Ragnarson

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I work as a software engineer at a university.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Ragnarson?

At the University where I work, we develop free, open-source software called Madek. Being scarce on developers for our in-house software, we decided to get external help. We needed more manpower to add new features and improve the user experience. We pay a great deal of attention to the interface and usability as the software is being developed. Striking a balance between numerous functions and ease of use is a major challenge.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to improve the functionality of software we own — by adding new features — and to receive advice on the most efficient solution.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We were referred to them by a colleague who had a history with Ragnarson and spoke highly of them. I'm glad that he made the suggestion. We went with them because they had the skill set that we needed. We ended up hiring 3 Ruby on Rails engineers.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Ragnarson has been involved in all of the actual builds, including the design and implementation of the system, eventually taking over the development of the project from the in-house team. Initially, they helped with the development of the admin management system using Ruby on Rails and efficient SQL queries. Afterward, they involved in API written in Clojure. Now we also use React.js to build the app’s frontend. On account of its features, the software sits at the interface between institutional repository and digital asset management. It serves as a media sharing platform for users and makes different media types - images, audio, video, and documents - available in the same place and on the same terms. Our platform offers differentiated administration of access rights - a system of users, groups and access authorizations so that media can be shared. It's like Flickr, Vimeo, and Soundcloud combined with a built-in drag and drop file converter. The original documents can be imported in any standard format for integration and transcoding. The file is also saved and a playback version is made available. This means that authors can always access the original at a later date or for archiving purposes.

What was the team composition?

We partnered in 2013, and the work is ongoing. At the beginning of the process, we worked on the admin panel with multiple developers from Ragnarson, who collaborated closely with my development team. The platform is complete, but they maintain and update it as necessary. Their current engagement is shifting to operational support, but we also regularly add new features and functionalities. Our product owner and testers are in direct contact with the lead developer for new requirements, feedback, and support. Despite the long-term character of our relationship, the team remained fairly consistent, which is rare in software development. As a University, we have a large IT team, but with so many projects we currently develop we're pretty reliant on Ragnarson on this one.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The first project went well, and we've been working together since. The Ragnarson team has been engaged throughout the process, responsive to our needs, and collaborating on business goals and solutions. At the moment, our platform is actively being used by 3500 users. Over the years, they have created 2200 groups and imported 85 000 files. The whole project is open source, and I'm proud to say that a handful of other organisations in Europe use our system.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

I think the management was really good; I can't remember any major issues or misunderstandings during the process. We use an agile approach and regularly meet with the development team to provide feedback on features and add progressive requirements to the application. This was effective as we could increase our functionality while having the application work seamlessly from its early stages of development. Our team uses a Scrum methodology with two-week sprints, daily meetings, and retrospectives, which Ragnarson fits into well. They joined our meetings and gave daily and weekly updates. Over time we replaced daily stand-ups with weekly status calls. Besides that, we use a collaborative tool and sometimes email and Zoom and Slack for communication.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Ragnarson excels fairly well at the tasks they're given. That's a key reason why we've had a long term relationship with them. It's particularly helpful that we don't have to micromanage every bug and task, as this allows our team to focus on other pertinent work. They listen to our needs and work closely with our team to make the partnership easy and effective. They've done everything in their power to ensure that the resources initially assigned to us stay with our team. On top of that, they have excellent Ruby on Rails knowledge.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There are always some areas for improvement, but Ragnarson is a comfort to work with. I take part in many software projects at a time, and this project was very straightforward.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m Product Owner at Verivox - the platform that allows visitors to compare rates among household service providers with just a few clicks and quickly chose the option most suitable for them. I’m responsible for the development of insurance managent solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Ragnarson?

Initially, we hired the Ragnarson team to help us build an insurance mobile and web application (Getsafe). However, at some point, the business has been acquired. As a part of this transaction, we had to integrate all the data from the apps into the existing Verivox data environment based on Salesforce solutions. That’s our current focus and something we’ve been working on for the last months.

