Seamgen

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Inspire Investing is a global leader in the faith-based investing market, and Inspire Insight is our industry-leading app that gives investors the power to type in a ticker symbol and discover the faith-based, environmental, social and governance issues inherent in their portfolios. I am CEO of the Inspire family of companies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Seamgen?

We hired Seamgen to design and build our Inspire Insight web app.

What were your goals for this project?

To build a simple, beautiful and effective application for investors to type in a ticker symbol and discover the faith-based, environmental, social and governance issues inherent in their portfolios.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We researched several companies which we found through the Internet and locally here in Silicon Valley. After multiple interviews with candidates, we decided on Seamgen. Deciding factors was their ability to understand our concept and communicate to us their plans and ability to develop it, the quality UI and design of their project portfolio and their experience working with complicated back-end engineering managing massive quantities of data from multiple sources.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Seamgen provided all services from wire frame to engineering and everything in between. Our internal design staff collaborated with Seamgen's designers to provide input and direction for the design and UI. Seamgen's team created the design and then engineered the application.

This required a lot of interaction with our team to make sure the specific data and UI needs were met for our unique market. It also required the management of a large amount of data from multiple sources and in multiple formats (API, FTP, spreadsheet upload, etc) which then needed to be plugged into a variety of algorithms to produce several calculations relating to the faith-based and financial performance data that we report on with the app.

Seamgen also built various user roles with various feature permissions and integrated those with our internal Wordpress-based marketing website, including single sign-in. The features Seamgen built are too numerous to name, and we have completed multiple development sprints and continue to use their services for additional features as we grow the app. You can see the product at www.inspireinsight.com.

What was the team composition?

The Seamgen team consisted of UI designer, two engineers, a project manager and various other team members who would come and go throughout phases of the project. Our primary communication has been with the project manager and lead engineer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The Inspire Insight app is a truly revolutionary development in the faith-based investing industry and solidified our position as a global leader in that market. For the first time ever, investors around the world can see the good, bad and ugly of what they are invested in for free online, anytime of the day or night. This democratization of data is helping investors discover issues they never knew they had and growing the faith-based investment movement around the globe.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Seamgen's project manager organized sprint plans and budgets and we have routine (usually weekly) review meetings with her and the lead engineer to update on progress. It is an effective process and makes for clear lines of communication.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Seamgen has been very accomodative of our demanding expectations, tight deadlines and limited budget of a rapidly growing, startup business. They are enjoyable to work with and are willing to dig in and grind out work. They are able to understand our precise and complex needs and seem to really enjoy building our app and the challenge it poses.

Are there any areas for improvement?

One area of improvement, which Seamgen has been receptive to over our relationship and has taken steps to correct, is getting better at forecasting development costs for our rather complex product. While mostly on budget, there have been certain features/sprints that came in meaningfully over budget as Seamgen underestimated the workload the build would require. In such situations they have been gracious to reduce their charges or provide future hours at no cost to help us stay within our cash flow constraints.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO and co-founder of eGrove Education Inc. We are a small startup that creates mobile apps for education ranging from elementary school through to college. Our first app is a freehand sketching app aimed to increase spatial visualization skills for STEM students. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Seamgen?

We had a mobile app that needed to be rewritten to support iOS and Android. The app recorded students’ freehand sketches, implemented a sketch grading algorithm, and gave personalized feedback to each student. Because this was an educational app, all student activity needed to be recorded in the cloud, and teachers needed the ability to download which assignments students completed.

Prior to working with Seamgen we had an app developer working for over 2 years on implementing the app. The app had been written over 4 years ago in iOS, and we had hired this developer to create an iOS & Android version as well as rewrite out backend.

Our prior developer had decades of experience but choose a platform that compiled for iOS and Android that was becoming obsolete. The last straw was when we missed key marketing deadlines and the platform was not staying current with the requirements of the Google Play Store.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to do a complete rewrite our mobile app to run on iOS and Android. The app also needed to send data to a backend, and we needed to create user registration that worked with our webpage purchasing. Because of the academic calendar a key goal was to finish the app within 3.5 months, which was when the winter quarter classes started.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We were referred to Seamgen by our business advisor. But we also solicited quotes from 4 other software vendors that we reached through word of mouth. Two of the other vendors had development teams in India. One of the vendors from India actually came in with a higher estimate and their team would not be using the latest Apple and Android programming languages.

