SPD Technology

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the owner of a company that provides part-time technical project leadership.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We were looking for startup-friendly, flexible, capable developers to manage updating an existing prototype / alpha product.

SOLUTION

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

We hired two vendors initially, having each work in parallel. SPD was recommended by a trusted colleague, and after a few months it was clear to us to consolidate all work with them.

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

Laravel, PHP, MySql, AWS Lambda, and other third party libraries and services. The work is defined in releases. With each release, a scope is determined by me and the client and delivered to the team.

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

5 total have worked with us. 2 PMs, 1 QA, and 2 developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Customers have commented that the updates to the site are good and welcome. The client is gaining confidence in the quality after each new release. This product is not yet being actively promoted; basically currently it's in a beta / stealth mode.

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

Weekly demo meetings, Asana task management, Slack + MS Teams.

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

Caliber of developer talent is very high. Good communication. They quickly understood the application's goals and have been proactive in suggesting improvements in addition to the scope we have provided.

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

We are in very different time zones from the team; I don't expect that this is something for them to accommodate but it's my only difficulty so far.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the principal engineer at an insurance company, working for the CTO and across the engineering teams.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SPD Group?

We are working on building out our policy management system, and in doing that, we want to develop more billing functionality. We got in touch with SPD to help source additional staff to move that initiative forward.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our main effort is building up a billing service to be able to handle a basic workflow. Stages of that have been done, but we’re still in process.

The first deliverable was understanding an API with a company that we’re working with — an outside partner. This would give us a better understanding of how to enter into a business relationship with this outside partner.

Moving forward, they’ve worked to build internal interfaces, modifying workflow management and UI solutions so that internal resources can have a more automated way of accomplishing tasks as underwriters and customer success resources.

What is the team composition?

We started working with two people from SPD Group. One was more of a project manager and, the other was more technical. We’ve grown the team through them and are up to 13 resources.

How did you come to work with SPD Group?

We had ties between our business and references for SPD Group. Because of that, there was a lot more trust and faith that we’d receive results from them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $50,000–$199,999 so far, and the total cost will continue to grow.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since July 2020, and we plan to continue working with them as long as we can give them meaningful work that helps them understand our company and our billing system.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The stage of the project that we’re in right now hasn’t been completed, so I can’t give too much information, but I can say that because SPD Group was able to ramp up and get people involved quickly, we’ve been able to grow the team at a faster and faster rate. The slowest and hardest part of the process to get 4–5 people on the project, but once we had them — a foundation of people that understood the company and permissions and knew how to get connected to the code base— it was much easier to work toward seven, eight, nine, 10, and 13 people.

One resource on the team is strong in UI development, and their work has been very helpful, both in building out UIs and planning the builds. They’ve joined our internal UI architects and developers to help build our billing process.

How did SPD Group perform from a project management standpoint?

The primary person managing and driving the team helps us handle the project management through Jira. We’ve also brought on a business analyst from SPD, and they help with communications and project tracking. They also help identify the needs of all our stakeholders and ensure that this information is communicated.

Everyone conducts themselves professionally. Just like any business, there are many challenges — sometimes it’s multiple business stakeholders with different priorities. We’re trying to work through the right way to get everything done, and the team at SPD helps us find out what’s really the best way.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It’s easy for anyone who gets involved in a new project — especially if they’re not used to it — to believe that the vendor will have a clean and clear understanding of what the goal is. They believe having written out documentation means there will be no questions and challenges to deal with. This isn’t the case a lot of the time, but SPD Group does a great job of always finding a way to take the next step. This step-by-step process has been fruitful because as they come up to speed, frustration could set in due to the lack of clarity. Additionally, they’ve allowed me to make progress when I don’t have full-time engineers to work in the space.

For the things they’ve had to learn and do, they’ve been graceful in dealing with adversity. The engineers are professional in finding the balance between asking hard questions and listening for what the current state is as we’re iterating.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would have loved to have kept all the employees that started with us. Having our first assigned engineer stay with the project for around six months would have helped maintain the pact at which we ramped people up. They were one of the stronger engineers, and they were rotated off after a few months to a project that better suited their skills. SPD Group helped us continue forward, however.

