The Software House

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am CEO at Blue Coin, Katowice-based company that develops a range of web portals that provide individuals and businesses with expert knowledge on topics such as personal finance and economics.

Blue Coin wants to equip users with the information they need to make the best decisions in their everyday lives – when choosing accounts and deposits, learning about innovative fintech products and many more.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Software House, and what were your goals?

TSH’s assistance was required in the ongoing development and maintenance of our most important web products: najlepszekonto.pl and najlepszelokaty.pl. As their popularity grew, a bigger and more flexible team was needed to meet all of our objectives.

Ever since 2015, the objectives gradually changed. They included frontend work with React and backend development with Symfony. An important part was the implementation of the Bolt Content Management System. As the portals grew in popularity, more work was needed on maintenance, optimization as well as development of new features.

SOLUTION

How did you select The Software House and what were the deciding factors?

We have used both recommendations and online research in our preliminary selection and then went on to consult our project with a number of pre-selected vendors. The team at TSH impressed us with a highly personalized approach to our project and lots of interesting suggestions, as well as the ability to handle almost all aspects of the projects, including design and project management.

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

The cooperation has been ongoing since 2015 and involved comprehensive custom web development of our web portals with React and Symfony. At various stages, the Bolt CMS, Redis and the Twig template engine were used. The TSH team also had a PM specialist on its own. The development and maintenance of all services is still ongoing.

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

Up until recently it included two PHP developers and one frontend developer. Now, we are working with one PHP dev and one frontend dev (React), a designer and a Project Manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The work done by the TSH team made it possible for us to keep with the increasing traffic and demands that resulted from it. They helped build a scalable and easy-to-manage content-heavy portal that grows with its user base.

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

We’ve worked with a few Project Managers during the course of the cooperation. All of them managed to meet our needs, despite having different approaches to the project. We use industry-standard communication tools (email, Slack, Jira) and SCRUM/Kanban approach to development.

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

Their flexibility makes it possible to increase and decrease their involvement based on our needs. Their overall ability to deliver is also impressive.

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

During the project, any issues we raised were solved efficiently and there is nothing major I can think of.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm co-founder and CEO of Uberchord, maker of the eponymous mobile app. Uberchord Guitar is one of the world's three interactive guitar teaching platforms. Uberchord was founded 2014, uses a patented technology for acoustic chord recognition and raised 2.5M of VC funding.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Software House?

We've set out to develop the entire learning platform from scratch. This includes all parts of the platform. Frontend, backend, CI/CD, devops.

What were your goals for this project?

Until now, Uberchord has only been available for iOS. The new version were to designed be available on iOS and Android, with Mac and Windows coming later.

SOLUTION

How did you select The Software House?

I've had a long standing friendship with one of the business executives and had developed a trusting relationship through small projects over the years. My experience with the previous projects, our overall communication, and the growing size and quality of the development team made TSH a clear choice.

Describe the project in detail.

Uberchord had been developed in Swift native to iOS. To be platform independent we needed to move to a new technology, deciding for Unity. In addition, the backend had to be migrated from Meteor to Node JS, and massively extended. Also, we needed to ramp up operation, deciding for Kubernetes and seamless CI/CD.

What was the team composition?

While TSH does not have Unity developers of their, within days they identified the right team from their own backend team and the frontend team from their network. The team consisted of two backend engineers, devops and two frontend engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Both mobile application and backend are running smooth with tens of thousands of users, with a surprisingly small amount of bugs along the way, which were with few exception easy and fast to fix.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The collaboration and the workflow has always been smooth. The onboarded us in their Slack, organized a few channels. We invited them to Jira, Figma and our cloud systems and off we went. One standup in the morning, spontaneous Zoom calls when needed and that's about it.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They know what they are doing, they do their best (which is very good), and they are all super friendly, reliable, communicative people. 

Are there any areas for improvement?

We had a little bit of a shuffling of resources, partly due to our changing needs. Not sure if that can be improved, especially since TSH had to stretch themselves to always accomodate us.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am co-owner of Language Advisor. The company is a business listing for language courses, offering a personalised search for language courses, matching interested students with schools and teachers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Software House, and what were your goals?