What were your goals for this project?

Besides the development of mobile and web applications we needed to consolidate external data sources from insurance companies with the local Salesforce database. The capability to connect, replicate, integrate, migrate, scrub multiple third-party applications and databases to our system was crucial. We wanted to be able to easily merge and synchronize data from third-party applications into Salesforce.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

It’s a little bit complicated. Verivox acquired on part of Getsafe. Ragnarson has been working with Getsafe before the acquisition, so their knowledge about the application’s data architecture and backend was priceless. They were the best fit to help us with the upcoming database integrations, so we decided to keep them with us.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Our cooperation started with web-based projects. First of all, they built Ruby on Rails backend for the consumer insurance web application as well as an admin panel for our team. The Ruby on Rails backend is integrated with the front part of the app via API. At a later stage, when we had to integrate with Salesforce Ragnarson provided consultation on an analytic data warehouse, database design, and data management best practices in data sciences allowing us almost real-time synchronization. They took in large amounts of data and used various analytic techniques to build models and produce consumable outputs for Salesforce. In addition to that, they normalized data sources to cleanse and automate the data ingestion process making it more efficient. The work wasn’t very easy as they had to deal with quite an old codebase and come up with newer versions. However, the quality and reliability of the new code is a huge improvement.

What was the team composition?

It’s quite a big team. Three engineers from Ragnarson take care of the backend written in Ruby on Rails. There are also two front-end developers who build the front end part of the applications using Angular and Ionic framework. They serve also as a UX designer for web and mobile platforms ensuring delighted customer experience. My team, on the other hand, brings in-house QA and UX specialists to the table.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I don't have any measurable statistics to report, but Ragnarson has successfully hit all of our milestones and been very thorough throughout the process. With the integration of Getsafe's technology that Ragnarson has built and now is helping us adopt, over 8 Million Verivox customers will be able to manage all of their insurance policies. It’s a whole new segment of people who can make use of our services. They can buy, change or cancel an insurance policy paper-free on the web or mobile app. So far Verivox has helped it’s consumers to save more than one billion euros.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Communication has been great overall. We hold daily standup meetings, as well as biweekly meetings to go over other issues. We manage the project ourselves using their resources, so that’s on us. Their developers are responsible and professional, and they provide good work. Even though we’ve only hired them for a specific service, they have become a part of our team immediately engaging and trying to take care of whatever we need to be done, quickly. Our issues get solved and I don't have to think about them. That’s why we continue working with them. Their expertise and attitude made them a strong partner for future projects.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The thing I like the most about working with Ragnarson is that I can focus on goals, not the tasks. I feel that they are involved in the project, and they want it to work well taking the initiative regarding new approaches. Their team is approachable and collaborative, bringing ideas to the table up front. They know perfectly when and how to involve and how to carry out your project. Loved their engagement, transparency, and continuous support. We have a cool, creative, and trustworthy partnership.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not much to say here, they were on point and available whenever I needed them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m Chief Operating Officer and tech lead for a Thai e-commerce eyewear brand. Our e-commerce platform makes it easy for customers to filter and choose frames as well as try them on at home.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Ragnarson?

We mostly use Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a cloud infrastructure for our Ruby on Rails e-commerce app. I knew that there were certain areas for improvement in terms of costs and automation of the setup we’ve been using. At one point I started to look for a partner to come in and overhaul our deployment pipeline and production infrastructure. It was a project that we needed to complete but didn't make sense to develop the capability to do in-house, as it would take time away from our normal role of developing business applications.

What were your goals for this project?

