SPD Technology

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a director at a consulting firm.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with SPD Group?

We had a project to develop for one of our clients and needed external help for frontend engineering. Although we have an internal team, we’re also used to working with external contractors. However, our contractors had moved to other activities, so we decided to give offshoring a try.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SPD Group provided us with two frontend engineers. We interviewed three candidates and decided to go with two of them. The engineers we hired worked with PipeScript, React, and Redux.

What was the team composition?

We worked with two teammates from SPD Group.

How did you come to work with SPD Group?

A business developer from SPD Group contacted me on Linkedin. After that, we started discussions, and I met their CTO, who was located in Ukraine. He gave me more insight into their work and sent me some resumes. 

How much have you invested in them?

We spent €60,000 (approximately $64,000 USD). 

What is the status of this engagement? 

The project lasted from September 2022–February 2023.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I’m very satisfied with the work SPD Group did. Just a couple of days after integrating with our team, SPD Group started working on the code and implementing features. Overall, SPD Group did an excellent job, and our end client was very satisfied. 

How did SPD Group perform from a project management standpoint?

They met all deadlines. We used GitHub for project management and communicated via Slack and phone calls. SPD Group’s teammates were good English speakers, so we had no issues communicating with them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

SPD Group’s process was impressive. After our initial meeting with their CTO, they sent us resumes of developers that matched our needs and expectations. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything SPD Group needed to change.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Give SPD Group’s developers a chance to learn something new and to have ownership of the features they’re building.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO of a software development company that provides B2B and B2C solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SPD Group?

Their team is helping us outsource some of our development positions by assigning a couple of resources to us. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We are building a marketplace application for sporting activities that's available on Android and iOS. SPD Group is providing us with the resources, but we provided the requirements and are driving the idea and implementation from our side.

What is the team composition?

It changes depending on the intensity of the work, but, on average, there are about five people. We have a team lead on our side who's in contact with their resources.

How did you come to work with SPD Group?

We were introduced to them by someone we knew.

How much have you invested in them?

The cost is somewhere between $150,000–$200,000 at this point.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in March 2020, and the relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The main metrics are the tasks being done and my team lead's satisfaction with the engagement, and we're satisfied with their performance in both categories. There is some room for improvement — we experience bugs and crashes — but they're a normal part of the development process. All in all, the results are good. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be working with them.

How did SPD Group perform from a project management standpoint?

They've been good in this regard. Projects are never usually on time or on budget, but that isn’t SPD's fault; it's more because there are always hidden features and requirements that appear along the way. We use our own project management tool, and communication has been fine. over emails, phone calls, and meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

SPD Group provides a very good service and solid developers; we've had a very good experience.

Are there any areas they could improve?

At the end of the day, I don’t think there is anything for them to improve at this point.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Communication is the key to success. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the senior software engineering manager at Roche. We’re a pharmaceutical company and we build medical devices.

We have two project teams that are working on different projects that are very similar in nature. We do different kinds of automation and are building software simulators for medical devices.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SPD Group?

We have a combination of developers working here in Santa Clara and in the Bay area. We have a workforce working in this time zone, but by having another workforce working remotely, we are getting multiple benefits: there is someone that can still deliver the software fixes and run it overnight.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

With SPD Ukraine, the whole hiring process is transparent. We are able to participate in it and can tell if someone is good or not.

We work with their software developers. They receive a task — sometimes it is something smaller, so they are able to deliver it the next day. We create a set of changes called a pull request, and we’ll review and test the code when we receive it back. We then accept and merge it and it becomes part of our codebase once it’s accurate. If there are any issues or changes needed, then we can provide feedback, and their team can provide a base that is necessary and run the process again.

Some of the team we are working with acts as our representatives. They gather the requirements, and by having all of this information in hand and this communication channel, they can drive the development on their side. They are basically product owners defining the requirements for their developers so that they can drive it with full-cycle independency.

All the deliverables are custom software. For a medical device, there is the hardware, chemistry, and consumables, and in order to build a simulator, you have to gather all the requirements and understand the behavior of each of the components and how they integrate and work together. Then, we build the software that mimics and pretends that it is actually doing it. This allows us to show it to business people without having them deal with real hardware that is undergoing upgrades or is expensive or impossible to get into the lab without special permission. There are a variety of different cases where they are helpful.

What is the team composition?

The last time I counted, I believe there were 15 team members, including different levels of software developers: senior and mid-level software developers, and a requirements engineer. There are 1–2 people more focused on DevOps type of work.

How did you come to work with SPD Group?

I’d worked with them in the past on some other projects, and when I joined Roche a few years later, we onboarded SPD Ukraine as our vendor.

What is the status of this engagement?