We hired them to build the platform from scratch. The goal was to have a working platform after a few months and schedule an update/ refinement the second year.

SOLUTION

How did you select The Software House and what were the deciding factors?

We found TSH through your website. We selected a short list from developers in Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine. The deciding factor was their promises, proactive way coming forward and size of the company.

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

The scope was set detailing two outcomes, from 3,5 to 4,5 months, giving a range between two prices. The elements which were to be delivered were;

architecture, API, Mail engine, File Upload, Online payment gate, Search engine, Login/ register, Account settings, Password reminder, Social media registration, Create profile, update profile, map search, public profile, attaching user as an damin or a teacher, contact form, newsletter, whish list, reviews, user dashboard, school/ teacher dashboard, and business dashboard.

Furthermore, a system admin, statistiscs, CMS, mail templates, financial section, save search result, share, add/ edit for publications, search publications, view publications.

The approach was minimalistic, design was included as considered important. No commitments/ specifications on technologies were made. Work was due to start April/ May 2017. As not all deliverables were delivered, we had to schedule 3 other scopes, the last one ending in November 2019/ January 2020. The website in the end was developed in angular, php and javascript.

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

Front end and backend developers, designer, devops , project manager, business analist, and testers. In total, for all scopes we met 11/13 different team members.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project was a disaster. 1st scope 5/ 6 weeks delay, and only part of deliverables was delivered. Quality of deliverables was good, but as not all deliverables were delivered we required a second, third and fourth scope. 2nd/ 3th scope was done by an excellent Project manager and a lot of work was done and done well. The other Project managers and business analyst.

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

1st scope we used basecamp, 2nd/ 3th scope trello and 4th scope jira. 1st Project manager who wrote scope was overruled by business analist who had his own agenda, became project manager. The original project manager halfway resigned, and the new project manager/ business analist left halfway the project to become head of design.

New project manager halfway 1st scope became head of PHP (but not immediately). 2nd and third scope was another Project manager, nobody of the previous developers was working for the company anymore. This project manager was really good. The 4th Project manager was inexperienced and had little input himself.

The 1st was very proactive, to a degree that he hijacked the project and implemented mainly his own idea, the second was very critical and asked the right questions the 4th was passive. None of the project was delivered in time.

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

The most impressive thing was the knowledge and quality of the developers and the second project manager.

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

Where do I start? The BA started without project charter and pushing his own idea and abandoned the project halfway for a different position. Our project was used for his own career, a year later he was fired as well. The first PM left frustrated soon after project start.

Deliverables and deadlines weren't met, and worst the wrong program language was used (Angular) making it virtually impossible to perform SEO, combining this with little attention to site structure (category pages, breadcrumbs, landing pages, etc.) which meant the project could never attract any real traffic as it was virtually impossible to index.

Only empty pages (rendering) were indexed and subsequently all pages were empty and had the same meta-data.

The 4th scope was intended to fix this problem, but to little and to late and executed poorly. Renderton was applied and installed, causing for a huge cost increase and after that the wrong time-interval was set. Communicating honestly was hard for them, probably because of previous errors had to be swept under the carpet.

Company Responses

The vendor responded on March 10, 2021.

Dear Client,

As discussed already in private, we are very sorry about your bad experience. We are known not only for technical expertise but also for great customer care, and we regret that we missed the mark. Your feedback is important to us. We have already implemented multiple improvements to our process to ensure that a similar situation does not occur in the future. 

Your claims have been addressed in private and as a result, we have reached and signed a settlement agreement. We wish you all the best in your future endeavors.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Product Manager at Workpath. The company enables leaders and teams to adapt their strategic focus, organizational structures, and resources faster to the market environment. Resulting from this, organizations gain the needed speed and adaptability to transform into agile network organizations.

That empowers them to sustain in today‘s complex and dynamic business and work environment. This is achieved through Workpath‘s enterprise software consisting of workflow and analytics tools as well as an all-in-one enablement solution.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Software House?