The only other answer I can give is that, when you work with a team that has different business hours because of their time zone, it’s difficult to allocate time to answer all their questions as they ramp up. Their work has to be guided initially, and it took preparation on our side. That’s more on us to be aware of those effects than on SPD Group, though.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They are good at finding ways to ramp up quickly, but I would remind other customers to provide extra time and support in that first week or so. It’s hard for someone to learn when they’re on their own.

Plan on building a long-term relationship with them, as well, as the investment to start the project will be most worth it if you maintain that relationship. Really work to build personal relationship connections between your employees and the people on SPD Group’s team. The latter will be able to drive the work eventually, but strong connections to internal employees will help in the early days.

As you build the team remotely, they’ll be able to ramp up new employees much easier. Additionally, document and record everything you’re doing as much as possible. If you have a meeting, make it a Zoom meeting and record the call. When there are differences from individual to individual in terms of language, being able to listen to what was said a second time helps everyone understand what’s going on. This also applies to taking clear notes on daily sync-ups.

Finally make sure that they know that you’re willing to hear questions and concerns, which will help you know where you’re really at.

BACKGROUND

"Smart Way" startup is a service for international transportation. 

A new IT product, a mobile application for drivers, carriers, consignors / consignees of goods to quickly cross the border, order online customs and logistics services, pay for them, and get additional services on the road.

My role in a startup - Project manager Anna Tkachuk

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Transition from paper workflow and telephone communication to a digital environment to establish a relationship with a client and provide additional value, service solutions

solve the "pain points" of different groups of clients

create ecosystem solutions, digital environment

SOLUTION

We analyzed the market, who could suit us given the specifics of the startup. We looked at who is in IT clusters, studied their experience, the presence of a team, and other parameters.
SPD Group - has expertise in writing technical specifications, experience in developing mobile applications. For each project, they select a professional team. The company is a technology partner for leading companies in the USA, Great Britain, Germany and other countries.
Works with technologies such as IoT, AI, ML, Cloud Computing.

Project manager, Android Development, Backend development, QA, from SPD Group. - Product Owner, marketing specialist, designers, Technical Specialist -from us.

This company has developed a "Smart Way" mobile application for us for the role of a driver.

We started working on a mobile application with SPD Group in March 2020. The MVP version of the product was completed in early 2021. We are preparing a publication in the Play Market 3. How much did the project cost? we do not disclose prices.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

The mobile application is a new solution for interacting with our customers, as well as the ability to provide customers with more relevant services.

Everything is recorded. Sprint work.

Focus on results. Team spirit.

No comment on improvement. 

The team is always ready to find a way out of the situation, to offer their ideas, solutions. These guys can be trusted.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a product owner at G-Accon, a data management company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SPD Group?

We contracted them for software development resources. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SPD provided us with one JavaScript developer and one developer with Microsoft technology knowledge to help us expand our custom software offerings. These included Google Sheet plugins and other platforms.

What is the team composition?

One of the developers was with us for a little over a year and a half, and the other resource worked with us for about seven weeks.

How did you come to work with SPD Group?

We were referred to them. Once we got into contact with them, we were confident they were a good fit. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from September 2019–September 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were pleased with SPD Group’s services, especially considering they provided us with junior level developers who we trained internally. They were able to understand very well the requirements of our project. They also had great communication skills in the sense that they weren’t afraid to ask for questions when they didn’t understand something. 

How did SPD Group perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management was one area that we could’ve seen improvement in. At the beginning of the engagement, SPD Group promised to have project managers from their site, but it didn’t end up happening, so we ended up having to handle project management on our own.

That being said, they really emphasized communication throughout the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m impressed with their ability to find resources for us. It was a very professional experience. Even before they brought the resources to us, SPD group gave technical and behavioral interviews to make sure they were of the right quality. Overall, the people who worked with us were very professional and knew what they were doing.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Like I mentioned, the project management side could be improved. They could also provide some behavioral training to help teach the developers how to communicate with the clients. That would be very helpful for them down the road. 

Other than that, they’re a great company, and we were very happy.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Go ahead and schedule a meeting with them. SPD Group is very easy to communicate with, all the way up to upper management. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of Livescience, a lab iOS solutions company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SPD Group?

During a business trip to Ukraine a year ago, I was looking for a company to develop middleware software for us. Our startup is developing an industrial IoT solution to help laboratories be free from the mandatory, tedious documentation effort with the help of our RFID sensors. 

