RubyGarage

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of an online marketplace for logo and packaging designs. We offer a higher quality standard than most competitors.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with RubyGarage?

When we came up with the concept for our company, we started searching for a development firm.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a 200-page documentation framework of what we needed to be built. The cooperation was very pleasant. They delivered what they promised. I flew out to meet them a couple of times to explain different things. It was a fairly large project, so I wanted to make sure we were at the same level of understanding.

What is the team composition?

The team composition fluctuated. When we were in the UX phase, it was a smaller team. We had four developers during peak development. We started with a project lead on their side, which changed midway through the project. We did a lot of the project management ourselves. Volod [Founder & CTO, RubyGarage] was very helpful.

How did you come to work with RubyGarage?

We searched multiple places and also received referrals. We considered and gave extensive requirements documentation to eight companies. We asked for cost and time estimates, as well conducted short meetings to discuss the project in order to inquire about their intended approaches.

RubyGarage is based in Ukraine, while some of the other companies were based in the Netherlands and U.K. There were both small and large companies, but they were all technical partners. Based on those meetings, we came back with a lot of different thoughts.

Some of the Western European companies didn’t have the same level of knowledge and professionalism as RubyGarage. Besides the cost advantage of working with a company based in Ukraine, I also felt they were the right partner because they offered suggestions to improve upon our ideas.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $50,000–$199,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in August 2016, and the project took nine months. We have an ongoing maintenance and development contract with them. At present, we’re going through some sprints to update our offerings.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve launched the project, and are in the public beta phase right now. The clients we’ve received seemed to be happy. We’re now moving on to a marketing strategy.

How did RubyGarage perform from a project management standpoint?

We had some movement in the deadline due to entering with a 200-page requirements document. However, the timing and budget ended up being acceptable to us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were happy with their performance. If we weren’t pleased, we would find another vendor. They are quite dedicated and clearly enjoy what they do. They’ve set out to make a difference in their field.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s always difficult to work at a distance. I’m used to dealing with clients from all over the world, so I continuously have to figure out how to deal with daily communication. I was very happy that I went to RubyGarage’s office to meet them and build a personal relationship.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would recommend anybody working with them to visit them at the beginning of their project. When we started the early development phase, I flew over to see them again to go through all the pages and discuss our expectations in order to ensure no time was lost. This is a good idea when working with any remote company.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and co-founder of a content publishing platform that is essentially an SaaS [Software-as-a-service]. Companies can plug into our platform to publish in-depth content such as online courses, events, and webinars. Our platform has a lot of video, text, and audio content.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with RubyGarage?

We were looking for additional support for Ruby on Rails development. At that time, our focus was more on the content side, meaning we were involved in content production. Our platform allowed us to produce, post, and publish content in collaboration with other organizations or experts.

We decided to change our business model because we realized the platform was quite powerful. The pivot was to take the platform we were using and open it up to other organizations. When you’re involved in content production, there are a lot of bottlenecks. If we remove ourselves from the content production side and open it to others, then we won’t have bottlenecks. Our business would be more scalable if other people could use that functionality. We’d already started the pivot, but we definitely needed more help.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The project involved continuing and concluding the pivot. RubyGarage came to us at just the right time. They helped build features that we didn’t have before. The big functionality RubyGarage created was a dashboard that allows organizations to manage their own content.

There are a lot of different functionalities within the dashboard. For example, an administrator can upload content, set the pricing, create discounts codes, bundle content, and add users. There are also channels that let an organization decide which user sees what content. Organizations can do these tasks in their own domain.

What is the team dynamic?

The team went through some fine-tuning. In the beginning, we had a project manager, a developer, a frontend resource, and a design resource, but they were not full-time. RubyGarage originally proposed this model, but we found that working with a manager was not effective for us. We thought there were too many people, and the communication was not very clear.

Eventually, we took a break to change the model. We started working directly with just one developer, with no management in between. We knew exactly what we wanted so the developer just executed what we told him. He would crank out code, we would give feedback, and then he would fix it promptly. It was a very hands-on and results-driven process. This worked really well for us because we’re a small company. The developer was great and communicated well with us.

How did you come to work with RubyGarage?

