SoftGroup

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Business Development Manager of Netscale Agency

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Empowering the web and mobile industry through cutting edge technologies We Scale your business to the next level! We are driven by our undying passion for developing innovative products and our dedication to providing the highest quality, speed, and accuracy to our clients. Scaling the web and mobile industry with you. We are empowering the web and mobile industry through cutting-edge technologies. 

Our mission is to help digital businesses grow, by making their ideas a reality and turning them into highly effective products. Netscale is a group of creatively-minded people who have fun while doing high-quality work. We deliver solutions that fit perfectly with your business model and brand.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SoftGroup to accomplish?

• Helping our company with staff augmentation services

SOLUTION

How did you find SoftGroup?

Referral

Why did you select SoftGroup over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from SoftGroup were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

In collaboration with SoftGroup, our team is actively engaged in developing a cutting-edge mobile app focused on delivering a seamless and efficient online shopping experience. The project is geared towards achieving several key deliverables that will redefine the landscape of digital commerce: 

1. Intuitive User Interface (UI): 
   • Deliver a visually appealing and user-friendly UI to ensure an intuitive navigation experience. 
   • Implement design elements that prioritize simplicity and ease of use, enhancing overall user satisfaction. 
2. Streamlined Navigation: 
   • Develop a streamlined navigation system, allowing users to effortlessly browse products and easily locate desired items. 
   • Ensure a smooth and efficient user journey from product discovery to checkout, minimizing friction points. 
3. Robust Security Measures: 
   • Implement advanced security protocols to safeguard user data and ensure secure online transactions. Integrate encryption technologies, secure payment gateways, and multi-factor authentication for enhanced user protection. 
4. Personalized Product Recommendations: 
   • Utilize sophisticated algorithms to deliver personalized product recommendations based on user preferences and behavior. 
   • Enhance the user experience by offering curated suggestions, promoting product discovery, and increasing engagement. 
5. Diverse Payment Options: 
   • Support a variety of payment methods, including credit cards, digital wallets, and other popular online payment solutions. 
   • Provide users with flexibility in choosing their preferred payment method, catering to diverse consumer preferences. 
6. Real-Time Order Tracking and Notifications: 
   • Develop a robust order tracking system to enable users to monitor the status of their purchases in real-time. 
   • Implement push notifications to keep users informed about order confirmations, shipping details, and delivery updates.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

ur collaboration has not only surpassed expectations but has become a driving force behind the accelerated progress of our mobile app project, subsequently leading to increased business and revenue:

• Knowledge and Dedication:
  • The team members provided by SoftGruop have consistently showcased a remarkable depth of knowledge in their respective domains. 
  • Their expertise has proven invaluable, addressing complex challenges with ease and implementing innovative solutions that have significantly elevated the quality of our mobile app. 
  • Beyond their technical prowess, the dedication demonstrated by your professionals has been truly commendable. 
  • Their proactive approach to problem-solving and commitment to project success have fostered a collaborative environment that aligns seamlessly with our project goals. 
• Accelerated App Progression: 
  • The impact of this collective knowledge and dedication is evident in the accelerated progression of our mobile app. 
  • Milestones are being reached swiftly, and development timelines are consistently outpacing expectations. 
  • This not only speaks volumes about the efficiency of SoftGruop's staff augmentation services but also translates directly into tangible business benefits.
• Increased Business and Revenue: 
  • The faster progress of our mobile app has played a pivotal role in driving increased business opportunities. 
  • Our enhanced product is resonating with users, leading to a surge in user engagement and, most importantly, a noticeable uptick in revenue. 
  • It's clear that the strategic collaboration with SoftGruop has become a catalyst for business growth.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

SoftGruop's project management has been outstanding, marked by timely deliveries and a highly responsive approach. They consistently exceeded expectations, ensuring not only adherence to deadlines but also proactive problem-solving. 

Communication was seamless, fostering a collaborative environment, and their strategic planning aligned seamlessly with our business objectives. SoftGruop isn't just a service provider; they are a strategic partner driving our project success. Looking forward to continued collaboration.

What was your primary form of communication with SoftGroup?

Virtual Meeting

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

What sets SoftGruop apart is their exceptional communication and delivery. Their responsiveness and clarity in communication fostered a collaborative environment. Most impressive was their consistent ability to not just meet but surpass delivery expectations. SoftGruop's commitment to effective communication and on-time delivery is a standout quality that significantly contributed to the success of our project.

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

No

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am R&D Director working with a distributed team on AI-based music and video content generation applied for livestreaming social network.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We wanted to develop a social media livestreaming app. The main challenge was creating a scalable live-streaming feature with realtime video and audio features for mobile (iOS).

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We have posted a Senior IoS developer job announcements and SoftGroup representative contacted with us. SoftGroup was flexible with the mode of cooperation which was an important aspect of the agreements. Eventually after speaking to several SoftGroup-sourced candidates we selected a great talent who works with us now.