60% of our effort goes into developing the startup and the other half is our own natural financing by individual software products which we also have SPD Group as the preferred supplier.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SPD Group helps with programming Java applications. They also do technical consulting regarding the architecture of the middleware like where we put what function but mostly the rear development. 

They also have a bit of an average degree of bringing their ideas as well. For one application, they used C#, and they also do front- and backend development, doing the full stack of the solution. The team first had to interface with our ID hardware. 

They did the data collection, reformatting, and stored the data in databases. They also developed a frontend that accesses the data. For the RFID readers, I didn’t want them to have to read all of the documentation. 

I provided some sample code of what we had done with previous partners to ensure a better start. SPD Group mostly developed from scratch and didn’t just do modifications to the elements I brought.

What is the team composition?

I only work with the R&D team where there are three individuals.

How did you come to work with SPD Group?

I was looking for a company in Ukraine because I wanted a nearshore company. I wanted us to be able to work together. With COVID-19, this changed a bit.

My partner and I took a business trip, compared seven companies, and had on-site visits regarding their expertise, working style, and prices. SPD Group turned out to be fast in understanding what we wanted.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about €10,000 (approximately $11,900 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2019, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I’m quite happy with them because they have a good R&D mindset. SPD Group has a team that is really used to doing these types of innovation projects. We have two internal developers who are mainly doing the specifications. 

We have a shared repository and see all of their comments directly. Additionally, the efforts they log and bill to us seem justified. That’s what we regard as success.

How did SPD Group perform from a project management standpoint?

We interact directly with the developers because we’re quite technology-focused, but we do the project management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re the only company I found that had an R&D team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Some users may wonder if it’s possible to put 10,000 database entries or if it will crash from the load. They could give the information upfront of what the specifications and restrictions are. If we'd required them to include this, they would've done it.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You can challenge SPD Group. They have good ideas. You don’t have to throw the specifications over the fence; you can collaborate by telling them the functions and what the user gets from the system, and the team will provide a larger portion of the value chain by taking the requirements on their own.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of Home Hub, a mobile platform that helps homeowners better manage the preventative maintenance of their homes. This results in extending life to their appliances, reducing their energy costs, and avoiding other major losses.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address SPD Group?

I hired SPD Group to pick up production development of the entire platform of Home Hub. Another firm built the MVP, but the other firm lacked some of the professionalism I was looking for.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SPD Group redeveloped the whole infrastructure, building the Android app and improving the iOS app. There was also some web development work and help with our backend database system.

Within the app, there’s embedded camera functionality in the app that identifies the appliance and its model and serial numbers. After that, it gets married to our database of manuals and database of preventative maintenance suggestions. Our database system is built on a cloud-based platform.

What is the team composition?

We have a project manager, two backend engineers, an iOS engineer, an Android engineer, two QA testers, a frontend web engineer, and a DevOps lead.

How did you come to work with SPD Group?

They came highly recommended by the CEO of the company I previously worked at. At that company, I had a few interactions with members of their team.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We officially engaged with them in November 2019 but began conversations that August.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Their communication is incredibly professional. We regularly discuss how we’re building against our primary goal and projections. I always feel like SPD Group is making more progress than I expect. They’re efficient engineers.

How did SPD Group perform from a project management standpoint?

Our project manager Timur (Deputy General Manager) is very communicative and precise. He gets very detailed responses with data to back up his points and suggestions. Every week, we have meetings where we go over the progress they’ve made and if there were any delays or roadblocks. Their documentation is also great.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The professionalism. Not only do they do great work, communicate really well, and document incredibly well, they have internal peer reviews to look over work across teams. This process validates their work. It’s an incredibly professional organization opposed to others I’ve worked with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t come up with anything right now.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that you’re clear in what you want. The limiting factor working with SPD Group is the client’s own clarity within their communication.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a B2C financial services software development firm. We have two products we offer directly to consumers and a product we offer through enterprises. These enterprises offer our solutions directly to their employees. The products all relate to financial planning or wellness. I’m the co-owner of the company, and there’s about 12–15 of us.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SPD-Ukraine?