It’s not easy to find reliable Ruby developers. Because Ruby is a difficult language, there are few developers available. We looked at different possibilities, then we went through a number of discussions with RubyGarage. We liked their expertise in Ruby on Rails, and their cost was acceptable.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in November 2016, and the relationship is ongoing. RubyGarage has been really flexible and agreed to do some maintenance service for us. We have one guy for one day a week, which is great because we’re focusing on marketing now. This is not normally the way they work, but we let them know that we would be using them again after this maintenance period. We’ll probably continue like that for another month, and then we’ll go into another round of heavy development.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

RubyGarage has been a big contributor to our platform. It has been a win-win situation for both of us, and I even wrote a testimonial for their website. The functionality and features demonstrate the quality of RubyGarage’s work. It’s a good product, and we’re happy with it.

The system is live for organizations to use. We wanted to build a 1.0 version, but we had issues while building it. As a result, it became more of a 1.5 or 2.0 version. What we have now is functional, but development never stops. We want to add more functionality and other things in the pipeline.

Now, we need to make sure other people are happy with it. We’ve had some engagement, but we need much more traction. I wish we had more. We are trying to find ways to get more users. Our current challenge is to let people know what we do now. The marketing side is not easy. Since we produce content in different areas, we need to market to different audiences.

How did RubyGarage perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate through Slack and Trello. We interact with the BD [business development] manager, and he has been phenomenal. We sometimes have weird requests, but we are able to find solutions together. The manager is very helpful.

What did you find most impressive about them?

RubyGarage is reliable, which is a huge advantage. A freelancer or full-time developer might get tired of our project and move on to something else or another company. If we lose that developer, we’re stuck. With RubyGarage, the beautiful part is that they deal with this situation. They have 40 developers so they can assign a replacement if someone wants to take time off. The developers are professional, competent, prepared, and easy to work with.  

Another thing I like about RubyGarage is that their price is competitive. They’re not super cheap, but they’re reasonably priced.

Are there any areas they could improve?

At first, the communication was not very smooth, especially with the project manager. For example, they would tell us about holidays at the last minute. We now have a system in place that’s very transparent. Now, the communication is perfectly fine.  

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am actually engaged with them on a number of projects. For the purpose of this, we will talk about BTMetrics. The reason for that is because some of the other clients I work for don’t want to disclose that they were working with offshore teams.

BTMetrics is an analytics product (like Baremetrics) for SaaS companies using Braintree, a payment gateway. The product’s purpose is to provide one-click analytics to SaaS subscription businesses. If you’re a subscription business, you want to know what some of the analytics are like your monthly revenue, your average revenue per customer, and your lifetime value per customer. You plug into our system, and we produce graphs and insights to that.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with RubyGarage?

We built a web-based SaaS product, and we needed design work done for BTMetrics. We had the existing interface, and we wanted a redesign. The original design was done internally by one of our designers. He designed it in Photoshop. I’m a software engineer, so I coded that all by myself. However, I’m not very good at design nor did I really have the resources to do the implementation of that frontend in-house. So then we used RubyGarage for that.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a basic Bootstrap-based design. Our designer came up with something that was a little different that didn’t fit into the Bootstrap mold. We needed that whole design turned into a mockup with some frontend code. Their job was writing a mockup and implementing the UI. Once they gave me the mockup to review, I would be like “This does not seem right. The fonts do not match up here,” and they would fix it, whether it was the sign-up page, the log-out page or the forgot-your-password page.

They did all the frontend assets and mockup with CSS and JavaScript. They were good about really using reusable CSS, writing clean CSS code. The page is made out of the main layout with a sidebar, content pages, and graphs. They didn’t design all that, but they implemented all of that.

I did not really have a hand in putting together the team for this project, although I had some hands-on with developers on other projects for clients. Although they have quite a lot of developers, they only have a couple of senior designers. I engaged with the frontend staff, (you really do not have a choice), and they put someone underneath them to work with. Since I had worked with them before and I liked the work they did and their approach, I was happy with that.

The developers that worked on the frontend code was a junior frontend developer who was managed by their senior. I liked that they didn’t charge for that. They charged me the hours of a junior developer, and they did all the management. Maybe that is how everyone works, but I really appreciated that. If they made a promise on how long something would take, and if it took longer not due to specs changing, they were pretty good about staying true to the original number that we agreed on. If any problems popped up, their senior guy would jump in and talk to me. So that was really good.

How did you come to work with RubyGarage?

I was working with this other company as a contract-to-hire CTO, and they really wanted to look at offshore teams. This team that I was working with just happened to be recruiters building a recruitment platform, and that is what I was helping them with. They did the work of looking around for offshore teams. After looking around, they sent me links and asked me what I thought of the companies. The recruiters were not technical in any way; they just did a blanket search of those that they thought were good, or that people had referred to them. That is how RubyGarage came to me. The reason that I choose them was because, to be honest, I really liked their website. It had a really good design that was contemporary and clean. They also seemed to say all the right things on their website. When I talked to them, I asked them very specific questions about development and how they worked, they were saying the right things, so I jumped on that.

