Techs Advisory

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Founder / CEO of an insurance SAAS solution that is disrupting the insurance market in the high volume low premium segment.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We had seen substantial growth in a very short period and needed to augment our current platform and team to ensure the rapid delivery of all projects

SOLUTION

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

We found Igor and his team through Clutch. We considered a number of alternative providers but after careful due diligence and review, we decided both in terms of capabilities, and technical expertise but also price they appeared to be the best solution available.

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

Aligned to complex insurance and client related requirements they developed components of custom work related to 3 major clients including one of the largest retailers in the country and 2 financial services players. This included distribution, administration and reporting functionality. Development happened in Python, Django and within a secure AWS enviroment.

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

There were a total of 6 team members.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The team displayed relentless commitment and determination to achieve our deadlines. Although the projects took longer than initially forecast, the scope of work also increased post the start. The team worked day and night to achieve our outcomes and results.

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

The team were involved in daily standups and client reviews where needed. We used Jira, Slack and Google hangouts mainly for communications.

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

There was clear leadership from Igor, and his team was fully committed to our delivery and timelines. They exceeded all of our expectations.

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

Not really, potentially a deeper dive into the legislation associated with insurance might have been useful, but to be fair that is rather the domain of the product owner, which was internal to our business.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the technical director for EV Connection, a Malaysian-based company working on EV charging infrastructure development. We have a full range of services from hardware installation, studying of charges, and development of charge point management system.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Techs?

We had a platform that was running on Ruby on Rails (Rails) and we had been using it for a couple of years. Recently, we received a request to duplicate the functionality of that platform onto another platform that was running based on Python. However, we didn’t have expertise in Python’s programming language. As a result, we hired Techs to help us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The team has recommended changes in our platform’s architecture. We’re using microservices in order to separate functions within the platform such as user and organization management and charging flow management. Charging flow management involves linking the user using the charger. We’re currently finished with 50%–60% of the project, and we expect the development to end in April 2022. After the development, we’ll continue working with them for half a year to handle maintenance and to resolve some technical issues we identify.

What is the team composition?

We mainly work with one person, but he has a few colleagues supporting him, especially during our discussions.

How did you come to work with Techs?

We looked for experts in Python and microservices on LinkedIn. Our tech lead spearheaded the search. He had a short discussion and a few online meetings with Techs to establish expectations from both sides. After that, we decided to work with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $25,000–$30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in July 2021, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve divided the delivery of systems into milestones, and we measure Techs’ success based on their ability to deliver our agreed functionalities. So far, they’ve managed to deliver what we’ve agreed upon. In fact, we already have some of the systems in place. We also have some additional things which haven’t been captured in the initial agreement, and we’re having ongoing discussions about that.

How did Techs perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re responsive, quick, and proactive — they actively check on us. We have concurrent projects running, so sometimes we’re not able to give feedback on the things they’ve completed. We use Slack and Jira in order to communicate and visualize our process.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Techs’ team is flexible and friendly. In addition, they don’t just follow our requests. Instead, they share insights in order to improve our ideas because we’re not familiar with Python and microservices.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s a bit challenging to do the work 100% remotely. Since they don’t have easy access to the charger, understanding the UX and the charger’s behavior may take time. However, it’s not really their fault, it’s just the nature of the project.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Their team can move very fast so as long as you’re clear with what you need. You’ll get the most out of the project, too. If you’re unclear about certain things, you may influence the progress of the project and you might incur additional costs.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a consultant for a small company that provides B2B digitization services. We create products used to digitize companies, and we’re based in Bucharest, Romania.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Techs?

We were looking for a team that could help us digitize a Romanian client of ours that specialized in data analysis and social marketing via surveys. The client had handled that process via other tools and on-field or phone surveys but were spending lots of money on competitor tools. They wanted to develop an in-house solution.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had specific requirements to build the app in Python with a small footprint regarding resource utilization. There’s also a focus on microservices.

My partner and I collected data and requirements from the client, much like product owners, and we translated those into a technical diagram for Techs. Then, Techs devised solutions to design and implement those requirements.

They used the FastAPI and Django frameworks on the backend, Angular on the frontend, PostgreSQL for the database, Redis for message queueing, and some Typescript. There’s also a Docker design model composed in GitHub.

What is the team composition?