Another team from India came in with an unrealistic low quote, and did not seem aware of key issues involved with implementation. A US vendor was planning to use a platform that would compile for both iOS and Android, and we did not want to get burned again by having a platform that was not maintained (we had also suffered through the loss of Parse).

A key reason for selecting Seamgen was that we could work closely with their whole team. We ended up joining their daily Scrums (typically 10 minutes), and could communicate via Slack directly with their developers. We had longer status updates every 2 weeks. We also liked the fact that they were developing native iOS and Android using the latest languages by Apple and Google.

Describe the project in detail.

Our task was primarily to rewrite our mobile app in native iOS and Android because our old platform was no longer being supported well. Our scope of work was defined as just duplicating features of the old app, but we did share some wish list items. We also decide to move our backend from IBM Cloud to Amazon AWS. The development team used the latest coding languages, Swift for IOS and Kotlin for Android.

The native approach does require that we maintain 2 source codes, but I have come to agree with Seamgen’s recommendation that overall this approach is quick and. A key factor is that Apple and Google will always support their native development languages. The project moved forwarded as planned. Once the first software versions were available, we got involved in hands-on debugging. As expected, we found bugs, but the key factor was that we were able to solve them one by one.

Seamgen was also able to add key features from our wish list without adding to the cost of the project. The app is based on having students complete freehand sketches of specific 2D and 3D shapes. Our company had developed in house the image processing grading algorithms to automatically grade theses sketches and provide custom feedback.

We wanted to have this same code used in the app (it was ported to C from Matlab), so that we could further develop it. Seamgen was able to do this as requested. Based upon on our experience with prior developers we know that development for the mobile environment can be hard, and most likely is never over. We did have some wish list items remaining from the first phase of our project and have recently started a second phase to incorporate these features.

What was the team composition?

We started with an iOS developer and an Android developer along with a project manager. Towards the middle of the project we shifted to a single developer working on both iOS and Android. This developer also ported our backend from IBM Cloud to Amazon AWS. At the beginning and at a few key points in the project I asked for input from Seamgen’s CTO; his advice did not change the plan of action but it was reassuring to have. We also got help from a quality control person doing testing before our app release. Because we were duplicating an existing app we did not have a need for UX designer (we have one inhouse).

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The app was rolled out mid-January which was when needed it to be out for key classes to use. We knew at the time that revisions were needed, and those got done on time as well.

Just a week ago I finished a class that use our old version of the app, and had the students play with the new version on the last day of classes. In a survey 77% of the students preferred the new app that Seamgen wrote, 15% thought the new and old app were equal, and only 8% preferred the old app that they were much more familiar with.

A key point is that now we can rapidly move forward with app improvements that we have been waiting to do for over a year. Just recently we started a Phase II of the project, and within 2 weeks have features that have been on our wish list for over a year.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Excellent! As I mentioned we participated in daily Scrums and our UX designer communicated via Slack with the developer as the need arose (sometime multiple times a day). When we got to QA, our UX designer directly added to the bug list, and worked hand in hand with Seamgen’s developer in fixing problems.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their attitude and technical competence. They definitely made the correct choice in going with native iOS and Android. For years we were limited by the constraints of the software platform we were working with. Also, whenever Apple or Google made an update, we use to spend significant time bringing our code up to date., Now we don’t have these issues and never will again.

Everyone on their team was professional and truly a pleasure to work with. I have worked with a range of software developers and have learned that this cannot always be the easiest group to work with. However, with Seamgen the attitude was always straightforward. We freely discussed pros and cons, and without blame discussed how to move forward from any situation.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None that come to mind. We have been around the block in terms of software development, so know that there is no such thing as perfect software. But as soon as an issue arise we have a frank discussion, discuss options, and choose one to implement.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the group vice president of brand marketing, product, and UX [user experience] at Connexions Loyalty. Our company is in the business of consumer rewards program management. We manage programs or facets of programs for some of the largest financial institutions in the world as well as major airlines and hotel chains.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Seamgen?

The original reason we hired them was because we were looking at some innovative ways to bring our capabilities to market, most specifically as it relates to native application design and development. Internally, we didn't have the skill set to develop native applications for mobile. I can tell you that from a pure process and productivity perspective, the biggest reason we looked outside our own company was to expedite and speed that process up. We also had no intention of absorbing the permanent cost of hiring full-time resources.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Seamgen was technically involved in two projects, but all of their work was related to one end deliverable. In the first part of the project, they facilitated a discovery phase where we had a list of concepts on which we were looking to get independent guidance. We wanted our ideas to be winnowed into something we believed was going to bring value both to our clients and the end consumer. Seamgen came on-site and facilitated quite a few conversations with different stakeholders around questions like, “What are you trying to accomplish?” and “What are your capabilities?”

