SoftwareMill

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the technical director of a telecommunications company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SoftwareMill?

We needed to develop a portal for analytics.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SoftwareMill developed an analytics portal for our customers. It’s an onboarding process that allows users to monitor the quality of their delivery rate and more. Some of the technologies they used included Angular, Java, and MongoDB. They’ve finished building out the portal and now provide support and maintenance.

The SoftwareMill team recently revamped the portal by modernizing and updating it; this includes its code, frontend, and database. As new services become available, they integrate them into the portal as well. They’re currently working on another phase of the project. We’ll be rolling the revamped portal out next week to our customers; we’re presently doing in-house testing.

What is the team composition?

We worked with five people in total, encompassing two frontend engineers and three backend engineers, one of whom specialized in AWS infrastructure.

How did you come to work with SoftwareMill?

We found a shortlist of companies online. The reason we chose this team was because of their experience in working with companies similar to ours. Also, we liked the fact that they understood the goals we had for the project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested roughly €440,000 (approximately $402,000 USD). It was about €220,000 (approximately $201,000 USD) for the initial build and then we spent some more on the revamping of the portal.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together around July 2013, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I’m quite pleased with SoftwareMill’s work. The initial portal worked well with very few issues. Their team provides excellent support and has put the tool into our customers’ hands to analyze their data.

How did SoftwareMill perform from a project management standpoint?

They do ok with project management, but it could be better. Regarding the budget, they did go over.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have good developers and understand what needs to be done.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

In working with any remote team, remember that project management is very important.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of R&D at Salt Security, a cybersecurity startup. We offer an API security product.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SoftwareMill?

We were in need of Scala developers.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SoftwareMill augments our team and helps with Scala development. They contribute to several areas of the project to make our build better. In some cases, they do the entire service themselves, and in others, they add to our existing services.

What is the team composition?

There are two full-time software engineers.

How did you come to work with SoftwareMill?

The engagement started before I joined the organization. I know the company was looking for an outsourcing company that was known for their expertise in Scala.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend between $13,000-$20,000 per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2019 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

In the beginning we had some quality and process issues, but we had regular discussions and mutual feedback sessions. There was a bit of an adjustment process as the two engineers work remotely, but we’ve gotten better together. They meet their deadlines and the quality of their work has consistently improved. We enjoy working with SoftwareMill.

How did SoftwareMill perform from a project management standpoint?

We manage the project on our side, but SoftwareMill is an experienced and mature team. They communicate their progress and keep us updated on plans for particularly complicated features. We use both Slack and Monday, and we recently implemented TeamSpeak. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

We like working with SoftwareMill. They know how to work remotely; they can help compensate for the distance and detachment. The team does a good job.

Are there any areas they could improve?

When we wanted to scale up, we couldn’t. They didn’t have the capacity to add DevOps. Now they have more resources, but they were fully booked when we needed them.b One of the reasons we hired an outsource company is because you can easily scale.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice, with any outsourcing company, is to give SoftwareMill a clearly assigned task to build something from scratch. Then you can measure them on it. It’s better to have an early disappointment than to see it in four months after onboarding them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a biotech company that is active in injectable pharmaceuticals used in imaging, diagnosis, and treatment. We focus mainly on oncology, specifically in prostate cancer. I'm the senior director of data science, and I oversee a team of about 15 people who help analyze diagnostic images.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SoftwareMill?

We're working on a new data platform for medical images. We wanted to hire a team with expertise in Scala.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We collaborate with them, but they do most of the work. They started working in the backend, but we added a frontend developer about nine months into the project. Everything fits within a cloud platform, so we use a lot of cloud services as well.

What is the team composition?

At most, we had a core team of three, with six additional members who support the project. I set up all the meetings and communication.

How did you come to work with SoftwareMill?

I knew about them through some research I did, so I actively sought them out for this project. I liked the contributions they've made in the field, and they had a lot of credibility.

How much have you invested with them?