The ultimate goal was to (1) make the test and deployment process more effective for our in-house development team and (2) improve cost efficiency of dev and production worker infrastructure. We focused on cloud services cost optimization as the most important KPI.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I connected with Maciek (CEO) via email long ago. When we first met, he seemed to be more focused on application development so there was not yet a match in terms of our needs and Ragnarson's capability. Later, he circled back to me and started a conversation about his company's new capabilities in devops. He asked me about the infrastructure that we use and that’s how it started. He then involved DevOps consultants and they did the technical assessments and gave us their proposals on what should be done, where to begin, different changes needed, and what process would provide the best results.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Ragnarson provided operational support and development work to help us with the infrastructure redesign. We use continuous integration workers to test our software every time a new code is written and pushed, but that computing capacity can be expensive and hard to predict. Ragnarson replaced our 24/7 GitLab runners (Vultr and Digitalocean) with more cost-effective AWS Spot Instances. It allowed us to split the work across multiple servers and scale up and down capacity as required. Bidding for unused capacity in the AWS infrastructure kept the costs down. They also migrated our staging environment to the Fargate-backed ECS cluster. Most of the DevOps work they’ve done has been optimizing AWS cloud services costs. Everything they came up with was implemented and fully integrated with our existing infrastructure. It allowed us to better manage and monitor our performance.

What was the team composition?

We worked with a team of two DevOps engineers. One of them was responsible for operational development work and was backed up by a more senior person. He was also available for calls, ongoing consultation, code review, etc. I was impressed by how fast and smoothly they learned our pull request and merge processes. They didn’t even have to ask for the instructions.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They completed the project according to our requirements. The experience has been very positive so far and we have seen an increase in performance. A good example of their work is the time our app needs to build and test. Before we brought them on board it took 30 minutes, they managed to shorten it to 12 minutes. We found Spot Instances as a cost-effective alternative solution suited for our deployment process. It reduced costs significantly.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We hire 6 full-stack developers, but I personally assigned one of our devs as the main point of contact between our teams, with me backing him up. Ragnarson communicates effectively and performs great when integrated with an existing team. They integrated well into our existing tools (Slack and Gitlab). They remain independent, yet very transparent about what they do. Despite the time difference they’re very responsive trying to be as flexible as possible. Due to the time zone difference between Thailand and Poland, we tried to have at least 4 hours schedule overlap, but actually they were always available when we needed them. We found them easy to engage with.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Ragnarson is a team who knows how to collaborate to understand and deliver the goal. They took the time to learn our business and understand our needs. As a result they learned complex DevOps requirements and delivered a perfect solution, in the form of pull requests, that has lowered our costs significantly. Their technical knowledge stands out and makes them an extremely valuable asset. 

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not really. They exceeded the planned budget by a couple of hours but were very transparent about this, and I authorized the change. Besides that, they were able to deliver on all of our requirements. Their service delivery is impressive!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CFO of a management consulting firm. We operate in 50 countries across the globe, helping our clients to supply their internal project teams with the world’s best independent professionals who have both consulting and line management experience.

A significant part of our projects is for Private Equity owned companies in a wide range of industries. We mostly support our clients in driving performance improvements.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Ragnarson?

We decided to build a web application from scratch, fully customized to our processes and client’s needs as well. As our business grows, we have created a network of nearly 2000 Independent Professionals who choose to work independently yet remain fascinated by the challenges of leading corporations and relentlessly make things happen.

We’d been using an internal CRM to match them with our clients, but it wasn’t a perfect platform for our operations. We had higher expectations regarding the matching process to support the team find and deliver an expert with the perfect combination of skills, experiences, and qualities.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed to build a custom web platform to improve our internal sourcing processes. The UX had to be seamless for all our users. We gave Ragnarson a draft document - which was focused at a practice level - as a starting point.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I was introduced to the Ragnarson after we started our collaboration. They built an application for one of our companies. Once we started to discuss the possibility of building our own bespoke application, we reached out to Ragnarson.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Ragnarson provided professional service throughout the process - from the initial consultation and mock-up stage to the development stage and final testing and corrections.

The core part of the application is an advanced search that allows us to find an accurate independent professional for the given project. We can assign tasks to each subordinate, as well as manage clients and orders. These functionalities made the build quite complicated.