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

The newely hired Talent from SoftGroup has been involved in the development of the Mobile Application for livestreaming using iOS (Swift, Rust), AWS, WebRTC.

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

We cooperated with one senior software developer (iOS, Swift).

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project is progressing well, and the product is evolving rapidly. We expect the product launch.

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

In our project development we use Agile approach, with Bitbucket and Jira as management tools. We are distributed team, therefore Slack and Zoom are essential means of communication among the team.

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

We are glad we started our cooperatin with SoftGroup. SoftGroup is eager to adjust their approach to our specific organizational requirements.

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

We wish we agreed on several specific requirements (like the budget, or salary ranges we announced in our job postings) earlier in the process, so we would not loos that much time discussing candidates our of the profile we were looking for in the first place.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Fintek Software is a software development company that builds bespoke software for startups, SMEs and charities. I am the CTO and the project lead for all the projects in which we used SoftGroup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire SoftGroup?

We used SoftGroup to augment our in-house tech team with Java, Scala and AngularJS developers. SoftGroup worked on two closely related projects - web app platforms for currency transfer / international payments companies.

SOLUTION

How did you select this agency and what were the deciding factors?

SoftGroup were able to provide a wide range of prospective developers who were experienced in Scala at short notice. This was the deciding factor because at the time it was difficult to find good Scala developers.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Both projects were Scala / Angular JS web apps which enabled customers to exchange currency and make payments in foreign currencies. Both projects were also derived from the same code base.

At the time that we started working with SoftGroup, both projects were already mature and deployed to production, and we had an in-house tech team based in London. The developers from SoftGroup joined our team remotely and adapted to our existing development tools and methodologies.

This included remotely partipating in planning meetings and daily standups via Slack. SoftGroup developers' main roles were to add new features (full stack development), including integrating a wide range of external banking APIs, code reviewing other developers work, and testing new releases. Developers were also part of the technical support team for the client, using Zendesk and providing front-line support for technical issues.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

We initially had a call with Anna from SoftGroup, where we discussed the requirements for developers. We were then sent a number of CVs matching the requirements at various costs / levels of expertise. Once we had shortlisted some candidates, we held brief Skype interviews discussing their experience.

We led the format of these interviews, and SoftGroup were flexible in following this. Once we had selected developers, they got in touch with us via email, and we then onboarded them on Slack and our other services. Each developer used our team and project management tools. There were several times over the course of a few years where we repeated this process as we needed more development resources.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The developers we worked with from Soft Group were very communicative and experts in the required technologies. When working on support for clients they were very professional in how they dealt with users.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Soft Group entirely adapted to our workflow and our working hours. We were very happy with how the developers worked with us.

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

SoftGroup is able to find experienced developers in niche technologies quickly. The developers we worked with were flexible, professional and effective coders and communicators.

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

No - there were initally some communication issues but they were on our side.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a former director of startup and CTO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SoftGroup?

We had an application with some equipment to measure latency through computer networks to present latencies and variations of problems on a portal. We wanted to provide companies and enterprises with insights into their network performance in terms of latency and variation. Equipment was to be placed on the customer's network to report back to a central data center running on Amazon, and the results would be represented on the portal. 

We hired SoftGroup to develop and deploy web services in an underlying web database and a Javascript-based application to serve as a frontend for end users.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Before we brought on SoftGroup, we worked on GitLab to develop an original mock-up. We gave this to them as well as user stories, cases, and base code. We had a global design, but SoftGroup collaborated with us on a detailed design and helped make decisions like using React and JavaScript as a library. We asked the developers for suggestions and used their user stories as input to come up with a mock-up of what the end result might look like. 

The system was intended to be geared toward network managers. It would present charts of timeline data and mathematical analysis of that data to point out where certain parts of a network might be affected and not running optimally. 

GitHub was a technology we often used for storyboarding, documentation exchange, and task boarding. We also used an Amazon-managed database with a MySQL derivative. Next to that was Python running Django for hosting the API functions. The web pages were hosted on Amazon S3 and contained React and JavaScript libraries and code to present the portal. They also requested data from the database server API and put it in a nice graphical interface. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with about three different developers. 

How did you come to work with SoftGroup?

We met one of their employees at a trade show. We needed a company that could collaborate effectively, and SoftGroup seemed like they could, so we moved forward with them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We invested around €300,000 (approximately $310,000 USD). 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together between September 2016–April 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Without SoftGroup’s assistance, the project would never have been developed fully, and we wouldn’t have been able to sell it.  