I believe we've spent a little more than $200,000 at this point.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2019, and the collaboration is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They're a great resource for us, especially as we didn't have a clear idea of our final outcomes. They provide a lot of input, and we use their ideas.

How did SoftwareMill perform from a project management standpoint?

I often come into meetings with an idea of how to solve something, and by the end of the meeting, that idea has changed completely. I like that a lot. They're a fully remote company, and they're well-versed in teleconferencing, email, and Slack. They self-organize within the core team, and one main point of contact is available for most of our communication. We use the Atlassian suite, so we work in Jira and Confluence.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We're very impressed by their workflow, and I’m so pleased with our partnership. They're very thorough, and their documentation is excellent. They're always available, and they work long hours to accommodate our time difference.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They are very technical, so it took a little while to learn their mode of communication. That is fine for us, but their technicality could be challenging for other clients.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Our Slack channel is always open, and it helps to have a feature like that to chat or ask questions.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a big data architect for LPP, a fashion company and market leader in Eastern Europe.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SoftwareMill?

We tried to implement a Kafka Cluster as well as Apache Kafka streaming technologies on our own. But we failed and needed to outsource those competencies.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

During the three-month project, our goal was to build a streaming infrastructure to process data in real time for our big data analytics. Kafka Cluster was constructed on a Kafka on Kubernetes platform, and we also used Kafka String API. We had different databases, such as Redis and MySQL. For analytics, we used BigQuery. SoftwareMill built the infrastructure that is connected to our sources on premises and transfer the data in real time to the Google Cloud.

What is the team composition?

We worked directly with two people from their team. In this project, we had a DevOps engineer and a Java programmer.

How did you come to work with SoftwareMill?

SoftwareMill is a certified partner of Confluence, which is the company behind Kafka technology.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent between $25,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with SoftwareMill on this project from February–May 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We just started to deploy machine learning algorithms, but thanks to the infrastructure, we’re able to compete with market leaders.

How did SoftwareMill perform from a project management standpoint?

Sometimes it’s challenging because we worked most of the time remotely, but we’ve had three onsite visits when they came to our headquarters for two days each time. Overall, I feel that our engagement was positive. SoftwareMill was responsive, providing us with internal files for every product and piece of software. When the project was finished, we were able to use them right away.

What did you find most impressive about them?

In terms of technology, their team was flexible. While we started with the Kafka String API, we had to switch to another API for a different set of reasons. Along with the transition being smooth, the developer and DevOps engineer were positive about learning new things. They stuck to the three-month timeline, doing everything to deliver a ready solution.

Are there any areas they could improve?

While the project was completed as scheduled, we didn’t have a channel to communicate small issues that we found as there was no place for small support afterward. Internally, they only hire experts and seniors, so they were unable to provide low-cost support after the project was finished.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a software developer for a Swedish online reviews company that offers information about restaurants, service providers, and the like.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SoftwareMill?

I was looking to scale our efforts quickly, but I had difficulty finding suitable talent in Sweden. I hired SoftwareMill to provide remote staff augmentation for website development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SoftwareMill works with the Scala stack along with Postgres and Elasticsearch. We rely on them to fix the existing code and build new features while working with our frontend and backend.

What is the team composition?

We work with one remote full-stack senior developer. 

How did you come to work with SoftwareMill?

I learned of SoftwareMill through a friend. Once I contacted them, I spoke with a sales and technical lead who confirmed that they could match me with a developer that met our requirements.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $25,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our collaboration began in June 2018 and remains ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our entire team worked better and faster with the addition of an outside developer. Our SoftwareMill teammate has brought many practical recommendations and enhancements.

How did SoftwareMill perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate very well with our developer. We hold morning stand-ups, and we feel as though he is completely integrated with our team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

This experience has been my first time working with an outsourced development team. I’ve been impressed by how easily they acclimated to our in-house technology and practices.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t identify anything needing improvement at this time.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would advise future customers to specify what their developer will be doing on a day-to-day basis so that they have a better idea of what to expect from the engagement.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We develop software solutions to help with debt recovery, enabling organizations to collect from their customers in a fair, efficient, and intelligent manner. I'm the CTO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire SoftwareMill?