We’re still going through the process of articulating our own business requirements, improving solutions and encoding them in the software.

What was the team composition?

The dynamic of the team was fine. At the early stage of development, Ragnarson allocated a core team of 4 Ruby on Rails engineers to our project, including a project manager who is the main point of contact for my team up to now.

The team varied depending on the challenge we were facing in different areas of the application. Not all of the team members worked fulltime, and some developers changed because of turnover, but overall, the teams were fairly consistent. There were about 4–5 others working on the project as well at various stages.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We started working with Ragnarson in May 2017. We finalized the development plan in January 2018, eventually replacing the old system, but our relationship is still ongoing. The tool evolved purely by converting something that had worked well, into an online platform, essential to our business.

The platform is complete, but Ragnarson maintains the application and updates it as necessary

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We set up an agile approach with an organized team. During the rapid development phase, we had weekly status meetings to define our goals for the next sprint and to go over the progress of different deliverables and milestones. Each decision or change to the website we made took into consideration what was best for the business in terms of the value it would add.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The solution is core to our business. Ragnarson had a fair impact on how we build our application by suggesting proactive changes, which we consider valuable. The solution has launched, and we’ve enhanced it with other releases, which brought significant additional functionality

Are there any areas for improvement?

We’ve had some user experience concerns at one point. Sometimes it takes several iterations to implement the UI that our corporate designer specifies. Ragnarson worked on all the issues after we gave them a better understanding of the end-users during their visit to our headquarter. However, they should improve their initial delivery time and cost predictions

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our business focuses on digitalizing submetering. I am the CTO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ragnarson?

When my co-founder and I started, we joined the original business team but were building a prototype for heat cost billing. We created multiple iterations in ASP.NET. When I joined the company, the existing prototype was not strong in terms of architecture, scalability, and future maintenance. We needed a solution for passing data from meters to a gateway, sending it to a server for processing, and utilizing it for cost allocation. This was the core product we wanted Ragnarson to develop.

Since we’re a software company, we would have normally onboarded our own developers. Back then, we would have needed a kick start to do so. It was impossible to find high-level engineers in this field on such a short basis. We needed three developers from the start, and we couldn’t find this suite of resources in our city.

We started developing the platform with Ragnarson, and we’ve stayed with them until now. We plan to use them in the future, since I’m still very satisfied with the work they do. It is still difficult to find engineers of this level in our market, and to utilize them within our product.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve integrated Ragnarson integrated into our project development team. We mainly use Ruby on Rails for the backend and Vue.js on the frontend, but we also use the MQTT stack for communication. We use different frameworks for smaller tasks. We’ve developed the mobile application in-house, but Ragnarson has built its API.

What is the team composition?

We started with three developers from their team. We currently use roughly four-and-a-half resources, since one of them works part-time.

How did you come to work with Ragnarson?

I found them by accident. I asked a lead developer from a previous project about a partner. I hadn’t originally considered using an agency for our project, since it was too complicated, but I needed someone for code reviews. The developer recommended Ragnarson because he had worked for them in the past.

I originally worked with them on code reviews, but the more I got to know them, the more I appreciated their style of work. That was what convinced me to work with them, even though I normally thought that this kind of work wasn’t suitable for an agency. There was no project manager between me and the developers. It was almost as if the developers were working directly with me on the project. From the beginning, they were very interested in understanding our vision for the product and knowing why we needed certain features. They truly got involved. That’s why I decided to go with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We have spent above $200,000 so far, but we have agreed to spend $400,000 in total. We have expanded the contract with Ragnarson until at least 2018.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Ragnarson in January 2017, and are still working with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The first result was the release of a first version of our platform. It now handles all incoming meter data, normalizes the data accordingly, and prepares it for cost allocation. The platform is stable and currently running more than 500 gateways, each of which handles around 400 meters. Quite a lot of meter data is aggregated through the platform, and users can perform and manage installations on the frontend.