There weren’t other companies in consideration for this project because I had worked with RubyGarage on other things. With RubyGarage, I’ve worked with them where I am an interim CTO (because I am a contractor) for a couple of different companies. What I would do is bring some RubyGarage developers as an add-on team. We do not use them on a project basis but more for ongoing development. They are external developers, but they join our sprint and internal development team. I put them on that, and I really liked the way they worked. I also used the frontend guy on another project. I liked the work that he did there, how quickly he did it, and how he approached it. Because I had worked so much with them, and that frontend developer, before as an ongoing team, it made sense to use them again for BTMetrics. To just give you some context, on BTMetrics, we worked with them purely on limited project-based work: find out what we need, how long is that going to be, how much do you need, do it, and we’re done. We are talking about BTMetrics here because that’s the company I can talk about, because the other company does not want me to do that.

How much have you invested with RubyGarage?

With that project, it was not very much: $12,000. Overall, in terms of the other two projects, we spent $4,000 on each monthly or $8,000 a month all together.

What is the status of this engagement?

This project only lasted about two or three weeks. We started working with them on this project in November 2016, but I have been working with them since June 2016. I’m still engaged with them on two other projects. Those projects are more in terms of full-stack backend developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We saw usage go up. People converted more. With the older UI, we couldn’t implement certain features because the UI was restrictive and didn’t allow for it. When we built this new UI, it had much more space, not in terms of literal space, but it had more pluggable bits that could be built on. Not only did it allow us to build new features, which then means that people converted more, but it also made our team’s and my life easier. When we wanted to add a new feature, it was much easier to include that into the UI, whereas before we were asking ourselves where are we going to put this.

Having said that, I think that is more as the result of the design, not so much of the implementation. The implemented code was maintainable and understandable. It made out developers lives easier, so there was less friction when touching the code. That also made us more productive. But I wouldn’t say that their implementation resulted in any user-facing improvement because I think it was more the design that did that.

There were some issues with the implementation, which was that sometimes it was a bit too literal. For example, the design didn’t have all the responsive views in the design. It was more a desktop view with no mobile view. For the first few rounds of code implementation, when you went down to smaller viewports for the browser window, it didn’t quite work. There was intervening I had to make, saying let’s use common sense in what kind of known practices in terms of how pages collapse into mobile view. There was a bit of friction there and took a few extra rounds, but they were pretty good about not charging that.

Those iterations delayed the project a little bit more than we would have wanted. Luckily, we were not too rigid about the deadline on the milestone date. We were only off by an extra week, which wasn’t a big deal for us. However, there were no issues once we went live because everything had been addressed beforehand by me because I reviewed the code.

How did RubyGarage perform from a project management standpoint?

Their communication was great. That was one of the things that I liked working with them in general. The designer and developer were always available, so I could always ask questions. The senior member and the general account manager were also super responsive. They were always quite consistent with whoever was on the project, meaning no turnover in resources. Their developers are high quality, meaning they followed best practices in terms of the code that they wrote. We did code reviews, and they were very good with code reviews with either engaging in the reviews or fixing things that I would say were not quite right. They were really engaging with that. Also, they were quite humble, which is hard to find in development. There was no ego involved. We exclusively used Slack for communication. Everyone was in the Slack channel so we could ping anyone.

What did you find most impressive about RubyGarage?

I found them to be very flexible. If things needed changing, or if I got something wrong, or if I needed a special circumstance or a way of working, they were particularly flexible which I liked. Even with billing, they were really flexible there. They would charge in dollars, but whenever I could not transfer dollars because I wanted to use an app to transfer money, they were pretty good in charging me in euros. Their developers are clearly talented. Maybe that’s not unique, but I found that to be a fact.

Are there any areas RubyGarage could improve?

In all of my experience with them, I had the best experience with the backend developers, but the most friction with their frontend team, even though their work was very good. That is more because of the literal way they might approach a project or an implementation of a design. That is my only thing really. I had issues with some of the junior developers, but I think that’s a normal junior developer thing. I do not think that is unique to them. But I do not think there is any general thing that I can really think of off the top of my head that they can improve.

