structured two-week sprints. Based on some initial velocity out of those first few sprints, our product management team will then estimate how many sprints it'll take us to get to certain milestones. From using that same planning process with previous teams, against the N-iX team, they've performed very well. That velocity we see is high. Their velocity, and the way they've performed against our plan based on that velocity, has been as good as, if not better than, any other team we've had.

Also, we can see the quality of work through what we call kickbacks from our quality assurance team. We do have metrics around that which we pay attention to, and their kickback rate has been very low.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

We use JIRA heavily in terms of building epics, and then decomposing that into user stories in a variety of tickets. That's actually what we move through all of our sprints. We being with a sprint planning meeting, and that's where we do estimates on tickets, which allows us to figure out what we can fit in that sprint. Then it's working through those tickets. Our QA reviews those tickets, those items and those sprints. The N-iX team has had a low kickback rate, meaning not many items have had to be reworked. That is an important metric for us.

What distinguishes N-iX from other providers?

I've worked with offshore and nearshore teams in the past, and many them have high turnover rates. It is very hard to have good continuity when people are turning over frequently. We wanted something more aligned with how we operate internally. We want to retain talented people and build them up over longer periods of time, train them, improve their skills, and get that return on investment.

Our hope and expectation with N-iX is that we should be able to retain people for a longer period of time there, invest in them, and actually see the benefits of that. Since we began working with them, we've been working with the same developers and engineers at N-iX. They are dedicated to us. It's not like other models, where you're just paying for work done or hours spent. There's no scope of work statement with N-iX, it's purely a resource arrangement, and that's what we were after.

We have aligned them and they now use our processes and development methods. In that way, it's just the resources working in our model. The benefit of that is that we're able to compare their performance against other teams' performances that we have. It ensures a certain level of quality.

Is there anything N-iX could have improved or done differently?

Not really. The process has been very smooth so far. I really don't have any particular feedback for them at this point.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are an online service for booking meeting rooms and meeting spaces, in general. Our company is called Book2Meet. We have a website where people can book meeting places.

What is your position?

I am the IT [information technology] director.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We needed a qualified IT team. Because we couldn't hire anybody with our startup budget and because of limited recruitment possibilities here in Brussels, we looked more for an offshore or near-shore team. Technical skill, experience working on complex tech projects and price were the key drivers for us. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

So far, we have used N-iX for Web development and mobile development. We have a dedicated team that was built specifically for us. The team they gave us is quite young. Our team lead is very good. In the beginning, we had two or three rather senior people. At the moment, since the project is a bit more mature, the juniors we had in the beginning grew a lot as well. When seniors left the team, we replaced them with more junior or mid-level people.

N-iX has one purpose: to run our Web and mobile apps, our B2B [business-to-business] connections, and the system integrations that we're doing with some other third parties. The work is not really project based. It's ongoing work.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

We went through the whole RFP [request for proposal] selection process and three Ukrainian companies responded. From what we saw, we chose N-iX. Their cost was a driver to our selection process, but not the most important one. We visited the offices, and we liked the people. We saw that they had nice offices, nicely decorated open spaces, a friendly atmosphere, and that set them a little bit apart from the other Eastern European competitors. In terms of atmosphere, recruitment, and the people who were presented to us, they were the very best. We hired our current team lead more or less on the spot, on our first visit, even before we signed the contract.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

We've spent around $30,000 per month, since April last year [2014].

What is the status of this engagement?

Our collaboration with them is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

There are numbers that I would prefer not to share, but it would be difficult to quantify the development work. We have an increasing foothold in our market, and we are probably one of the biggest players in online booking of meeting rooms. We're still a niche market, and we're still early on, but I'm afraid I can't share specific numbers.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

We have been tracking their progress using a model for remote Agile development. We work in two-week iterations, after which the N-iX guys showcase to the internal stakeholders what has been achieved in the last two weeks. We've got a backlog of work that we monitor, and we also monitor their process and the number of features they output every two weeks.