We hired them to handle all of our software development solutions. They’re a figurative arm of our company.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SPD-Ukraine is responsible for our software, web, and mobile application development. They handle all of our backend work, whether it’s application infrastructure or full-blown backend development. We’ve used multiple technologies over the years. Currently, for frontend we use React, GraphQL, TypeScript, JavaScript, and D3.js for graphs and charts. In the past, we’ve used React Native, Angular.js, and Foundation, which is a VR framework.

For backend development, we currently use the Kotlin and Spring frameworks. However in the past, we’ve used Java running on Spring as well as Node.js. In terms of our database, we’re currently on PostgreSQL and Juke, having used MySQL in the past. Infrastructure-wise, we’re now on Kubernetes, Terraform, and Google Cloud. Previously, we used Docker extensively as well as AWS and Ansible.

SPD-Ukraine has completed native development through React Native on both iOS and Android. Our latest app is a progressive web application. It runs on iOS and Android through a web browser and is being built on React, GraphQL, TypeScript, and JavaScript. We also built a full-on web application using React.

What is the team composition?

It has varied over the years. We started with a single dedicated developer and now have a team of six people. This includes a full-time technical project manager and QA as well as two full-stack developers and a front- and backend developer.

When there’s a heavy workload on the infrastructure, SPD-Ukraine has provided experts on Kubernetes and Terraform. These individuals come in and help with the specific project, but we don’t keep them on our team. Essentially, we just borrow them from other teams. For example, for our AR work, we pulled in experts for the core frameworks. After they completed the development, we did the integration and handed it over to the rest of the team.

How did you come to work with SPD-Ukraine?

We heard about them through another startup here in Seattle. Also, my CTO worked with SPD-Ukraine at an old company. When we started our company, it was easy to select them to help us build our startup.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $1.2 million so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership began in October 2010.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our CTO is responsible for the development team and deliverables. We measure quality based on team efficiency and if a solution needs redoing or rebuilding. These benchmarks are critical because we don’t have resources to build solutions multiple times.

Over the course of ten years, SPD-Ukraine has built three different iterations of the applications through progressively different stacks. What matters is how long these iterations last. The life of the code has been consistently lasting about 3–4, maybe five, years. Most codes have a lifespan of 2–3 years. Based on that, SPD-Ukraine is doing great in terms of maintaining that code and keeping it alive.

How did SPD-Ukraine perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve done well, and we use Clubhouse for managing the work. SPD-Ukraine provides visibility into their price estimates. I always know where I stand with them. I know how much something will cost and that it’ll get completed for that exact amount.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’ve enjoyed working with them. In the past, our company has used different developers. What’s unique about SPD-Ukraine is that they use dedicated teams. They’re an extension of our startup, without being actual employees of ours. We manage and maintain their full team and are responsible for keeping them busy. Then, their project manager is responsible for ensuring we don’t go overboard with requests. This is not a typical outsourcing relationship.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The challenge, and what we spend more time working on, is the process of preparing and writing requirements. The level of requirement, its specificity, and the iteration plans are all things we consider. This is a detail that SPD-Ukraine is very flexible about.

It can be good for some people if they already have a great process. However, if they don’t have a set process or existing team, they’d have to integrate it with SPD-Ukraine’s. It’d be nice for the SPD-Ukraine team to bring a stronger point of view.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

SPD-Ukraine is not a firm to work with if you have a one-time project; that’s not their forte. Collaborate with SPD-Ukraine if you’re planning for the long term and have the full intention to keep them as your outsourced development team.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Engineering manager for a gift card e-commerce product.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our platform was a huge set of web services built using spring and java technologies. SPD team had the required product and tech.skillset for our requirements

SOLUTION

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

We got the engineers through an acquisition and continued to engage them since they were the original developers of the product

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

Develop key web services and e com websites for some of the biggest retailers in the US. Key tech stack was Java, Spring and Hibernate.

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

2 people - Senior Engineer and Test Engineer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The engineers worked for many years across the breadth of the platform and were consistent in their delivery and high quality of work.

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

We had daily standups; We used teams to communicate. The engineers were very responsive and were flexible to work into US hours for production support.

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

They are true professionals with clear updates about their progress and plan forward.

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

Sometimes, we felt they could document some of the work / experience in our wiki. Eventually, this got sorted out after expectations were clarified.