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

First of all, get a sense of the way that they communicate. It is quite general, but you should really do that before and see what kind of communication you are going to have with them ongoing. Then jump in and see if you can do any short-term work (one or two weeks) with them. I think that really is the best way to find out if you are going to work together, and I think that is what kept me with them, even if I had to educate a developer, junior or not. Just generally working with them was good, but I could only find that out by doing it.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We offer a SaaS-based learning platform, Path LMS. We primarily focus on association and corporate markets who are looking to offer external training to their users. We also provide a service side to the business where we professionally manage webinars for our customers. It's tied into the platform as well. I'm the CTO, and I oversee the platform and technology at the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with RubyGarage?

We had a core in-house team working on building our platform, but as we got started, we saw a need to have more of a flexible workforce as well as reduce some costs. We had a limited budget, so we wanted to make sure that we could supplement our in-house team with external talent. That's how we found RubyGarage.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They're fully embedded into our team as full stack developers. They're working on new features, functionality, bug fixes, improvements, integrations with third parties, etc. They have been invovled in building many of the key features on our platform. We do a lot of integrations with third-party systems like databases and association management systems. They can be pretty complex because you're dealing with different technologies every time and we don't get all the information upfront from the documentation, so you have to dig around and explore and make sure you can get the integration working. They've done an awesome job at those over the years, building out the single sign-on capabilities and data integrations with third-party systems.

At the start of the relationship, they sent us a number of resumes, and we got to pick which developers were the best fit for our team. We got the team together pretty quick, within a few weeks, getting contracting out of the way. We had anywhere from 1–4 one to four people assigned to our account.

How did you come to work with RubyGarage?

We didn't want to just do traditional offshoring; we wanted someone who was going to be embedded as part of the team, who spoke English, and who could work within our Agile workflow. We wanted to have a cohesive team, do sprint planning together, and have everyone interact as if they were in-house, and Ruby had a structure that supported that.

We were looking at three different companies when we decided to do work with a development firm. Our product manager was managing the process to find the providers and leveraged a mix of online research and references when making the decision.

We were impressed with their work product and the fact that they specialized in Ruby on Rails, which was hard to find. Based on some similar work that they've done—they had work that was similar to what we were doing—pricing, and references that we checked, it all sounded really promising.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2014.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It's been consistent performance over the past three years. We do two-week sprints. They've been successfully embedded with our team, and have the same number of stories assigned to them as our in-house team. We don't have any special considerations of them not working on certain features or functionality because of any language barriers or skill levels. They're fully engaged, interacting with our team and offering suggestions. We even have improvement sprints where we let the developers work on projects that they want to work on, and they help out there as well finding issues or refactoring parts of the app that they think could be optimized. They care about the success of the team and the platform, so it's been really great for us across the board.

We have never even considered looking for a different provider since we started working with them. We've been really happy and impressed with the talent that we have assigned to us: We’ve been working with one of the engineers since the beginning, and are happy to say he is still working with our team today.

How did RubyGarage perform from a project management standpoint?

We've been satisfied with the rate, and more than satisfied with the talent that we've received. We love working with them and have built personal relationships with all of them. They’ve all been solid communicators in English, so we haven't had language barriers that have prevented working together at all.

They all report directly to our product manager. We use a combination of Trello and Slack for daily communication. We do daily standups that they participate in. For every sprint, we do a planning session, and they're in those sessions as well.

What did you find most impressive about RubyGarage?

The ability to get a highly qualified, talented, motivated developer dropped into your team is pretty rare. We've worked with about six or seven different developers over the time, some of them on shorter sprints just for specific features, and other ones have been added to the team full-time. We haven't had any issues with onboarding. Typically, they’ll handle training and bring onboard the other developers themselves so that we don't have to do much coaching to start. Within a couple of days, they're already submitting pull requests on the app. We don't have a long lag of weeks until a new developer is comfortable with the code base. That reduces the stress of adding new engineers onto the team and worrying about whether they'll work out or how long it'll take to get them integrated. They’ve been spectacular on that front.

The other side is just the fact that, so far, everyone that's worked with us has written clean, excellent code and is really smart about how they approach implementing features, using the latest and greatest techniques, best practices, and code hygiene.

On top of it all, they care. It seems like they’re invested and care about the app and the product that they're working on, which is not something that you typically expect from a contractor. It's been really great being able to integrate them directly into our team and not have them off to the side as "consultants" or “contractors.” They really are part of the team.

Are there any areas RubyGarage could improve?

Honestly, there haven't been any issues or challenges that we've run across working with them to date.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Our company worked on providing insights into analytics data from a variety of services, including Google Analytics, Segment, and so on. We aggregated everything and tried to make sense of it, as well as make predictions. The company was located in San Francisco.

What is your position?