We hired The Software House to support our product development with UI designs.

What were your goals for this project?

Our main goal was to refurbish and improve key parts of the user interface of our existing platform. Moreover, we asked The Software House to help us with the UI design of new features.

SOLUTION

How did you select The Software House?

We found The Software House product design portfolio on the Dribbble platform. We were impressed by their work and therefore we decided to explore their abilities. The Software House turned up to be an experienced, highly professional and skilled partner in the area of UI design. That’s why we decided to hire them for a long-term collaboration.

Describe the project in detail.

During our cooperation so far, The Software House helped us with the UI design of new and redesigned features. In the process, they also advanced our UI library.

What was the team composition?

Due to the nature of our cooperation, the team included 1 part-time Product Designer from The Software House.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Thanks to support in UI design, we were able to improve the design of our product.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

In this peculiar project, the work was based on Agile methodology.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The Software House is a very reliable partner. We appreciate their Product Design skills, straightforward communication and flexibility.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No, I don’t think so. Whenever challenges arose, the Software House were open and fast to address these to our full satisfaction.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a Berlin-based startup. We are developing applications for manufacturing companies. They are enterprise applications and my role in the company is the CTO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Software House?

We needed to bring on some additional resources.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Software House has been providing us with additional development resources and capabilities for our backend development. We have quite a complex microservice-based backend infrastructure because we need to connect to our customer’s backend with our backend. They have been providing additional resources for that task.

We use Node.js, GraphQL, message buses, cloud architecture, and cloud infrastructure, and we are using Azure and AWS.

What is the team composition?

We have one main developer and occasionally we have contact with Adam (Head of Node.js) if there are some more difficult questions and we need guidance on certain things or features.

How did you come to work with The Software House?

We found them through a web search. We did a little bit of research and contacted some companies. For our requirements, they made the best impression.

How much have you invested in them?

So far, we have spent around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I believe we started in June 2020, and it is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The Software House has a really good and solid understanding of Node.js, Microservices, and also Docker. They really helped us implement some features like a message bus assistant.

We had some pretty complex handling of some very large data structures in our backend, and they had an excellent idea of how to manage that in a very efficient and performing way. It was very helpful.

How did The Software House perform from a project management standpoint?

Initially, we had project management resources. They gave us a bit of project management and a little bit of scrum, but there wasn’t really a need for it because we have direct interaction with the developer and a daily meeting. We decided to keep it lean and to focus on direct contact with the developer.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I am really impressed by their profound knowledge of Node.js and MongoDB which we use on the backend. The Software House really has a very profound knowledge of their field. It is really impressive and that is what also confirmed for me that they are the right choice for us

Are there any areas they could improve?

It is a small setup and it really has been going well so there isn’t much to improve. Communication is good. We have a daily meeting with the developer, and they are flexible. The onboarding was really fast and smooth. When they onboarded the developer, he got what we were doing and was able to start quite quickly so it has been going quite well.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It is more general advice, but you should be very clear about what you are expecting and what tasks you give to an augmented developer. There was a bit of challenge initially because our developer had recently joined The Software House, so he also had to onboard during COVID-19 and come into our project. 

Looking back, I would say it would be better if you have someone on the project who has already worked at TSH for a couple of months because there was a learning curve. He was new at the company and working with a new customer. So my advice would be that the developer should already be with the company for a few months.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the former CTO of MaaS Global.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Software House?

The company was scaling rapidly. We needed to augment our staff in order to meet the demands of the market.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Software House works as an extension of our team, working mainly on software development. They also do some QA and DevOps.

What is the team composition?

We started with 2–3 teammates initially, but the team has grown.

How did you come to work with The Software House?

I had a list of potential partners who I vetted as I would an internal hire. We felt like we connected well with this team and would work well together.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $400,000–$500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together around November 2019, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We measure quality in terms of productivity versus bugs. They produce quality code and are effective in their use of time. The Software House is also proactive, pointing out when something isn’t right so it can get fixed. That was a pleasant surprise. Overall, I’m very happy with them.