The first version of the platform was released successfully. We are currently focusing on building a workflow engine for the whole submetering process, from installation to cost allocation. Ragnarson has helped us build a ground platform for scaling our service.

How did Ragnarson perform from a project management standpoint?

We are using a tracker, and we have a typical scrum process with some additional flavor. I’m the product owner, and their Scrum manager acts as the project lead on their side. We use GitHub for versioning and review.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They stand out from other agencies because of their dedicated interest in what we want to achieve with the project and why. They’re helping us build the right tool, not just by providing designers, but also by understanding the problem and product very well. They constantly enable us to challenge our solution, asking a lot of good “Why?” questions and proposing easier solutions to our problem. They don’t just take tickets, no questions asked. They try to deliver the best product.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Neon Fuzz is an independent online production music library. We non-exclusively license professional music tracks primarily to television, advertising and other media companies.

Our music is available for use across all media platforms. All licences are valid for worldwide use and in perpetuity. Licences start at just $45.00 for a simple online licence, with a single advertising production licence costing $295.00.

Founder, Evan Buist is an independent media professional with over 15 years experience in advertising, post-production, and broadcast. Evan has a thorough understanding of the media landscape, with a working background as both composer and producer.

Our mission is simple: to become the world’s leading online provider of high-quality music production.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ragnarson?

Technology is vital to any online business, but particularly those working with a large database of large digital files, like us. I needed to find a company that understood the importance of speed and UX for this project. We needed an intuitive music search engine, one which made finding the right track easy. Ragnarson understood this and so much more from day one. Working in Ruby on Rails is what they do, and they do it very well.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I came to Ragnarson with an existing codebase from which the team were instructed to make several alterations, add new features and completely re-design the look of the site. Our existing codebase was built in Ruby on Rails. We had two fantastic developers working on this project, Piotr and Kasia, as well as a project manager, Marek.

How did you come to work with Ragnarson?

I’ve only ever heard the best reports about Ruby devs in Poland (and that area of the world), so I contacted several companies in Ukraine, Poland, Germany and Belarus. Ragnarson was a perfect fit for our company so we went with them - and I’m so happy we did.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started development around the beginning of March 2017 and completed the main scope of the project at the end of June 2017. We are now working on the second stage of development with Ragnarson. This relationship is ongoing, I wouldn’t think of using another company right now.

How much have you invested with Ragnarson?

$10-50k

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re currently moments from a private beta launch, but the initial feedback we’ve had from clients and colleagues has been very positive.

How did Ragnarson perform from a project management standpoint?

Marek, the project manager, is an absolute professional and a pleasure to work with. He was meticulous at every stage of the job, ensuring that the team was on top of each issue and worked skillfully via Slack, Pivotal Tracker, and our weekly sprint meeting via Google Hangouts. Ragnarson’s well-structured, agile workflow is the best I have ever experienced.

What did you find most impressive about Ragnarson?

The philosophy at Ragnarson is unique and one to be greatly respected. Check out their Core Values page for more details. This is absolutely reflected in the interactions I had with all staff members and in the quality of work delivered. Integrity is trait often left behind in the current international business landscape, but Ragnarson possesses real integrity and so much more.

Are there any areas Ragnarson could improve?

I honestly don’t think so. Considering the budget and timeframe, they were absolutely spot on. They delivered everything we agreed on and more.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We provide an app for the management of insurance contracts. It has been available for the German market during the last two years and it has 20,000 customers. I am the co-founder and CTO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ragnarson?

We have worked with Ragnarson from the beginning, in order to build our platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Ragnarson has helped us build our API server, management platform and mobile apps. Our technology stack was Ruby on Rails on the backend and the Ionic Framework for the mobile apps, which is a hybrid approach based on the Cordova SDK and AngularJS.

We started out using one developer, and increased the size every few months. At peak level, we used seven or eight developers from Ragnarson.