I'm actually preparing to leave the company, and then the whole IT team will be N-iX. It is a leap of faith. Internally, we will still have program managers, but in terms of technology and IT, the responsibility will move even more to N-iX.

What distinguishes N-iX from other providers?

So far, N-iX has been very relaxed and honest. For a company their size, I think they have just the right amount of process in place to ensure top quality but, at the same time, they keep it light. We actually picked them because they were more agile and comparable to the size of our startup. I think they have a quite entrepreneurial approach, which suits the culture of a startup very well.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve, or things you might do differently?

Honestly, no. That would be a bit farfetched. We never wanted any other services. We wanted a dedicated offshore team, and that's what we got, and we're very happy with it.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

I'm a software engineer by trade, and I had an e-commerce platform, which ran a company called HealthyChic and TheSpaMarket. So, that's one project that N-iX was involved in, and my most recent project is WorldOfHumanity.

What is your position?

I am the founder of WorldOfHumanity.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

I needed a development team that was skilled and reliable. I've worked with them in the past, and it was a natural choice for me to hire them for my WorldOfHumanity project.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Basically, they did everything from the ground up. Their junior-level developers are equivalent to U.S. senior developers, in all honesty. I've been a developer for many years as well, and I've recognized the type of quality work that they're completing. Their juniors are really our seniors, but I had experience with a lead software engineer and technical engineer as well as a junior and a senior person. I had experience with all three of these categories.

They actually have another firm that they used to do design work for me, but N-iX did all the HTML and cutting out all of the images into a functional interface. I wouldn't use them for training, except possibly for training other developers.

They have been working on my database configuration and development as well. My website uses a database, so they did the database work for that, and they did middleware interfaces, they did work on Windows-based executables for me. They worked across different platforms and different specs. I am hosting the website myself.

How did you come to choose N-iX?

It was a referral to me from my friend here. I had a person out of New Jersey, and he had an Indian development team. I had him for many years, but then I switched because I recognized that the talent was a little better, and they were less expensive than hiring a person here. I got that referral from my friend, who has a QA [quality assurance] team.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative in financial terms?

I've probably spent around $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Right now, we are taking a little break. I'm going to need to get my website to scale, and then I'll resume again.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

When compared to the previous team I had been working with, N-iX is much faster, more consistent, and more skilled in development. I never had an issue, and they were always on time. There was never a delay with assigned work. They actually delivered faster than I thought that they were going to deliver. They spoke perfect English. Even the people who claimed that they didn't speak perfect English, spoke perfect English.

I typically did all the final testing of their work. They have done some of the initial testing, and then after their testing, I did testing as well. I wanted multiple layers of quality assurance. They have always been very consistent. They actually took steps to understand what should be done, rather than here's what is being done and what's been asked of them. That's why I really loved working with them. They eliminated a lot of extra steps that I would normally have to take back when I was working with my Indian team.

What distinguishes N-iX from other providers?

I think the professionalism was one of the things that really struck me, and the fact that they would sign contracts with me. Since I've dealt with them for several years, there were instances where a person left the company, and he transitioned us very smoothly and the knowledge base was maintained. The way that they structured our contract was very smart. For instance, he said that instead of hiring two people, I should hire one person quarterly, a technical engineer a quarter of the time. They were very flexible in that matter, in the way that they structured the team, which I've not really seen from any other company. Just the way that they form the team, they search for their talent, and they work with you on what's needed.

In one other instance, there was a pause of time last year, when I went on vacation and came back. They said, "We realize that you are going in a certain direction. The technology that we use – even though it's working now and you would have never noticed – during these two months of your pause time, we completely revamped it and put into use this new technology, because it will work better for you for the next time." They didn't charge me for it, so that was something that was very nice.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve, or that you would do differently?

Really, no. They made me feel like they had a dedicated team for me, which they did. I was nervous to let people go on pause because I was afraid that those people are going to be gone indefinitely, but that's nothing that they can improve on. There's really nothing that I can think of.