I usually talk directly to Igor (Founder & CEO). Jesse (Frontend Developer) is one of the team members, but I don’t know anyone else. Igor is usually the one discussing details with us and presenting their solutions. He works with the team, setting up agile sprints.

We had a product-owner-to-product-owner relationship, as it’s called in the Agile ecosystem.

How did you come to work with Techs?

We posted our requirements on Upwork and interview 10–15 of the companies that qualified. Of the ones that responded to our requirements and budget, 50% were scams. Out of all the others, Techs provided the best design solution.

What I liked about them in the beginning was that they built us a design POC without asking for any payment. That was a big point from my perspective.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost so far is about $15,000. The initial estimate was $22,000, and the cost will possibly go up to $25,000 for this first phase. We plan to invest a percentage of our revenue into developing this platform as well, so this is just the beginning.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Techs in June or July 2021, and we’re on the fifth milestone now. We have an end date, but the project will most probably be continued in the future, for support and new features.  

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

There isn’t too much to say with regards to the client, but their feedback is positive. They love the features Techs has built, but there’s still a lot of work to do. We’re enjoying the partnership so far.

Techs hears what we have to say with regard to requirements. They make all the changes we want easily, and the app is quite well-written. Basing it on microservices was a hard requirement, but they’ve complied. I’m 70% happy with the product they’ve delivered so far, and the remainder will be accomplished in finalizing the app.

Right now, we’re trying to get all the stuff from the old ecosystem into our application to avoid the hard, difficult process of growing the application. We may not have many users at the moment, but we will evolve the app in the future.

How did Techs perform from a project management standpoint?

Igor’s job isn’t very easy, but as a product owner that has a strong background in technology, he’s very organized in creating sprints and organizing his team to achieve deadlines.

We struggled a bit in the beginning because we weren’t using a very agile model. It’s possible that Igor was new to this way of working, but he’s a fast learner. I have good experience managing projects inside some big companies, and Igor applied the input I gave him pretty well. I’m happy with his management.

We communicate via Jira tickets and have a basic Kanban model, mostly based on bugs and incidents raised by me. On his side, Igor translates my requests into stories for his developers.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Techs came up with a design pattern and an architecture solution from the beginning after just a few days of us presenting our big picture request.

As I said, we interviewed 10–20 other contractors on Upwork, and none of them came up with such a solution. They would have gone straight to the technologies that they had; it’s easy to work on what you know, but we had a reason for sticking to Python. Instead of solving the need for us, these other companies offered to sell their solutions. Igor, on the other hand, came with solutions to the needs that we had.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We didn’t do well on our side of providing the requirements on time, so Techs worked with what they had. The most important thing for them to work on is speeding up the journey from idea to production-ready output. They need to align more with the best practices of production applications. My feeling is that they don’t yet have the experience of working with products in production environments, but that’s normally learned over the course of years.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients should prepare requirements well from the beginning. This isn’t an easy task when starting an app from scratch with a company that’s never gone through a digitization process.

The struggle was on our side as well, because we didn’t get very good requirements from our client, requiring us to translate something that’s not easily translatable from a technical point of view.

The bottom line is that Igor’s team knows what to do. If the client simply asks them to do that, then they’ll do it without a problem.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Polstrat is a political consultancy. We provide resourcing strategy for politicians in India. I’m the director, and I look over almost everything in the organization. We’re a three-year-old organization with a team of nine people.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Techs?

We focus a lot on business and strategy, and we’re trying to get into tech solutions for our clients. There aren’t a lot of tech solutions available in the Indian political landscape. A lot of things are done manually, in terms of communication and data collection, and analysis.

We were trying to automate this, and give politicians access to all the data through a single solution, and cut down on the time and resources they need.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Techs is developing a proprietary dashboard for our clients. We started with a small proof of concept, which was mostly backend work. One big feature is virtual maps of constituencies, displaying electoral and demographic data, grievances, and so on. The tool also does data collection.

That was a two-month project, and we spent the next six months figuring out how to take it forward. We’ve made a lot of changes since the beginning.  

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked mostly with Igor (Founder & CEO) and with a UI/UX designer. As I understand it, Igor has done most of the work on the project.

How did you come to work with Techs?