How did you come to work with Ragnarson?

We chose Ruby on Rails as a technology stack, and Ragnarson specialized in it. It would give us the ability to develop a stable and maintainable system in the beginning, with a high speed. That was crucial for a startup in order to ensure speed, quality, and enough performance. Moreover, Ragnarson not only built the platform quickly and with good quality, but also allowed us to scale up the development team well. They’re not a 100-developer agency where the team members don’t know each other. Their familiarity improves their way of working together.

How much have you invested with Ragnarson?

The cost of Ragnarson’s work was between $300,000 and $600,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Ragnarson in 2014. The project duration was a little over two years, ending in the summer of 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We cannot attribute results directly to Ragnarson. They were used only as an engineering team, so KPI improvements are related to our product team. Items like response time didn’t factor in.

How did Ragnarson perform from a project management standpoint?

Ragnarson was always keen to follow best-practice processes in terms of software development and project management. Given that we are a startup and had a small team at the time, we were not always able to follow best-practices, so we were grateful to be reminded of what we could do and where we could improve the development process. Ragnarson coached us in this area, which was great for us, as a small and inexperienced team.

What did you find most impressive about Ragnarson?

Their developers know each other well, which leads to fast ramp-up times, once they are on the project. They go on company retreats and similar things, and all work from the same office. We haven’t had to worry too much about team dynamics, once we scale up.

Are there any areas Ragnarson could improve?

Sometimes, the developers should try to think more from a customer’s perspective when developing products. They are not the most customer-centric developers I know, but they were also not reluctant to work with us.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

1FORhunger is a social enterprise which helps facilitate meals for those in need by working with restaurants. We have built an app which helps users find participating locations where they can become a part of the process. I am a co-founder of the company and also handle much of our business development, marketing, and product development. We’re a startup and haven’t yet hit critical mass, so my role involves a bit of everything. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ragnarson?

We were looking to build an application which helped users learn about our program and the available restaurants in and around their locations. At the same time, it would help them track their own progress based on the purchases they made at participating restaurants. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Ragnarson developed our iOS and Android app. We used Ionic Creator, which allowed us to stage mockups of the screens in order to experiment and test versions. Ragnarson assigned one frontend and one backend developer, a project manager, and another resource on an as-needed basis who worked mainly on the backend.

How did you come to work with Ragnarson?

My co-founder participated in a networking session at a startup event. There was a contest being held by Ragnarson in which the winner would receive a chance to work with their team pro bono after meeting a number of criteria. We won that contest. The rest took off from there.

How much have you invested with Ragnarson?

Because we won that contest, our costs were minimal. We were able to work with Ragnarson and get top-notch guidance and input for nothing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

At this juncture, there is not much to report in the way of metrics at a market level, but regarding their ability to deliver what we envisioned and asked for, close to 100% of everything was made as we wanted. Ragnarson met our goals without any hassle; whenever there were any challenges, they were good at voicing them and helping identify potential workarounds. While it would be hard to quantify from a Net Promoter Score standpoint, I’d give Ragnarson a 10/10 based on our experience.

How did Ragnarson perform from a project management standpoint?

They used Slack and Trello in order to ensure that we were project-managing at an efficient level. The process was fantastic, with daily 10 minutes to half-hour sessions during which we planned for the next day and talked about the work which had been done so far.

What did you find most impressive about Ragnarson?

We worked with a manager on a daily basis and also had a chance to meet Ragnarson’s senior leaders, including their CEO and some other top members. They flew in from Poland, and we had a breakfast and learned more about where they were coming from. It was a good chance to learn more about Ragnarson as a company. We also had a strong relationship with the developers themselves, with no acrimony involved. I would highly recommend Ragnarson to other businesses and individuals.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a Berlin-based startup working on a car-leasing platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ragnarson?

We are building an application using Ruby on Rails.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Ragnarson developed our platform using 4 developers. The spectrum of technology used includes Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, Redis, Heroku, AWS S3, as well as other cloud computing services.