How did The Software House perform from a project management standpoint?

Most of the project management is done internally. They are responsible for their daily activities and their team composition, and they do well in both of those areas. Communication is very good.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team is focused and specialized in their technology stack. They also engage well with their customer to build long-lasting relationships.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could consider adding to their technology stack.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make personal connections, work closely with them, and treat them like your own employees. That is the most rewarding for all parties involved.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of the Energy Web Foundation. Energy Web (EW) is a global nonprofit organization accelerating a low-carbon, customer-centric electricity system by unleashing the potential of blockchain and other decentralized technologies. EW focuses on building core infrastructure and shared technology, speeding adoption of commercial solutions, and fostering a community of practice.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Software House?

The Switchboard project represents a key element in our EW-DOS (https://www.energyweb.org/technology/ew-dos/) decentralized infrastructure project. It shall allow applications to create roles for their users in a decentralized manner and authenticate the users by verifying their DID documents (https://w3c.github.io/did-core/) We hired 3 developers from TSH to complement our in-house dev team and support the creation of this complex piece of software.

What were your goals for this project?

Switchboard shall become a one stop shop for managing the Authorization settings for decentralized applications (dApps) In conjunction with the DID library (https://energyweb.org/technology/middleware/did-explainer/) it will allow the creation of a decentralized service hub for authentication and authorization which can be used by anyone who wants to free their application from the data silos and the data management problems of holding user data in a centralized database.

SOLUTION

How did you select The Software House?

TSH is our devops service provider and we have faith in their ability to deliver good quality services and software. This prior experience gave us the confidence that they are the right partner to create this complex and innovative piece of software.

Describe the project in detail.

After selecting TSH the 3 developers were onboarded remotely and they proved to be fast learners and experienced. Even though they did not have any prior experience with blockchain, they were able to contribute rapidly and learned the intricacies of Ethereum in a timely manner.

The developers showed involvement in the project and it was obvious they had prior experience in working on projects remotely as the online meetings did not pose any challenge for participation or understanding. We use scrum as our agile methodology and the developers from TSH were experienced scrum team members which helped in integrating them in the overall team.

What was the team composition?

The Switchboard team is composed of the internal EWF staff:

• Software Architect
• Product Owner and Scrum master
• One back end developer
• UI designer From TSH
• Two senior full-stack developers
• One intermediate full stack developer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

we were able to create a reactive web-app in the first 6 weeks of the project and are confident that the whole project will be finished in time for the january 2021 go live.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

the nice thing about working with TSH is that it is not about Us and Them but about creating software together. We got the feeling that our goals are shared and that we're all working towards a common objective

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I like their drive for innovation and the company spirit. They are responsive and helpful and willing to listen. What I encounter too often in software development is that people try to be right. The fact that TSH is not adversarial but collaborative is a refreshing change.

Are there any areas for improvement?

there is always room for improvement. Having outside developers does not help a company improve its internal processes. Maybe the developers could have brought more outside perspective to the retro meetings, letting us know about previous experiences that had worked well.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a real state development company. I'm currently the head of innovation.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Software House, and what were your goals?

The challenge was time, price, and quality. usually, you have to choose between those but working with TSH actually is much easier and will satisfy these challenges. Also what I love about TSH is that they give consultation on the general directions they don't just say yes. if they think the feature is not needed they tell us that.

SOLUTION

How did you select The Software House and what were the deciding factors?

We've done a bidding process and the software house was selected. we have two committees. Financial to evaluate their financial offer and the technical one to evaluate that.

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

We have to create a website in which we showcase our offering in the three pillars we have: live (residential offerings), thrive (business, offices offerings), and discover (retails offerings, shopping offerings, entertainments). in each section will represent a different kind of pictures videos etc. also there have to be a function to request a visit or register interest to any of these offerings.

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

3-4 an account manager/project manager technical lead developer QA

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

the project was delivered on time and on budget. and we've extended our contract to support this website.