We hired SoftwareMill to help us while we built our team from the ground-up. They function as part of our team and provide us with deep expertise in some of the technologies we use, primarily Scala programming.

What were your goals for this project?

This is an ongoing development effort to build new features and functionality for the market.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We were looking for deep Scala expertise. We noticed SoftwareMill from some of their open-source contributions that we were using.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

SoftwareMill has provided two full-stack engineers who work remotely as part of our team to develop features using Scala and Angular.

What was the team composition?

Two full-stack engineers from SoftwareMill augment our team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Without SoftwareMill's help, it's unlikely we'd have been able to deliver to our first client. They've been fantastic.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We use Scrum to manage daily work, facilitated by Slack, Google Hangouts, GitHub, and JIRA. Our colleagues from SoftwareMill visit every six months or so for a summit. Communication is good, and the team is fully engaged and productive.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They have an excellent ability to work remotely without it being a barrier. They fit seamlessly into our team.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nothing comes to mind.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of Ersules. We’re a web development firm that provides hardware and software for building automation solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SoftwareMill?

We were looking to outsource development of a new part of our cloud-based software: a high-volume, real-time data transaction system.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The tool is focused on building automation, analytics, and insights. SoftwareMill developed the entire solution, with most of their work utilizing Scala. They delivered the UI and backend infrastructure and now implement any new requirements we receive.

What is the team composition?

Our team size varied as the project progressed. We worked with 6–10 developers and several DevOps resources and UX designers. These resources transitioned on and off depending on what stage we were in.  

How did you come to work with SoftwareMill?

They possessed experience with the appropriate technologies and had strong references we were able to communicate with. Our timeline lined up with their capabilities as well.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent around €500,000 Euro ($564,000 USD) so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since December 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

SoftwareMill’s quality surpassed our technical team’s metrics. They represent strong value for the money, which hasn’t been the case with several other companies I’ve worked with. My relationship with SoftwareMill is one of the highlights of my career. They’ve been a pleasure to work with since day one.

How did SoftwareMill perform from a project management standpoint?

We had stand-ups with them every morning, and we appointed our own scrum lead as opposed to having a project manager from SoftwareMill. They’re a very flat organization, which was unusual for us because we traditionally operate with more formally structured businesses. This didn’t hamper the relationship at all, however. They always met our deadlines, and we appreciated the enhanced flexibility they provided us. If we had a call with our client, one of their developers was always free to hop on and provide support. Their individual autonomy worked to our advantage.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

On a personal level, working with each of their developers was a pleasure. They were invested and interested in the project and were passionate about their company. Their deliverables are second to none.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their project management style might be an issue, depending on the size of the project they're undertaking. It worked well for our scale and scope though.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the quality engineering manager for a telecom firm in the Philippines. I’m in charge of both manual and automated testing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SoftwareMill?

We had a project with a strict timeline and lacked the necessary in-house resources. We needed a firm with expertise in SMPP Proxy.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I served as the point person for the project, relaying our requirements to SoftwareMill’s team. We needed to add an SMPP Proxy layer to an existing product to connect with our postpaid subscribers. Most of the tech stack was built using Java.

What is the team composition?

We were assigned two developers, in addition to a part-time project manager.

How did you come to work with SoftwareMill?

We searched for a vendor with the necessary expertise that could complete the project within our timeline and on budget. It was clear from the interview process that SoftwareMill could provide technologies that would expedite delivery of the product.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them between November 2017–January 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

SoftwareMill helped us finalize the contract so that we were both clear about our respective roles. They also began work while we were still finalizing the contract, allowing us to complete the project ahead of time.

How did SoftwareMill perform from a project management standpoint?