How did you come to work with Ragnarson?

I know Ragnarson from working on previous projects for another company, where I was the CTO. I had a great experience with Ragnarson's team. They have excellent front-end and Ruby on Rails developers.

How much have you invested with Ragnarson?

The cost of our project with Ragnarson was above $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have an ongoing project with Ragnarson, working on our company's main platform. We started working together in the summer of 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Everyone has been happy, which is why we continue to work with Ragnarson.

How did Ragnarson perform from a project management standpoint?

Our interactions with Ragnarson had me as the project manager. They were involved strictly in the technical implementation.

What did you find most impressive about Ragnarson?

The reason I've kept hiring Ragnarson is that, regardless of which developer is assigned to our project, they will always be skillful and well-motivated. Ragnarson tries to participate in the product life cycle, discussing features and learning what our business needs are, instead of simply coding blindly. I couldn't say the same thing about other providers.

Are there any areas Ragnarson could improve?

No. Ragnarson has done everything to my uttermost satisfaction.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

BookingSync.com is a vacation rental software offering centralized property management with distribution to platforms like Airbnb, Booking.com, and Trip Advisor. We centralize all marketing efforts, reservations, payments, and so on, and continue with steps like email notifications, generating websites for clients and providing invoicing.

I am the founder and chief executive officer of the company. I also lead the technical side.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ragnarson?

We have a challenging platform with numerous functionalities. One of our biggest challenges was building a central app. Booking itself is done through a co-product and many modular apps using our public API. Similar to a smartphone's architecture, we have a main operating system with apps plugged in on top of it. Some of them are made by us, and some by other developers. Regardless of this, we need a robust system in terms of APIs, authorization, record control, and so on.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Ragnarson developed our system using Ruby on Rails in the backend, an SQL database, and jQuery on the client side. 

The number of developers has varied from 2 initially, to 7 at peak capacity. We have since built an internal team, so we're only using 2 developers from Ragnarson now.

How did you come to work with Ragnarson?

I've tried multiple agencies in parallel but didn't have a good experience. I realized that, because I'm a technology person, I can quickly see inefficiencies in the processes of other groups. Ragnarson's motivation to get things right differentiated them from others. We have established a process which works for me, following common open-source patterns that have been proven to work well on other projects.

How much have you invested with Ragnarson?

We have spent between $400,000 and $500,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

We're currently building an internal team, so we're slowing down the work with Ragnarson, but we're not going to stop anytime soon.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

In my past work, I've had a chance to make contributions to the Ruby on Rails and EmberJS technologies. I can see that the developers from Ragnarson have the same level of capabilities and involvement in the project. I haven't found this while working with other companies.

The API we've released has around 200 partners currently. Some of them have told us that the system is a pleasure to work with and is one of the best they've seen in the industry. We've had fast integrations with partners like Airbnb, for which the process took 34 days. Some of our competitors still have problems after one year, so it was a huge difference. Airbnb has come to value our technical skills, which also speaks to the capabilities of Ragnarson.

How did Ragnarson perform from a project management standpoint?

Most of the project management was done by me. It wasn't something I was trying to get out of this partnership. We used Slack and Skype for communication and GitHub for project management. Our groups have a similar way of working, so the process was very efficient.

What did you find most impressive about Ragnarson?

I found the technical and human quality of Ragnarson's developers to be high. They took responsibility, making the project their own and doing everything possible to make it work. Ragnarson has a group of great team players, with good communication and English skills. It's been a real pleasure working with them.

Are there any areas Ragnarson could improve?

Ragnarson could have improved in terms of business discussions, gaining more clear knowledge about how transitions within an internal team work.