I believe it started in May 2019, and it is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They need to deliver software that meets a certain quality requirement, and those requirements speak for themselves. We don’t have much regression. Typically, in ongoing software development, when you are building a feature and then another one, the second feature potentially breaks the first one, but we aren’t having those types of issues. That is a really good time and quality metric for software development.  

The most important metric though is that there are some delays, but they aren’t because of SPD Group, but rather because the requirements changed. I don’t remember if there have been any delays or slips from the timeline that were purely because of SPD Group. Obviously, with the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, there are some additional challenges that we are experiencing, but prior to that, it has been just a positive experience.

How did SPD Group perform from a project management standpoint?

We are driving the team and doing the project management from our side. There have been some things that they delivered on their own, and from that perspective, they’ve done well with project management.

They are professionals as are we, so it is a perfect combination. We know what other professionals need to get the job done. From our side, we are trying to provide as much detail as possible and give them useful information to be able to start the development. It isn’t an issue or a concern, but because of the time zone difference, we have very little overlap with each other. We need to plan the work accordingly, as we have a small window to communicate. That has been the only challenge working with a team from Europe.

I like that we have periodic meetings where we provide feedback on the work and the individuals working for us . We’ve only had one time where something minor needed to be corrected.

For tools, we use industry best practices like Jira, Miro, and some other specific project management tools. We have multiple channels for communication, but the most common one is the Google ecosystem where we have Sheets, Docs, Chat and Hangouts. We also use Slack and email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

In the past, I worked with vendors from other countries like India. The challenge with that was there was even more of a time difference. Our morning is their night, and I used to run my stand-ups at 9 a.m. in California, which is midnight in India. After half a year of working that way, I saw that they couldn’t keep up with the pace.

With other vendors, there are some things that they do behind your back without telling you like training or engaging new team members, and by the performance of the team members, you can tell there is something happening, but you don’t know exactly what it is or how to explain it because you are just seeing the performance of the employees. These are things that have never happened with SPD. They are honest about what they’re doing and I really appreciate that.

Are there any areas they could improve?

As I mentioned, we are part of their hiring process, and if something goes wrong, it isn’t only their responsibility. It is really hard to distinguish what they can do differently because we are sharing the responsibility. We are trying to make a big impact and be more efficient by constantly identifying efficient tools, new libraries, and technologies that can help us move faster, as well as educate people. They are doing a lot of training to keep their people and their skills up to the market expectations of the knowledge of the most recent tools.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I believe you have to know what they want. If you can talk to people and explain what you need, then they can find the right people to get the job done.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior director of IT for an investment group. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SPD Group?

We needed SPD’s help with AI tool development. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SPD helped us develop an AI tool for elementary school students. Using this tool, end users could copy and paste a paragraph that could be normal, intermediate, or advanced level. The AI would then automatically create multiple choice questions for the user. It would also let users delete or change questions. 

Once the questions were made, the user should click submit. The test questions would then go to Google Forms, which the user could send to students. The students could then go to Google Classroom and solve test questions.  

Our goal for this tool was to spend less time creating questions while checking the student’s general knowledge level. We could simply select a paragraph and create questions in a matter of minutes.

What is the team composition?

I worked with a project manager.

How did you come to work with SPD Group?

I found SPD through a freelancing website. One of my friends also recommended them, saying they were good developers of AI tools. Our team had asked other companies, but those firms refused to do the project. As a result, we hired SPD. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $3,000–$4,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in July–October 2021. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were happy with SPD’s work. My partner and I were fully satisfied with their outputs, and the tool worked as intended. I’d hire them again if we had another project that suited their abilities. 

How did SPD Group perform from a project management standpoint?

SPD’s project management was perfect. Their manager was proactive, and she was always on time. Whenever we wanted to have a video call, she was available. She also explained everything well. To communicate, we used Upwork. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They did a good job. If we forgot to ask anything, the project manager would remember and would explain everything to us. They also never missed a milestone. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there weren’t any. Everything they did was good.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend working with SPD; I wouldn’t think twice about it. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO and CMO of Legal Shelf, a startup company that provides legal document management services in Latin America.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SPD Group?

We had an existing product built on PHP, which was old technology, so we needed a development team to rebuild it on a newer technology stack.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We needed to approach this project on a fixed-fee model to have predictability on the budget. Thus, SPD Group first assessed the project, which included reviewing the existing application's functionality and building all the user stories covered in it.

During this process, SPD Group brought a designer, who helped the analyst create an inventory of all the other user stories that we would need to cover with the new application. They also built the new wireframes necessary and estimated the effort that would be required to deliver each of those user stories.

Once we had the estimated overall cost of the project, we prioritized the tasks and planned the release schedule. There was one new piece of functionality that we prioritized, so SPD Group first worked on it. Then, they engaged a full development team, including frontend developers, backend developers, and infrastructure engineers, to build the system.