They did market research associated with some of those concepts, and then came back and presented a few product concepts for a native application that would solve some of those problems. From that point forward, they put a bid in for what it would take to develop the actual concepts. We wanted to sort of separate the two parts of the project. We decided to have them do the technology development on the concept we created, and they’ve been involved in the functional and visual aspects. They managed the entire user experience design process as well.

The number of their resources fluctuated. In the early stages, particularly during the whole concept development phase, they probably supplied 3–4 resources. In the development phase, they added project managers and more junior UX developers, etc., so it might have scaled up to 6–8.

How did you come to work with Seamgen?

Seamgen wasn’t the only company under consideration for this project. We looked at a handful of others, all located within the US. One might have been local, but most of the others were located throughout the US.

How much have you invested with Seamgen?

All in, I'd say we’ve probably invested between $500,000 to $600,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We officially began to work together about 2–2 ½ years ago. While 2 years probably sounds like a long time, the majority of that time was spent on our process of getting things approved and going through a couple of stage gates, budget cycles, etc., to get to that next level. By no means did Seamgen drive that timeline.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our end goal was to bring something valuable to the market. To keep us on track, they would say, “Hey, these are the goals and things we decided were going to be valuable. That decision—what you’re asking of us—conflicts with the charter we put in place for success.” They brought a different perspective to the table, which was a big reason why we were looking to go outside the company in the first place. That’s something we got from them. It’s hard to say they’re a “value,” because the project isn’t complete yet. But based on what we’ve experienced so far, I feel like we’re getting what we paid for.

How did Seamgen perform from a project management standpoint?

They run an Agile development shop. Their experience in running projects and having experienced DMs running them was something we were attracted to, and they delivered seamlessly. We used Confluence, JIRA, and some InVision tools.

What did you find most impressive about Seamgen?

One of the main things I appreciate about them is their transparency and specialized attention. They’re not afraid to challenge you or your corporate norms. I also think they have a unique value proposition where they have both UX and development internally. That’s something that separates them from a lot of pure development shops.

Are there any areas Seamgen could improve?

One of the things—and this is an industry-wide debate—is that the UX team and the development team could use a bridge. I come from a product background, so maybe I'm leaning this way. But just in my interactions with them, I think the UX teams specifically could use more of a product owner DNA. While we are technically the product owner, the type of experience we hired Seamgen for is to develop a native app. It would have been useful to have someone on their side who plays a product owner role and has experience with developing native application products. I don't know if that’s common or not. While we technically played that role, I don't think we had the right experience level. We probably could have benefited from some guidance on how to prototype things and how to make sure what we were really building was going to deliver.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We have created a mobile application that helps users discover trending people and places by leveraging publicly available content from Instagram, and generating a real-time photo map. I am the founder and CEO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Seamgen?

We had built an alpha application a few years ago, for which we did a small market test. We needed to build a more robust and refined version of the app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Seamgen rebuilt our iOS app from the ground up, without using any of the existing code. The goal was to give the app more overall consistency, instead of building on top of what we already had. In addition to this, Seamgen came up with ways of optimizing the performance and making the app more user-friendly. From a UX perspective, they've done a great job; the app feels very intuitive.

Our target market is geared towards young crowds, namely 18–24-year-olds. Many of the UX interactions, as well as the app's personality, needed to cater to that demographic. I'm glad that Seamgen was able to stay ahead of the trend, especially considering the gesture-based interactions (there are no back arrows in the app, for example).

Seamgen assigned eight people to our project, including a project manager, a UX/UI designer, backend and frontend developers, as well as other resources which came in as needed.

We were in contact with the team on a daily basis. One of the reasons for wanting to work with Seamgen was that they are a local firm, near to our office. When describing abstract interactions, it's often easier to do it in person. We were coming up with many ideas as we were considering designs and how to move forward with UX pieces. Being in the same room for the back-and-forth interactions led to many organic ideas which greatly improved the experience.

How did you come to work with Seamgen?

We were looking at two other developers, trying to determine which one could best improve our experience and make the app better. It didn't seem like anyone understood what we were going for, but Seamgen came up with a nice design proposal. Their approach made sense to us.

How much have you invested with Seamgen?