UPDATED REVIEW

This review was updated by Karol Galanciak (CTO, BookingSync) on August 28, 2020. The original star ratings were: Overall - 5, Quality - 5, Schedule - 5, Cost - 5, NPS - 5. New content is below:

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I work as a CTO in a company that develops a property management software for short-term property managers as well as individual owners who reach their customers using Airbnb, Booking.com, HomeAway, TripAdvisor, and more.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

When we launched our product, the infrastructure was appropriate, but, as the scope of our operations grew and our platform gained new features, the then-existing infrastructure began to be slightly underwhelming for our purposes. It was simply outgrown by the set of applications and we’ve been expecting heavy loads of traffic coming to our servers as the numbers of users grew.

It became obvious that we needed more scalability. During one of the meetings Ragnarson team came up with the idea to take advantage of AWS features and web services like Kubernetes and other open-source tools (Terraform and Docker). I liked the idea and decided to work with them.

The ultimate goal was to ensure stable product performance with a high degree of automation and flexibility. This required a smooth and a fail-safe transition towards AWS from our legacy servers to build a scalable system and cloud monitoring solution. We needed to implement new tools to utilize cloud components in a cost-efficient way.

At the same time, we wanted to keep our software development, testing, and deployment routines pretty much the same.

SOLUTION

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

We had been already working with Ragnarson's Ruby on Rails developers before for a long time and their DevOps Team had been helping us occasionally with the previous platform. As we were happy with the collaboration, continuing to work together on a new platform was a natural choice.

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

Ragnarson handled the full scope of the tasks that needed to be done to update and optimize our infrastructure and software delivery pipelines. Their consultants investigated our existing workflows and assessed infrastructure and software development processes.

Then they gathered our requirements and came up with a detailed plan for designing and moving our workloads, data, and set of applications to a custom AWS-based platform suited for our needs.

They eventually moved our data and applications to the cloud and performed mostly seamless migration so our team experienced no interruptions in the workflow process. We received detailed developer documentation on the architecture of our AWS infrastructure and tutorials on using it. The assigned consultants were very helpful in explaining some particular details to our developers.

Once we were happy with the new set up, they executed some changes to improve the security of the infrastructure and set up monitoring and alerting notifications. Currently, Ragnarson provides ongoing maintenance and monitoring of our infrastructure. If something is wrong they are ready to take action immediately.

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

They’ve been very flexible when it comes to the way they work with us. The team size fluctuated between 1 and 3 depending on the scope of work and phase of deployment. They are skilled and very proactive at identifying the issues and offering ready solutions for nearly all the challenges our infrastructure set-up encountered.

We work with them on-demand, however currently one engineer from the Ragnarson collaborates with my developers working full-time as an integral part of our team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The ecosystem became significantly easier to manage and extend as well as the costs of scaling it vertically and horizontally decreased. Our infrastructure is now managed and deployed automatically, using Terraform and Chef.

Ragnarson built a new Kubernetes-based platform and it meets all of our requirements: from deployment, security, maintenance to troubleshooting, monitoring, routing, network configuration, etc.

Yet, from day 1 the whole infrastructure is constantly evolving towards the most optimal solutions available on the market. I have an in-depth understanding of the current system performance at any time due to the smart monitoring system.

We also work with the dedicated DevOps consultant to maintain and constantly improve the infrastructure. He is available on-call duty and provides 24/7 support when needed.

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

All of the assigned specialists use our tools for project management and ongoing communication as well. They are quick to respond, even during non-working hours, so all communication goes smoothly and with no delay. That helps my team to focus on core product development and always stay informed without the need for micromanaging.

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

I liked their proactive attitude at identifying the issues beyond the initial requirements and offering solutions for them. The team draws from their past experience to offer critical insight into technical challenges. That helped them foresee most of the issues and solve them upfront, instead of dealing with the consequences.

Ragnarson is always willing to go the extra mile if needed, which saves lots of time and money in the long run.

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

They have proactively solved several issues, which could have resulted in major problems, should they have been left unaddressed. I was kept informed at all times and this fact gave me reassurance that the team will deliver effectively.