How did SoftGroup perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated via Google Meet. Before or after meetings, we would write up findings from the previous sprints materials or add user stories, and we had a Kanban mechanism to see who was working on what and when things would be delivered.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They presented the right people and gave us good candidates to choose from that were directed at the work we were looking to do. Once we started the work, they didn’t interfere, which we appreciated. We would call them again any day to work on a project. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We were satisfied with everything they did for us.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Contractbook is a contract lifecycle management (CLM) SaaS platform. I'm a VP of Engineering.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

For team augmentation, to work on several different projects, all being part of our main platform.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Quality of developers (we interviewed for skill, communication, etc.), their availability, and pricing.

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

SoftGroup developer was tightly integrated into one of our cross-functional product teams (consisting of developers, QA, designer, and product manager). Each team gets full autonomy in doing the project discovery, planning, and delivery. Teams are working in a highly iterative, agile way.

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

One person, as a senior front-end developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Most of the projects SoftGroup developer participated in have helped us expand our partnerships-related features.

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

We are flexible regarding project management style but this particular team worked in 2-week sprints. We are a remote-first company, so we communicate via Slack, Google Meet, Notion, and Shortcut for project management. SoftGroup dev had no problems fitting in. The communication with their business representatives was also OK and timely, though the management seems a bit stiff, formal, and corporate (this showed mostly in the agreements/invoicing part of our communication). They communicate solely via email.

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

The interesting thing is how many new developers they can propose no matter the tech stack. I guess they don't have a constant team but are also looking for people on demand.

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

Vetting developers more thoroughly on their side. The quality of their developers is mixed (especially regarding English language and communication skills). It was not a problem for us as we prefer to do our own interviews with all the contractors anyway, but we had to filter out several candidates to find a really good one. They also share a typical issue that we experience with most of the software houses: developers are very good technically but not very self-managing and require close guidance from our in-house technical leads.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

CHI Software is a global software development service provider that has been operating in the IT market for more than 16 years. The company has several development centers in Eastern Europe and five more representatives in the USA, Western Europe, and Asia.

CHI Software has a large pool of 600+ experts working in the company today. I’m Tatiana Guseinova, a Project Manager at CHI Software. I manage clients’ projects and cooperate with our development team and software development vendors when we staff in-house teams with needed resources.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our company provides staff augmentation services for Ukrainian IT vendors; that’s why we always have a great pool of front-end and back-end developers, BAs, PMs, and QAs to staff projects of any complexity. We were looking for a reliable partner to strengthen their in-house development team, work on exciting and useful products, and enrich our developers’ expertise.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

The most critical factors for vendor selection are an excellent company reputation, transparent management, and processes within the company. It's not the first project we have worked on with Soft Group, so they are our trusted vendor.

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

Our developers collaborated with the product management of Soft Group and their client’s engineering team to define and implement innovative solutions for the product direction, visuals, and experience.

The main scope of work also included analyzing and translating client’s business needs into long-term solution data models, evaluating existingstems, working with the in-house development team to create conceptual data models and data flows. The project management for this project was carried out on the Soft Group side, so our developers worked closely with their PM.

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

1 Project Manager

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project is ongoing, so at the current stage of transferring WordPress platform to the AWS cloud, it’s a bit early to measure solutions outcomes. However, we can share general feedback about cooperation with a Soft Group. Their management team consistently meets our expectations and provides comfortable conditions for our developers to do their best on the project.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

It’s a great experience since we conducted daily meetings with the Project Manager and the team to ensure our developers meet the client’s requirements and deadlines. Their project management style is very professional, making it easy for our experts to adapt to a new project, its requirements, and the development team environment. The communication tools for meetings include Skype, Slack and Microsoft teams for both internal and external communications.

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

Our fruitful synergy with another IT vendor in terms of business needs and plans to grow is the most impressive for us. Every new project with SoftGroup gives our team an excellent opportunity to boost both soft and hard skills, and, what’s important, have constant professional support for effective and comfortable work

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

Nothing to improve indeed.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder of a start-up which provides a way for creators to send updates to their followers about their stock portfolio.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

To develop our front end.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We looked for a firm that had developers who knew our stack.

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

Vue.js development

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

One software developer and one administrative agent.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have no measurable metrics.

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

They performed well from a project management standpoint. They utilized the Agile methodology.

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

They continued to provide services to my company even despite the war in Ukraine.

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

There isn't anything they need to improve on.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the head of engineering at CREOATE, an online wholesale marketplace.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed to scale our data platform team to be able to match our product roadmap requirements in time.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We posted a job advert online looking for software developer and I was reached out by SoftGroup offering their services. Being pretty quick to reply and understand our needs was the deciding factors for us.

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

In our case, the scope of work is the internal product roadmap, multiple key deliverables along the year, namely in the data platform team.

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

A business development manager was our main point of contact. So far we've hired 1 full time developer to work in our data platform.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our data platform average velocity increased and we were able to deliver more product features.

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

Project management was done internally at CREOATE.

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

The business development manager assigned to us is reliable, quick to answer, and listens to our requests.

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

Maybe further improved CVs, with more details regarding past experience of their developers.