We found them on Upwork. We spent a lot of time looking at companies in India, and it was very difficult to find a professional one with the right coding skills. The bigger organizations would be too slow, and we didn’t want to go down that path, especially when testing the concept, so we decided to find a freelancer.

We spoke to a few people, and Igor stood out. He came with a lot of ideas on how we could implement the ideas we had.  

How much have you invested with them?

We have invested around $11,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The first project ran between August–October 2019, and the second project started in June 2020. We’re almost done but it is ongoing for now.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality of work is really good. Igor was very good at creating everything we discussed. He went above and beyond to make sure we were happy with the work. We kept milestones for different parts of the platform, and we tested each one. 

How did Techs perform from a project management standpoint?

We had regular conversations about the work, and the communication between teams was clear. We had a project manager on our end, who had a technical background and managed a lot of the communication with Igor. We tracked time through Upwork, and I don’t think there were any other tools used.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a young team. Techs is very enterprising and professional in their approach to the project. I’m really happy with the work we’ve done overall.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re in Sweden, and I’m based in India, which has made communication and time management more complicated. I would’ve wanted to have someone local that I could sit down with, but that’s not their fault. That was the only limitation of the project.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Be very clear about what your requirements are. It’s important to break things down and explain everything right from the beginning. We learned from phase one, and we were clearer in phase two.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder of a branding consultancy company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Branding consultancy

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Techs to accomplish?

• Custom developed features

SOLUTION

How did you find Techs?

Online Search

Why did you select Techs over others?

Igors experience and values

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Igor helped out with developing custom content blocks and integrations to enhance our clients branding experience. 
Key deliverables included:

Custom content blocks: Built to meet specific client needs - offering dynamic functionality and tailored design options.
Integrations: Seamlessly connected third-party tools and APIs to expand platform capabilities.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Custom content blocks enhanced user engagement by streamlining workflows and providing tailored branding solutions, while seamless integrations expanded platform capabilities. 

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Igor was very enthusiastic and highly motivated, with a strong desire to ensure the project went well

What was your primary form of communication with Techs?

Virtual Meeting

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

What impressed us most about was Igor's technical expertise and strong values. His skills were evident throughout the project, and his dedication to creating something meaningful was admirable. Techs' commitment to quality and their drive to deliver a product aligned with our vision truly stood out.

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

There’s always room to improve communication, as it’s essential for any project. That said, the collaboration was productive, and the team was responsive and open to feedback.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Head of Product

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our goal was to develop a proof-of-concept of using the Timescale database as a meter data management system, adding an API to provide access.

SOLUTION

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

We put out an invitation to tender through the Upwork platform and evaluated a number of responses before selecting Techs for this work.

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

We started with a several requirements capture meetings. Subsequently Techs produced a detailed software requirement document to be the specification for the work.

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

There we 2 people in the vendors team on this project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to successfully demonstrate that the Timescale database was suitable for our needs and are now able to progress the project to full implementation in the future.

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

Their communication and timeliness were excellent. We used email and our internal comms tool (Discord) to do the work, as well as regular checkins to Github.

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

Communication from Techs was really good, which helped to move things along, and rapidly iterate on the solution.

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

Nothing of note.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are IT architects who are building a tool which will ease the life of building the architecture documentation.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed a team of professional developers to build our application. We had all the specifications, knowing exactly what we wanted. We collaborate with Techs team leader to refine the functionalities and improve the code.

SOLUTION

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

Techs already worked on projects in line with our application. They also had good reviews. The interview and the exchanges we had convinced us.

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

We use Python. The project is divided into milestones. Techs works with sprints taking into account several parts of the milestones. The delivery is the code and the application functionalities.

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

We work with only one person which directly manage his team. There are several developers involved in our project but we do not talk with them directly.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The delivered code is of good quality. The bugs and problems found are shared and Techs tries to solve them.

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

We have a weekly meeting of 30 minutes to discuss the actual topics, issues, bugs, etc. We exchange daily using Slack. When needed, we have longer meeting to discuss more deeply the important topics.

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

First, they are good and nice people. They listened carefully to our remarks and always did their best to satisfy us. The quality of their code is excellent. They also are able to propose alternatives or better solutions for problems we face.

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

The quality of the work is great, no question about that. However, there were some delays in the planning. That can be explained by the complexity of the tasks.