Sysvine Technologies

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Managing Director of Moss and Lichens in Munich, Germany.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Sysvine Technologies, and what were your goals?

We hired Sysvine to help us support the Data Science team with Web development activities in the Hoffmann Group in Munich, Germany

SOLUTION

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

I was recommended by family friend. The deciding factors was the professionalism and fast response times during pitching and staffing projects.

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

Cross functional team with Design, DevOps, Testing and Development knowledge to support web development activities of the Data Science Team in Munich, Germany.

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

We have Junior, Senior and Lead Developers, Senior Testing, Senior Design and Senior DevOps people on the team. 6 people working on a Scrum Team with the onsite PO from Munich, Germany.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The team has launched a web platform where multiple Apps are launched on a quarterly basis. Since one year we have a stable platform built on react with a Java SpringBoot and NodeJs backend. We have 4 active Apps and the platform is integrated with SSO. We also have Internationalization in place for German and English speaking users.

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

We use Scrum to manage the team.

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

We like the culture of their employees because it allows them to work constructively with each other.

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

None as of now

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the co-founders and director of operations of Rally Corp. We do software for nonprofits, particularly around mobile engagement. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sysvine Technologies?

We needed Sysvine Technologies to help us augment our development efforts. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sysvine Technologies has provided us with project management and engineering software development services. As a SaaS company that offers software services, they’ve been an integral part of our team, at least on our product.

We’ve mainly provided them with user stories, information about our current tech stack, and what we’ve done so far.  For this, they have access to our GitHub, including our code repositories and code documentation to date. We’ve also given them access to our project management software, in which our user stories are built out.

They primarily work with Ruby on Rails and JavaScript technologies, and we’ve also used them to integrate with some of our other technology partners, such as AWS. They’re currently handling a lot of our infrastructure and pretty much all of our software for development purposes.

This is an ongoing project, and we're currently still involved with them. If we have questions about certain technologies or there’s something we’re not ready to integrate, they do the research work on our behalf. 

What is the team composition?

We have 5–6 people working with us. There are a couple of full-stack engineers, a project manager, a QA tester, and someone who overlooks our infrastructure. 

How did you come to work with Sysvine Technologies?

They were referred to us by my co-founder, and that's how the relationship began. We started with a couple of small projects, and we’ve kept expanding from there. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent close to $80,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started with them in September 2019, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Since we started working with them, our feature development and deployment time have been reduced by at least half of what would normally take us.

How did Sysvine Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

Overall, Sysvine Technologies has performed amazingly. We have multiple project management services, and we primarily communicate through Asana, email, and Slack. They provided me with a contact who communicated with us daily, so we always have a handle on what’s going on. We receive daily reports, and I'm in constant communication with our project manager over there.

 What did you find most impressive about them?

The best thing about Sysvine Technologies is the overall quality and speed of work in which they get the work done. Their team is full of fast responders that provide us with great value for the right monetary costs.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There are probably times we could’ve been better to address the timeline. From that point of view, if timelines change, we’d like to get updates as soon as possible because sometimes, especially in software, what was requested doesn’t get delivered on the exact date because of all of the variables.

But they’ve been really good at changing what needs to be changed, like the deadlines for certain features. That’s something we’ve been notified of, and we’ve been able to decide if we want to proceed in a certain way to extend the timeline or if we want to move on to another project. 

Other than that, I don’t really have anything. Anytime we’ve had an issue, which doesn’t happen often, it has been resolved very fast. That’s why I think they should just keep up with what they’re doing because constant communication is key. As long as they keep giving us timely updates and our communication channels remain open, I don’t need anything else.

Any advice for potential customers?

As a piece of general advice, any time you're dealing with contractors or other kinds of service, the amount of information you have beforehand is key. In software development specifically, be sure to provide user stories, detail backed out of what you’re expecting, so you can expect the vendor to execute that fully. 

It’s necessary to have the documentation and everything else built out to at least have some way of communicating it, whether it’s video or any other way. That way, you’ll have an overall view of what you’re trying to accomplish. Moreover, it’s important to have an end goal. Otherwise, it will be hard for them to make decisions on the best way to proceed.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing director of Peloton Blockchain. We develop products to support tokenization, insurance, trading, and post-trade management of non-financial assets and financial instruments.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sysvine Technologies?

Our company uses blockchain technology to record and propagate products, securities, and accounts information. We wanted to quickly establish a global, robust, scalable, and decentralized network based in Hyperledger Fabric with our own specific set of smart contracts.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sysvine Technologies built a permissioned blockchain network that serves as a cloud-based blockchain solution. As a foundational component of our enterprise architecture, we can redeploy nodes to third-parties, and scale as needed. 

We provided designs, prototypes, and spreadsheet specifications. Our discovery phase required a great deal of work to produce several initial designs. Over 1–2 months, Sysvine Technologies turned those designs into an enterprise-quality layer and provided a detailed project plan and timeline. The team then built the solution and tools from scratch.

They also created a set of smart contracts as well as a set of REST APIs using Node.js. We use these APIs to integrate the Hyperledger layer with other third-party applications. We plan on working with Sysvine Technologies to build many more tools and integrations going forward.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a developer and a tech lead.

How did you come to work with Sysvine Technologies?

I had worked with them in a previous position. When I came to Peloton, I reached out to their team for this project. Their breadth of capabilities matched our needs well.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project so far lasted from October 2018–January 2019. We will re-engage Sysvine Technologies shortly as our next round of development begins.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Sysvine Technologies provided a highly professional and transparent team that fulfills their promises. They delivered high-quality code, diagrams, and architecture pictures. They even went the extra mile and set everything up in AWS.

How did Sysvine Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

The team led a smooth workflow from start to finish. Their level of preparation work impressed me as a former product and project manager. We can refer to their planning even now as needed. We had weekly calls with screensharing, diagrams, a weekly report, and a plan for the following week’s tasks. Sysvine Technologies transferred code to one of our code repositories so we could review it as well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Sysvine Technologies’s top-notch project management stood out the most to us. They excelled in their delivery of the upfront design, using a robust engineering process to accomplish each task. The team also demonstrated a penchant for creative and problem-solving. We found their highly independent and proactive approach valuable throughout the project. Lastly, Sysvine Technologies was highly knowledgeable of Hyperledger of financial services.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we’re thrilled with their work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure your vision and your project goals are clear. Give them enough time to accomplish your goals as well; I made the mistake of underestimating how long the project would take at first.