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

TSH uses an Agile methodology. So the fraction of change is to the minimum and also there is a weekly and sometimes a daily meeting to attend if needed.

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

Their integrity, quality of work, and adaptation to change of requirements impressed us the most.

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

I can't think of any right now.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of product development for a moving company. We specialize in local moving for residencies as well as junk removal for any unwanted items.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Software House?

We hired The Software House to extend our internal IT team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

The Software House augments our IT team. They provide fixed resources, including designers, developers, and other technical resources who help us build out our software solutions. That could be a new feature for our platform or a completely new product.

What is the team composition? 

Currently, they’ve assigned two designers, two developers, a QA resource, and a project management resource. They’ll revolve in other members of their leadership team, too.

How did you come to work with The Software House?

I found their Clutch profile through a Google search.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent somewhere between $70,000–$80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in May 2020 and are still collaborating today.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality of service is excellent. They focus on providing not only what we ask for but also what we really want. The team has a great understanding of our requirements, being able to push our ideas to the next level and ensure that the quality is good.

How did The Software House perform from a project management standpoint?

We correspond through primarily through Slack and Zoom calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team itself is full of high-quality individuals. Everyone is well-educated, communicates effectively, and has strong problem-solving capabilities overall. They’re not just there to give us exactly what we ask. Rather, they provide strategic guidance and recommendations based on their expertise.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only challenge we’ve faced is the time zone difference, but that’s inevitable in this sort of situation. We do have about four hours of overlap, so it hasn’t been a huge issue for us.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Go into the relationship knowing what you’re going to get out of an outsourced development team. There’s a lot of things that The Software House can help with, so it’s important to give them the creative freedom to execute. They thrive in the space.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We’re a leading software provider for educational institutions in Poland. We help schools and institutions in digitalizing their traditional processes and products. One of our core products is a digital school diary. I’m a CTO and the director of the IT department.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Software House, and what were your goals?

In Poland, every child aged 6-18 is obliged to attend school. As part of our portfolio, we have the Compulsory Schooling and Learning System. Its task is to enable officials to verify that all children from their region meet the education obligation. Our current system required refreshment and functional add-ons. Therefore, we decided it had to be rewritten and supplemented with new functionalities and modules.

SOLUTION

How did you select The Software House and what were the deciding factors?

I contacted The Software House’s management board about cooperation and product development. We were looking for a company with proficient skills in Symfony on the backend and React on the frontend.

Our developers attended a few tech meetups organized by The Software House in their office. They were extremely knowledgeable and our development team thought they would be a great addition to our project, so we recommended them to our board.

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

The primary services The Software House provided were backend development (Symfony), frontend development (ReactJS), and testing. Since our platform is one of the elements of a much larger system, there was a lot of integration with our other services included as well.

Apart from refreshing the tech stack, The Software House introduced brand new functionalities like databases of educational institutions, student registers, school districts, statistics, and other features supporting the work of end-users. An additional element created was the TERYT service. It’s a link between the state-owned location database and a few other systems of ours that downloads and updates necessary data to all systems directly.

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

Project manager, two frontend developers, two backend developers, and a Quality Assurance specialist. When we needed more resources, we were temporarily provided with additional developers and DevOps engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The Software House delivered a robust solution with high-quality code and improved security. The latter is immensely important because our portfolio is used by the public sector in educational institutions across the country and deals with loads of sensitive personal data.

Thanks to their help, our platform is 100% ready for the next school year. What is more, TSH worked so well on this project that our core-system developers could focus fully on developing our main product. That was especially important during the COVID- 19 pandemic.

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

As is often the case with this type of project, the beginnings were challenging. Luckily, our dedicated Project Manager was very supportive and quickly responded to all our messages.

He was responsible for communication and carrying out tasks smoothly and timely. The project had daily updates, sprints after each stage. It was always our team and TSH team planning the next stages together. We used popular communication tools: Slack, Jira, Google Drive, Confluence

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

We are impressed by how quickly The Software House understood our business. Unique was the quick adaptation of the team to the needs of the project.

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

Everything was OK