They provided weekly updates and managed the project through Trello. We could monitor their progress and easily add any repair requests, which they addressed quickly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was very impressed by their proactive decision to start the project before finalizing the contract. Communication was also easy, as they carefully explained the technical steps they took to accomplish their goals.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They provided quality engineers, but these individuals also handled testing. It would be helpful if they supplied separate testers to eliminate bias.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We experienced a slight delay because we failed to articulate our requirements in the beginning. Be sure to clearly explain your goals.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a project manager of the satellite project PW-Sat2, which is built by the students from Warsaw University of Technology.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what reason(s) did your company hire SoftwareMill?

The team needed help and support. The common project was a pure nonprofit supporting action for our student project team.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted an app and website to facilitate the uploading of telemetry data coming from the satellite. A secondary goal was also public relation activities, so everyone can follow the "health" of the satellite.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We found each other through our common friends. The student satellite project is nonprofit, and the company agreed to support the project for free. Plus, they were enthusiastic about cooperation and activities related to the space sector.

Describe the project in detail.

The telemetry can be downloaded from the satellite by anyone in the world who has sufficient radio equipment—mainly the radio amateur community.

Since the team has only two available ground stations (both in Poland), the communication with the satellite is reduced to the fly-by time above Poland. However, the satellite transmits data during the whole orbit, which means that people in other countries can collect the telemetry. Therefore, it was necessary to create a place where people can upload the collected data.

What was the team composition?

There were two software engineers and one UX designer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We're very happy with the results. The product is very intuitive to use, and the modern look fuilfills our PR goals. The app is very flexible, so it can be used by various types of users—both advanced users and those without specific technical backgrounds.

While the project is finished, it's not yet public since the satellite will be launched in the first half of 2018, at which point the telemetry will start to flow.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Their team completely fit into our workflow, even with the weekly teleconferences being outside their normal work time. We also used Slack with them, which helped improve the workflow.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They took a very professional approach to our project, with several on their staff dedicated to it. Their ability to fit into a completely different work style and environment demonstrated their flexibility.

Also, they took the initiative to learn more about us and the type of work we're doing.

Are there any areas for improvement?

With the project being so specific, their main challenge was integrating into our team rather than just thinking of us as a client.

Company Responses

CONTENT QUALITY = B

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there

We’re a small food e-commerce startup in San Francisco, and I am the founder. Our company was seed-funded in early 2016. We pivoted into a more general e-commerce platform for food retailers after an initial attempt at a nutrition-focused app in the consumer’s space.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Software Mill?

Welio was building a proof-of-concept for data cleaning and curation pipeline for a richer e-commerce solution. Smaller food retailers have been slow to adopt e-commerce solutions and larger food retail platforms have been stagnant in innovation. However, both see the need to develop better experiences to compete with online services like Amazon.

I had some proofs-of-concept that we hacked together with a couple guys. The POC was by no means what skilled software developers consider production-ready. We were so early in the process that we used a suite of niche programming languages. We needed some talented software developers to take this proof-of-concept in its early phases, review it and make some edits. Then totally rewrite it and make it a more ‘production-ready’, into an actual prototype. In summary, we basically had them take it from proof-of-concept to build a prototype.

We developed using the Lightbend (Scala) stack. Software Mill was strongly recommended to me by the folks at Lightbend. I delivered them a first prototype and a loose set of requirements as guidance and then gave them the freedom to develop as they saw fit. I only had 6 weeks before I had to show the proof-of-concept to potential customers. The challenge was the transfer of knowledge and the theory behind the concept. With only hours to meet and explain the product, they needed to start developing with little time. SoftwareMill did an immediate free two week, no-risk trial and has some world-class developers in the organization. It was hard to not explore this.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They worked on a risk data ingestion and cleaning integration pipeline. We stuffed out some data inputs. It could come from some API feed or actual UI form uploader where you can just imagine people that are part of the ecosystem are somehow uploading raw data.

This pipeline basically needed to, first, save it to the back end and then start this pipeline work, ingest and curate and clean and tag throughout different stages and deposit it into another data store.

We would ingest inventory from a food retailer and then apply it to this food ontology graph. Then it would pull up in that graph and everything that's connected one or two degrees from that data product. It's really hard to put this succinctly. But maybe a nutrition content or recipe that's included in that data product, and then it moves to the next phase.

