Synergy Codes

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a software development company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Synergy Codes?

We were looking for new ways to present our catalog’s content.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Synergy Codes helps us build a web-based product. They’re responsible for the UX/UI design and the integration, working with GoJS, Javascript, typescript, and Angular to manage these efforts.

What is the team composition?

We work with two developers who are supported by GoJS and UX experts.

How did you come to work with Synergy Codes?

We did some research to find companies that knew how to use GoJS, and they popped out as one of the best, so we decided to work with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between €50,000–€60,000 (approximately $61,000–$73,100 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started this project in January 2021, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Two of the components they developed have been successfully integrated into our website. Though the last component hasn’t been finished yet, we’re very happy with the deliverables.

How did Synergy Codes perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate through Slack and Google, which has worked well for us. On top of that, they’ve assigned us a project manager who works directly with our technical lead. Our internal development cycles consist of feedback sessions and one-week sprints.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have great technical knowledge and are very easy to work with, which we highly appreciate.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We’ve been working with them on a contractor framework, which has worked well for us.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

OPAL-RT is a manufacturer of testing equipment. We provide tools for testing different kinds of systems, which can be parts of cars, airplanes, or any type of equipment. The final product is a real-time simulator through which we can simulate a part of a system, or produce input and output for the equipment under test. I’m a product manager for the company, specifically for electrical products. I also work in other areas of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Synergy Codes?

We needed to develop a new interface for one of our products, and I was looking for a company that had experience with Vue.js technology. We needed them to help us build the web application.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Synergy Codes developed a web application using HTML5, JavaScript, and other web technologies, including React. It can run in the cloud, but it can also run on desktops. It’s not only web-based; it’s an application that can run in different flavors.

Its role is to provide the UI to build circuit models for our customers. It’s a drawing tool for designing models of the equipment that users want to perform tests on. It’s intended for our customers, not internal use. The product is fully embedded in our application, so the user doesn’t perceive it as a web-based application.

What is the team composition?

We used the agile process in this project and I acted as a kind of product manager in this context. There is no direct project manager; it’s more of a scrum master who manages the execution of the tasks, and makes sure the delivery is good.

For most of the time, I worked with analysts who helped me gather requirements. They did the refinement with the rest of the team, including the estimates and planning. They came back to me with a delivery date. I also worked directly with the developers at times, so that they could ask me more questions about the app, how it works, and what the purpose of what I’m asking for is.

How did you come to work with Synergy Codes?

I contacted several companies, and found Synergy Codes through a referral from another group.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in April 2017, and the current project will end in December 2018. We’re planning to continue working with them after that. It’s a long-running project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re just starting to sell the product, so I don’t have a lot of metrics yet. Synergy Codes’ involvement helped us speed up development and the launch of our product. They’re helping us gain knowledge and be ready if we need to do this type of development ourselves.

The product hasn’t been deployed to customers yet, but we’ve gotten feedback from partners, who really like it. Internal users also appreciate it. Just yesterday, I had someone tell me the app is really easy to use.

One of our objectives is to simplify workflows and improve the usability of our software. We’re going in that direction with this initiative. We’ve put in a lot of effort to simplifying the lives of our users, and the feedback we’ve received from internal users and partners is exactly this. They are really happy about the initiative.

How did Synergy Codes perform from a project management standpoint?

There are many mechanisms in place for helping communication. We have 1–2 meetings per week to talk about the refinement of the requirements and our needs. We draft a document after each meeting, then they ask us to validate everything. We have demonstration meetings every two weeks, in which we can see the results of their work and comment on them.

There's also a portal where we can enter our feedback; they gather that feedback and act on it. All the selected technologies are documented on that portal. They record everything—they’re sometimes more organized than us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

One of our reasons for selecting them was their ability to learn things that are outside of their current business. In our case, we’re doing technical things and we couldn’t easily find a company that would be willing to learn our stack. Synergy Codes easily caught on to everything we were doing and they were able to give us suggestions for improvement. They added value to our work. They’re smart enough to go further than just doing their job.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve tried to organize the work in different packages or measures, but the start and end of each step weren’t always clear. We continued to add parts to different steps, so it was difficult to measure the time needed for and efficiency of each one, even for us. We could do better with how we split tasks and organize the work in different packages or areas. Synergy Codes is generally open to improving things like this.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

None.

UPDATED REVIEW

Company Responses

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

I am the CEO of a company that develops and markets software for monitoring middleware-centric applications in order to maintain high performance and availability. We’ve been developing a cloud based SaaS version of our product to complement our existing on premise product.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Synergy Codes?

Synergy Codes has been helping us develop key aspects of our cloud based SaaS product.  The product is large and feature-rich so the development cycle has been long. We have deployed beta versions and are planning a formal release at the end of the year.

How did you come to work with Synergy Codes?