I was a co-founder and the CTO of the company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with RubyGarage?

As an engineer, I was looking for people who could focus more on product style. I had worked with other developers in the past, but they were not looking at solving problems but rather at technical tasks. We needed someone who could provide the whole nine yards. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

Our system was divided into an API and a frontend part. The API part was a high-volume Google-Go-based application, while the frontend was a pure JavaScript, client-side, single-page solution.

One of the biggest issues we had was fetching hundreds of gigabytes of data every hour for every customer we had, from Google Analytics, Sentry, Bugsnag, Crashlytics, Segment, and so on. It was a technical challenge to do this without paying an arm and a leg. RubyGarage solved that issue for us.

They worked on the engineering side and proposed an architecture for our solution. We agreed with RubyGarage on a technical level and implemented the code over a year and a half. We also used RubyGarage for marketing work, including the design of landing pages, brochures, and so on.

We've worked with three backend engineers, one frontend engineer, a part-time UI person, and a project manager from RubyGarage.

How did you come to work with RubyGarage?

I had worked with one of RubyGarage's co-founders for another company. He had good expertise, and I also knew a few other engineers from RubyGarage, which were the contributing factors for choosing them. We had familiarity and ease of communication with RubyGarage, so we didn't have to go through a due-diligence process.

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

The cost of RubyGarage's work was around $400,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with RubyGarage in May 2014. The project ended in July 2016. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Our company didn't perform very well ultimately, but it wasn't a fault of the engineering portion. The business was ended, and I've started a new one since.

How did RubyGarage perform from a project management standpoint?

We had project management help from RubyGarage. My co-founder and I focused more on the sales and marketing side, so it was our fault for the end result, basically. We were mostly happy with RubyGarage's collaboration at a technical level, but the marketing work they did for us was a downside. Some of this is due to the language barrier with their team.

We were based in San Francisco, so there was a 10-hour time difference. RubyGarage worked overtime every week since they wanted to be more in-touch with us.

RubyGarage usually used Trello, but we asked them to use Pivotal Tracker for the work with us. We also used GitHub for managing issues and tasks for the developers and engineers.

What distinguishes RubyGarage from other providers?

I don't think that RubyGarage offered any unique services, compared to their competition, but their engineering experience was excellent.

Is there anything RubyGarage could have improved or done differently?

I wouldn't choose RubyGarage if I was looking strictly for a marketing agency. Their strong sides are technical work and project management, but when it came to marketing or UI design, we weren't very happy with the work we received. We actually had to change our UI person during the collaboration. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a peer-to-peer marketing company. Basically, we’re building a platform to allow event planners to connect directly with event marketers. My role is the CEO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with RubyGarage?

We hired RubyGarage when we were looking for a full stack developer that was knowledgeable building similar solutions in Rails.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired one developer, and it was critical for us that this developer was a part of our daily scrum meetings. We assigned weekly or daily tasks on a whole manner of things, but mostly backend issues. One example of what they’ve coded is the PayPal integration. They also integrated some other functionalities like an invitation tool so everyone can invite their friends to be their own ticket runners. Recently we hired another frontend developer from RubyGarage to converting our designs from PDF to HTML and CSS. I’m not certain if other people from RubyGarage have been involved in the project, but we’ve been talking to one guy.

How did you come to work with RubyGarage?

We had some interviews from Upwork and a few agencies, but they didn’t have the capacity we needed. One company that we considered actually referred me to RubyGarage. The standard RubyGarage gave us for code quality and communications in our interview was enough for us: we wanted to have them on our tech team.

How much have you invested with RubyGarage?

We’ve spent almost $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in September 2016; we’ve finished with our backend work and now only the frontend remains. They receive PFD files and instructions for any JavaScript implementation we need and then they provide us the code.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We don’t have any KPIs yet since we’re still in product development and our launch will be in two weeks.

How did RubyGarage perform from a project management standpoint?

We had some communication problems with RubyGarage in the beginning because we were expecting that they were always available. We use Slack or JIRA and we expected the same of them. Of course, we brought up our concerns with them and they immediately changed it. They adapted to our needs.

What did you find most impressive about RubyGarage?

From the business administration perspective, they always have an ear to the ground and a rapid response time. It’s either on Skype or through email; doesn't matter because we can always reach someone. That’s very positive. 

Are there any areas RubyGarage could improve?

We had that communication problem in the beginning, but if they eliminate those it would be easier from day one. But any partnership evolves, so I wouldn’t criticize this one.