Then we would do some cleaning of the text that's associated with it. The next phase is maybe just calculations on cost and cost per weight. Next, it goes through this sequencing to go from raw data that you can't really use to build applications in really rich e-commerce platforms. It's just kind of sloppy data. The end result is very rich data that you can search from any type of parameter you might have imagined. So, if the data pipeline had nutrition calculations, now the end result is that you can search for e-commerce products based on protein content.

How did you come to work with Software Mill?

I met with the lead of the group that was to collaborate on the project, and in about an hour I knew I had the right team. Admittedly, the personal repertoire I developed with him had a lot to do with the selection, but I think the way the company is structured played a large part. The person I met with was genuinely interested in the success of the project, almost obsessively. This trust is key; every startup knows "never hire a consultant" in the early stages, because the incentives are just not fundamentally aligned. So much mutual trust was established early that I ended up not even worrying too much about an NDA, which also seems absurd, but that’s just how SoftwareMill rolls. Contractual issues fell to the wayside in favor of focusing on turning out the best possible product.

How much have you invested with Software Mill?

In total, we spent around $28,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

There was some legwork done but it was kind of a mess. They turned it into this beautiful thing that's easily extendable. Any developer can walk into the code base and see it's very cleanly done and know what direction to take from there. They did a two-week trial back in November 2016, and then we took off the rest of the four weeks.

Obviously, I had intended originally what to be a little bit of a slightly longer project, a few months, but we ended up being pressed for time because I needed to get the prototype to a conference to show some potential customers. We had to contract the length of time slightly. I think the project was four weeks-- after the two-week trial, it was four more weeks starting around January 14th and into the first or second week of February.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The results were beyond my expectations. The provided high-quality design and code. It's too early to provide metrics, but the project started as a proof-of-concept that had a few working programs, and SoftwareMill turned it into this beautiful thing. It's very well done. 

The suite of technologies we're using is open source, so there's a corporate backing, but it's based on the best developers in the ecosystem. They were the ones that recommended SoftwareMill. World-class developers backed the team, so it didn't surprise me at all that they developed very clean code. I was very happy with it. 

How did SoftwareMill perform from a project management standpoint?

Because it was so early and we're just seed-funded, there's a lot of flexibility that other companies might not have. I flew out to Poland for both the kickoff of the trial in November and then for the full four weeks in January. 

It's against general wisdom to bring in consultants so early in a startup because the incentives of the consultants are misaligned with the company. Working with SoftwareMill was a risky choice, but they did very well. SoftwrareMill was a joy to work with, and the product was a major success. They are truly not only passionate about their work but prideful in seeing the success of their customers. The amount of work they accomplished in weeks was impressive.

What did you find most impressive about SoftwareMill?

The number one thing I would say about SoftwareMill is their ability to put startup anxiety at ease. The way they operate and their organizational structure helps in that. It's a flat structure, and everyone is involved with the project and wants to see the success of their company. Now, being a part of Clutch shows they take pride in word-of-mouth.  

The interaction I had with the lead developer when I met him was like I was dealing with a friend by the end of the second day. We established such great rapport. There was so much trust established, and that alone, whether or not they had the best code or they even knew exactly how to go about the problem at hand, was the big hurdle for a startup. These guys really are passionate, almost obsessively passionate, about seeing my success. So much so that we didn't even discuss the details of the contract until we were well into it.

Are there any areas Software Mill could improve?

It's hard to say. It was a short project, and I was happy with the product. Maybe if we worked together for longer, I could pin-point things. Some companies might prefer SoftwareMill working in a different style. They have team members working all over the world, and we would have a meeting once a week for half of the day or a full day, and then they would go back to their hometowns. I had no problem with that, but some companies might rather have them located somewhere specific. 

Also, they charge per day. I was a little reluctant also at first because the commitment in terms of hours could be subject. However, it seemed pretty apparent that that policy was to protect their sanity, and they probably ended up working more than a typical eight-hour day on an average work day.