SPD Group built the product in three months based on that fixed budget. Since then, we’ve kept a small portion of their development team working with us on an ongoing basis.

For the frontend, we’re using React and React Native, and we’re hosting everything on AWS Lambda to have an on-demand infrastructure. Additionally, the middleware is built on Spring. This app is web-based, so we’ve built its frontend as a progressive web app to make it work on all devices and platforms. However, SPD Group has also helped us build an iOS app on Swift because Apple devices aren’t very friendly with progressive web apps.

The product is essentially a digital legal document library. It offers digital signatures, a repository, a sophisticated search engine, and metadata management capabilities. Additionally, it includes reporting features around the usage and content of documents.

The digital signature functionality was built specifically for Latin America — that is its main feature. Here, we can’t sign digital documents like they do in the US. There’s a sanctioned, advanced process involved in which the government participates. Thus, we integrated this system with that governmental infrastructure to make it work.

What is the team composition?

SPD Group’s team has included a project manager, an analyst who acts as product manager to gather requirements, and some designers. Additionally, we’ve worked with a development team that has included an iOS developer, up to three React and React Native frontend developers, a lead architect, and up to four backend developers. As we’re currently in maintenance mode, SPD Group’s core team includes the architect, the analyst, the project manager, a frontend developer, and a backend developer.

How did you come to work with SPD Group?

I’ve known SPD Group for a while, so this isn’t my first project with them. Originally, I was introduced to them through the CTO of the company I worked with back in 2011. Since then, they’ve been my favorite development firm to work with.

When Legal Shelf launched, they had used another development firm to build the product. Later, I got a call from them when they tried to get the new functionality built because they had a lot of issues doing so, and they were trying to move the application away from PHP. Knowing the urgency of this project and having known SPD Group for some time, I just brought them to the table to get the project done. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $250,000 on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

I’ve worked with SPD Group on various projects since 2011, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Within three months of working with SPD Group, we had a brand new version of our product with the new functionality we needed, so we were able to start selling it. We’ve measured the success of their work with QA and regression testing, and they’ve always delivered quality work.

Overall, they’re very good with these new technologies. Not a lot of people have implemented AWS Lambda, but SPD Group’s execution on it has been flawless.

How did SPD Group perform from a project management standpoint?

SPD Group has always delivered on time, even when we’ve had to push the deadlines. We use Shortcut as our project management and ticket management platform, and we use GitHub for the repository. Additionally, we communicate via Slack and Google Meet almost daily.

What did you find most impressive about them?

SPD Group’s commitment to projects is impressive; we’ve never felt like they’re part of a different company. For example, they had team members based in Ukraine who had to flee due to the Russian Invasion. Despite having some of those team members assigned to our project, SPD Group hasn’t missed a single deadline since the invasion started.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think that SPD Group could improve on anything. On one of my past projects with them, I wished that we had a stronger analyst. However, I can’t say that anymore because they’ve brought excellent resources to the table for this project for very reasonable rates. Nowadays, I can only wish that they weren’t in the middle of an invasion.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Ensure that you have a good in-house development process in place. SPD Group is great at integrating into your process, but they’re not the kind of company that uses their own process. If you have a good process in place, the project will be successful, but if not, they’ll use whatever your process is, and you’ll have to learn and adjust a lot on the go.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there?

I’m the director of Bang Analytics. We provide companies with research data for marketing purposes.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SPD Group?

We needed their support in our software development efforts.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SPD Group helped us fulfill the development of one of our software extensions. We kicked off our collaboration with a scoping phase, wherein we relayed our project brief and guidelines to their team. We then worked hand-in-hand with SPD Group to build the platform from scratch.

Their team was involved in the pre-and post-development processes, including the implementation, troubleshooting, and quality testing stages. Finally, they helped us deploy the software once it was ready for its go-live.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a project manager and two developers.

How did you come to work with SPD Group?

I read their profile on Upwork. Apart from their good reviews, I chose SPD Group because they seemed like a highly skilled team that was capable of delivering our needs. 

How much have you invested with them?
 
We spent $5,500.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our project ran from May–August 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We just reached the deployment stage, so there are no quantitative metrics to share yet. However, I could confirm that SPD Group met our expectations by completing the project within the given timeframe and delivering precise solutions that led to a seamless platform.

How did SPD Group perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated via Slack. SPD Group was on top of their project management game — they were a polite team that remained detail-oriented and proactive throughout our collaboration.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We saw SPD Group's commitment to making solutions that work for us. They took their time to understand the ins and outs of our product, so they were able to deliver tailored results within quick turnaround times.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There was nothing they could've done better or differently.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Come up with a clear project brief — while SPD Group can help you accomplish this, you can save time if you present concise goals and requirements from the start. It also helps to be attentive to their ideas and suggestions

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.