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

I didn’t have any previous experience with tech, and I had my doubts about this partnership. I would have been lost without the insights from my CTO. The best thing I can recommend is that if you don’t have anyone in your team who has technical expertise, be very specific in your requirements so that your vendor knows what you expect from them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the owner of Crux Entertainment, a cross-platform production company. We produce short-form digital content. Recently, we entered the app market with MoonAge.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with RubyGarage?

RubyGarage provided some strategy work for our company. We came to them with a strange idea for an app. We needed help with brainstorming and turning that idea into something that could work.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

RubyGarage has developed a mobile app which calculates time in lunar years. We have worked with 2 people from RubyGarage's team and interacted with them through an in-house project lead.

How did you come to work with RubyGarage?

An old friend had used RubyGarage for his own app. I also consulted with a few other companies and acquaintances in this area.

How much have you invested with RubyGarage?

The cost of RubyGarage's services has been around $15,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have been working with RubyGarage for 1 year. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We released a final update for the app 2-weeks ago and everything seems to be going well. However, we don't have any feedback for the app yet. 

How did RubyGarage perform from a project management standpoint?

The working process with RubyGarage was great. I worked with their lead developer and we kept in touch via Skype and email. Whenever I sent an email, they always responded within 12–15 hours. We didn't use any formal project management tools.

What did you find most impressive about RubyGarage?

RubyGarage gave me a different impression compared to other places I contacted, which seemed more corporate. This may be because RubyGarage is very young and has a more small-shop feel. 

Are there any areas RubyGarage could improve?

Nothing comes to mind.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a leading CRM [Customer Relationship Management], website, email, and accounting provider to the Australian and New Zealand real estate industry. We employ around 40 people. I'm the founder and chief executive officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with RubyGarage?

We had a legacy module that was a decade old and we rebuilt it with numerous functional and technical improvements. We wanted to build this complex module in parallel with other projects to bring forward its release without using existing resources. At the same time, we did not want to hire new permanent in-house developers, so we decided to partner with a development firm. This was a very challenging project with a complex domain that is heavily integrated with other modules on our platform. There was going to be a lot of data manipulation and custom coding involved.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We searched for Ruby programmers in our region [central Europe] and then found RubyGarage. They responded quickly to our request, with an accurate and unbiased proposal. We were not ready to proceed at first contact, however, when the project was ready, we didn’t hesitate to get back in touch with them. They provided a team of engineers that worked in collaboration with our own internal developers, analysts, and designers in a seamless way. They were very tightly embedded into our team and workflows. That was crucial for the success of the project.

They eventually discovered deficiencies in our preparation and helped refine the project scope and set it up for success. The project has spanned 6 months.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

RubyGarage was professional, responsive, and diligent at all times– before and after the agreed engagement timeline. Specifically, the quality of people and process enabled this complex accounting project to be a success on all levels. The solution itself has performed exceptionally well. Milestones and deadlines were hit without fail.

I have no hesitation when it comes to recommending them for projects that require considerable attention to detail and a professional, systematic approach to software development. These guys are seriously talented in terms of Ruby on Rails development.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a startup software-as-a-service company building and licensing solutions for marketers. We work for large consumer packaged goods producers and different retail companies, enabling collaborations across functions and across organizations. Our software allows budgeting, categorization, promotional planning, estimation, and reconciliation.

What is your position?

I am the founder and chief executive officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with RubyGarage?

I tried to build my software onshore, interviewing several developers, but I wasn't impressed with their attitude, and the pricing was prohibitive.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

RubyGarage built two applications for me using Ruby on Rails. They're a Ruby shop, so I assume that this is what they use for most of their clients. I didn't have a preference in terms of technology, given that I was starting from scratch, but I'd heard good things about Ruby and knew that there was enough talent on the market for this language so that switching companies would be easy.

I hired a dedicated team for the project, consisting of a senior developer, a mid-developer, and a junior one, who worked on the project for eight months. The team size was scaled back after the product launch after there was only a need for maintenance work. We currently only have one person on the development side working on it. We also work with a UX [user experience] designer on a part-time basis in order to build additional features.

At peak capacity, I had five employees: three developers, a UX designer, a part-time project manager, and a part-time HTML/CSS developer. I interacted with the UX designer directly. She and the project manager had a lot of understanding about my aim. Hers was more from a functional and visual perspective while my PM focused on how we could get things done. He wrote user stories and helped developers communicate. My UX designer made sure that the product integrity was there and integrated the vision into the design. I spoke with them twice a week at least through Skype. We also used Trello, so the process was transparent and fluid.