A partner who had used them in the past referred them to us and gave a good recommendation concerning their work on web-based user interfaces. We talked with them about past work they’d done and what we wanted to achieve, and they seemed to have good suggestions and gave an overall favorable impression, and we decided to move forward.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

Synergy Codes helped develop the frontend to the system using Javascript in a node environment and React, including the interactive portion that allows users to craft and customize their own visualizations and displays. They have also developed APIs to communicate with the backend, and helped streamline integration into the system as a whole.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in September 2015, and have been working together since.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We’ve had extremely good feedback from previewing customers, and they have expressed they are looking forward to being able to take full advantage of this newly hosted service version of our product.

How did Synergy Codes perform from a project management standpoint?

Their ability to self-manage is impressive. They’ve assigned and tracked tasks to 1-4 members at any time, then conducted quality testing with a fairly rigid release schedule. It’s been a pleasure working with them, and they’ve been able to deliver an essentially finished project with minimal project management intervention from us.

What distinguishes Synergy Codes from other providers?

Management of resources and professionalism sets them apart from the rest. They seem committed to being easy to work with and are adaptable. Their self-management skills are commendable, and they’ve remained dependable and reliable. They take their business very seriously.

Is there anything Synergy Codes could have improved or done differently?

At this stage, I couldn’t point to any particular area that needs improvement. I’ve been extremely happy with their work.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CTO of a company providing a website that guides clinicians and biologists working in bioinformatics. We’ve indexed 18,000 bioinformatics tools out of 50,000-70,000 on the internet. We classify them by extracting metadata from articles and identifying the software tool needed for analysis, which ultimately helps biologists and clinicians who don’t know a lot about bioinformatics.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Synergy Codes?

We wanted to have a way to display how a biologist or clinician could use tools in a specific order. The tools are in pipelines or chains through which the user analyzes data, and this functionality is important.

We wanted to have a dynamic and reactive solution, so we chose a special Javascript library, GoJS, and Synergy Codes was hired to implement this.

How did you come to work with Synergy Codes?

I found Synergy Codes via a Google search as the only company indicating their experience working with the GoJS library.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Synergy Codes used GoJS to implement our pipeline viewer, and we decided on a specific JSON format with them as an input to the application. The graphical part corresponded with categories that each had a list of programs sorted according to rank. Synergy Codes created an API connection between the application and our website in order to recover the information needed at each step.

We needed to display the JSON side of the pipeline construction in a way people could understand, which was complicated. Synergy Codes needed to allow users to add optional steps to the obligatory ones. They needed to be in specific places and easily identified as optional or obligatory, in case biologists and clinicians didn’t know how to analyze data.

We implemented 11 filters which can reduce the number of tools based on the operating system and programming language, so biologists wouldn’t have to filter through them manually.

I also wanted a functionality for biologists and clinicians who don’t know anything about analysis. They can click on a button and receive a selection of the easiest tools to use according to an algorithm. This was all implemented in JavaScript, and is working fine.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Synergy Codes in February 2017, and the first part of the project was completed April 2017. We will patent the product and put the tool online now that we have organized the functionalities and changes our pipelines require. We will start 3 other projects with Synergy Codes.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

This was not an easy project because it required complicated algorithms, but Synergy Codes performed well due to skill and efficiency.

How did Synergy Codes perform from a project management standpoint?

Synergy Codes was responsive and transparent while working under the Agile methodology. We had 2-week sprints where we discussed the scope to gain understanding of functionality, and they asked questions when they didn’t understand a point. I appreciated the good communication during our sprints, as well as the results and project management they displayed during briefings.

What did you find most impressive about Synergy Codes?

They are responsive, curious, smart, and efficient. We’ve changed some specifications as a startup, but they adapted quickly. They learned the specifics of our platform, sought solutions, and promptly executed the project.

Are there any areas Synergy Codes could improve?

I have no suggestions. Synergy Codes is already very good, and I have told them they are the best team I’ve worked with so far.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-owner and CTO of a software development company. We target quite a few industries, but we basically serve as the technical arm of a small group of companies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Synergy Codes?

We were looking for development expertise to support the build of our product.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We approached Synergy Codes to develop a co-generation product using standards in the industry, so we can capture business domain models effectively.

It’s a Microsoft-based product with React integration, but we’re currently running it as WebView in Visual Studio Code. We also implement C# in the actual development for the product to run as microservices in the cloud.

Moreover, they’re also providing us with maintenance and support to resolve any major issues we may have in the future.

What is the team composition?

We mainly work with a senior developer and three junior developers.

How did you come to work with Synergy Codes?

They were referred to us by a mutual company.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve roughly spent just under $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership started in September 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Synergy Codes has been instrumental in significantly shortening the development time of our projects. They’re able to deliver our ideas creatively and efficiently with very few issues and defects.

How did Synergy Codes perform from a project management standpoint?

They strictly adhere to the schedule and delivery timeframe they set up, so every project is done on and ahead of schedule.

We manage the project through GitHub and typically communicate through Skype, Zoom, and email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with their customer-centric approach and communication abilities.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have any constructive feedback on their work because they continue to perform better in this space.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would advise you to come prepared with your own design and requirements, so you can acquire solutions quickly.