The cost of Seamgen's services has been around $200,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Seamgen at the beginning of September 2015. The collaboration is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The app has recently been launched. We're getting feedback from users, but don't have many data points yet.

One of the metrics of success that we've been using is the Instagram component. There have been some recent changes to Instagram's API that consequently made our app's integration very difficult. We have achieved our functionality in a novel, never-been-done-before way, which required a lot of creativity. When we were designing the app, at one point, the only feasible way of doing the integration would have increased our server costs by tens of thousands of dollars on a monthly basis. With some inventiveness, Seamgen was able to integrate our Instagram component and minimize server costs at the same time.

How did Seamgen perform from a project management standpoint?

The project management was quite easy. Seamgen is located close to us, so much of the work was done in person, but also through an online management space. I was hands-on with the project, recording videos of the app and discussing them with Seamgen's team. They were always very responsive.

What did you find most impressive about Seamgen?

I haven't worked with many other app development agencies, but I've noticed an emphasis on user experience from Seamgen’s team. We already had an application in the app store when Seamgen reached out to us, proposing to make it better. Their framework for doing so was approaching it from a UX perspective, refining and improving the app through an in-house specialist, something I had never tried before. This approach really made our app better.

Are there any areas Seamgen could improve?

Seamgen could work on estimating the time scope better for some pieces. Technology is hard to estimate exactly. Seamgen’s team is responsive and has been able to overcome some big obstacles.

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

When working with development agencies, there can be a bit of a communication breakdown, which is the nature of programmers in general. I'm not a tech person, so the process can be like speaking two different languages. I've noticed other people saying similar things when working with developers, so I'd recommend finding a common ground. We were able to find our own language for discussing abstract concepts within the app, as well as bugs or improvements. Being as specific as possible is important; if there was a bug or issue I wanted to point out, I would record myself physically interacting with the app.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of service at a satellite network operator as well as an engineering firm for the satellite industry. We work on a wide range of industries and verticals, everything from government to commercial, and in commercial, from residential to enterprise. We’re a publicly traded company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Seamgen?

We hired Seamgen as an extension of our own staff for web development. We were looking for developers to build a Node.js-based solution and the customer facing frontend for our satellite service.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a big development burst in the beginning, and then we’ve maintained the work for about  2-years, adding new features from time to time using Node.js. Seamgen built a lot of the new features and also handled the creative and template design, the initial Node.js skeleton, and the frontend and backend development. They used AngularJS to develop the frontend user interface.  

How did you come to work with Seamgen?

I introduced Seamgen to our company because I knew of them through a peer of mine who recommended them highly. We then vetted them through some of their other client references. We use Seamgen across the company as an extension of our own dev teams. I’ve integrated them into my team and they’re involved in all of our sprints.

How much have you invested with Seamgen?

I’m not comfortable disclosing that. I don't know our internal policies regarding that information. I can tell you it was a significant chunk of work.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together for about 2-years, and we’ve kept multiple staff on to maintain the products.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They enhanced the web presence of our service, which seriously impressed our executive team within about 12-weeks. It was a big mind shift for our executive management.

How did Seamgen perform from a project management standpoint?

We have a time and materials engagement with Seamgen, but we have pivoted multiple times. They’ve been accommodating every time we’ve pivoted. Project management-wise, they’re essentially an extension of your staff trying to please you like a regular employee, which is a great thing. They also integrate perfectly into our existing processes, which are slightly different for our development of JIRA. Seamgen also works with us if we want to rotate or change staff, or if we want to make accommodations, augment, or mentor their staff into the level that we expect from our contractors. 

Internally, we use JIRA, HipChat, Git, AngularJS, Express, and several different database technologies like MySQL and DYNAMO. These guys are well versed in all of that. I heard that someone else internally bid them on mobile platform development, so I know they have a lot of mobile background experience, but I can't attest to that development.

What did you find most impressive about Seamgen?

A primary reason why we chose Seamgen is that while they have user experience on staff, they are not a branding house gone web. They are a web engineering house through and through. That’s a big distinction in this industry. Seamgen fully respects that we’re part of a large company, and we can’t change the brand. They just want to engineer good web apps, and that is their strong suit.

Are there any areas Seamgen could improve?

I think, overall, they are on the smaller side of companies, with only about 50 employees. With that, you do have to be cognizant of not being able to shed or gain tens of individuals. To me, that’s the only pitfall I have with Seamgen; I can't do that big burst or that big decline in staff with them. 

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

Having definitive requirements always accelerates the process, especially with Seamgen.