My apps are focused on adjacent industries. One is for marketers running large-scale events, either back-to-school or holiday ones. Retailers usually bring in sponsors in order to obtain more publicity and drive people to their stores. Currently, everything is done manually. Forms are sent in through email or regular post. There is a lot of material that needs to be sent, including artwork and graphics. Our application enables companies to design their marketing campaign, documenting every detail, including marketing strategies and other tactical elements. Then, they detail sponsorship packages and what the benefits are for each of them and, ultimately, send them out to brands that would be interested in being a sponsor. There is a back-and-forth approval process and, once the deal is approved, logos, text, photography, and other marketing materials are shared through the app. We offer a single, comprehensive place on which the marketing workflow can exist.

Our consumer packaged goods system is aimed at brands that want to plan marketing campaigns internally. If a manufacturer wants to sponsor a specific event, they need to figure out which retailer would want to partner with them, and they need to be able to assign budgets to different teams, which then use that budget for running the event. Teams can build marketing assumptions and specific tactical spend details, show how the money is being spent and upload marketing collateral to the system. It's a unified place through which marketers can build and push marketing events out of the door. It alleviates a lot of stress and offers a toolset for keeping their work in one place, featuring dashboards, calendars, report generators, search functionalities and so on.

How did you come to work with RubyGarage?

I was browsing review sites on which people posted portfolios and interests. RubyGarage was featured there, and I decided to contact them. The conversation went well and gave me the feeling that they knew how to work with startups. Their price was also decent, so I decided to give them a chance. Our first engagement was making a UX design, so I didn't have to commit to a large team, just a designer. They gave me a tangible deliverable that I could then use as a starting point for other developers. I was ultimately impressed by the quality delivered by the UX designer, so I decided that I wouldn't be shopping for alternative developers. We already had an internal relationship, so we could simply keep adding people to the team. Looking back, I never regretted hiring them, even though I didn't employ a due-diligence process of interviewing at least three other companies in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, or another low-cost market. Time is money, and I had to get people onboard. If something wasn't broken, there was no need to fix it. Things worked out in my case, although I wouldn't recommend this approach. The fact that RubyGarage was located in my hometown also gave me an emotional connection to them.

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

The development cost for the first app was lower because we only hired a UX designer to start off, after which we hired a product developer, slowly building the team. I spend around $46,000 for the retail application, and it took five months to complete. The second application was more complex, and it had a bigger team in place. It had a cost of between $50,000 to $60,000 and took another five months to complete.

What is the status of this engagement?

The second app was launched in January 2016. We have an ongoing relationship.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I don't have a frame of reference for their success because I haven't worked with other offshore companies. My subjective impression is that the app looks beautiful. It's modern, functional and fast. We've had minor bugs, but it has worked overall. All of my clients get excited when I show it to them. When I launched the software in January for my first client, RubyGarage's chief technology officer was present. He later said to me that he'd never seen such a smooth product launch. The client was excited about it, given that, before my solution, they were using a SharePoint system that was terrible. It was night and day for them, compared to their old solution. It was a great validation for both my vision and their delivery.

How did RubyGarage perform from a project management standpoint?

I didn't hire a project manager initially, thinking that I could act as one. I realized that I didn't have enough experience, technical expertise, or understanding of the development process. We had some staff turnover at the beginning of the project, which resulted in some delays. As soon as we hired a project manager and the team stabilized, I could immediately see how smoothly the productivity went up. Their project manager knew how to communicate, plan, and set expectations. I knew what was coming, and there was no frustration. He organized the process in such a way as to maximize productivity. I never had a problem with a specific resource, but some members resigned on their own, which was beyond anyone's control.

What distinguishes RubyGarage from other providers?

I like the fact that they have the ability to be flexible and scale up my team on relatively short notice. RubyGarage only needs one or two weeks' notice for this. They will figure out a way of getting me the right talent in order to resolve a task.

I also appreciated that their cofounder has been very flexible and has a lot of experience with startups. He not only consulted me on the right ways of building my product, but also helped me think through pricing and sales strategies. He introduced me to people who are working in similar industries, and I was able to share ideas with other clients of theirs. Beyond developing a product, he has a holistic view of startups. It has been easy to work with them.

Is there anything RubyGarage could have improved or done differently?

Things could always be cheaper and faster, but I have no specific complaints.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Our focus is on the events market, for which we offer physical space analytics. A sponsor advertising within a music festival, for example, will spend a large amount of money for funding the event, but at the end, beyond an increase in their social media presence, they wouldn't have an idea if the investment was worth it. We focus on activation, measuring on how many people see the advertising and how many engage with it. We offer a real-world version of Google Analytics.

What is your position?

I am the Chief Technology Officer and founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with RubyGarage?

We've used them for a number of things, including core development of our platform. They serve as an external resource and they aid us with customization, strategy, design, and implementation.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

We have used their design services, as well as their QA, project management, and development services. Because of our company's expansion in the UK, we've come down to 2 full-time engineers and one part-time QA resource. During the last three years, we've grown our own internal team, but we've always maintained some development with their company due to the core expertise that they can provide.

At peak capacity, we worked with 3 full-time developers, one part-time project manager, and one part-time UI/UX designer. They've been very elastic, shrinking and growing their team as needed. We work closely with them and share details about what's happening within our business in order to prepare them for the future. We have a strong partnership.

How did you come to work with RubyGarage?

I'd had some experience with offshore companies, specifically one in Poland, and knew what could be achieved through Ruby on Rails. As such, I was looking specifically for a Ruby specialist. I researched companies in Eastern Europe. I hadn't actually looked at Ukraine, but I came to see that they represented a very good value financially. After we started looking in that area, RubyGarage came up as a specialist. They were very active within their community, holding meetups and other events, so I got in touch with them. They responded back quickly and the initial contact was very responsive. Based on my previous experience with offshores, they clicked all the boxes. We considered three companies in total, including one in Poland.

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

The minimum viable version of our initial project was turned around within 10 weeks and it featured only one developer. The cost per hour was $35.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them for three years. Our first minimum viable product was completed in March of 2014. We continue to work with RubyGarage.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

My approach has been to remain open with our partner companies. This has worked very well with RubyGarage, from my point of view.

Adding new people to our team is done within 2-3 weeks of our request. We have an incredibly complex platform which involves calculating positional data based on information which we acquire from our own centers. Reports are generated from this process. The engineers brought in by RubyGarage have generally been able to pick up the work and become productive within one month from joining the team, which is quite good.

We have an elastic search functionality for our clients, which currently works for 0.5 TB of data sitting in our clusters. RubyGarage has always gone the extra mile for us. The nature of our work means that we're always working, specifically during holiday times and weekends, when clients are most active. Their staff has remained available and they've given us more than we paid for, working in the evenings and on weekends for us, without additional charge.

How did RubyGarage perform from a project management standpoint?

Within the last six months, we've become a bit more rigorous. In the first 18 months, our vision for the product was to collect data through our network at venues and then provide reports to the organizers of the events. We found that most of the organizers had no budget for this. They operated on microscopic margins, so we started aiming our product more at the people paying to be at the events. We had to change our product slightly, which meant introducing a lot more rigor into our development process. We now work within very structured 2-week sprints. In the past, we engaged in more continuous development, employing an Agile process in a very raw sense. This change has been dealt-with very well by RubyGarage. There have been occasional issues with forecasting the length of time for the work, but we're breaking new ground with intellectual property which no one else in the world has. Estimates have doubled at times, but from talking to friends, I know that this happens all the time.

We use Jira, Confluence, and HipChat as project management tools. Previously, we were using Trello and Slack, but I much prefer our current setup. We've also moved to BitBucket from GitHub. The transitions have been made at our recommendations and RubyGarage adapted to them quickly.

We also had a major move in terms of architecture. Last year, we were signed up to the IBM Catalyst program, getting some services for free each month. This was an advantage, particularly for our elastic search. We switched to Amazon Web Services from this, which required a lot of input from both our side and from RubyGarage. The transition was completed in under a month which, considering the complexity of our platform, was incredible.

What distinguishes RubyGarage from other providers?

Our engagement with RubyGarage is a partnership. They don't have equity in our business, but when it comes to changing circumstances, they will go out of their way in order to accommodate the specific needs of the time. This comes from both their principals and their team. Our developers have been up working at 12 o'clock at night on Saturdays, without being paid to do it. They've enjoyed working on the platform and we've enjoyed working with them. We've visited their headquarters a couple of times and found that they're more than what would be expected from an offshore developer. They care about what they're doing and about the quality of their work.

Is there anything RubyGarage could have improved or done differently?

We've had discussions about quality assurance, partly because of our own development process. There were a few bugs creeping in which should not have existed. Within 7 days, a QA person was working part-time on the team, so they dealt with the issue quickly.

We've at times had cost and estimation corrections, but they were always dealt with incredibly quickly. There is no such thing as a perfect sphere; there will always be bumps, but from the points of view of myself and my investors, the work has been good.