Tooploox

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

senior research scientist in a federal research institute

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire MicroscopeIT?

development of customised software

What were your goals for this project?

deliver an image annotation tool

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

they were recommended by collaborators at ETH Zurich

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

we designed together an annotation tool, which was developed and implemented by MicroscopeIT with regular feedback from our user group

What was the team composition?

3 people at microscopeIT, 3 people in my group

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

product is online https://www.taxonify.org/, and routinely used by my team. thanks to the software we have stated to train a deep learning based image classifier, which would have taken much longer if annotation would have been by hand

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

management was good, MicroscopeIT always complied with deadlines and kept constant and efficient communication, the product was delivered on time and on budget

What did you find most impressive about this company?

ability and willingness to understand customer's needs and commitment to openness and quality

Are there any areas for improvement?

They did a great job. software cold be tested a little further before delivery to reduce bugs, but it might have been a problem due to short time and hard deadlines.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

The Center for Experimental and Clinical Imaging Technologies Zurich (EXCITE Zurich) is a cross-sectional platform for biomedical imaging to facilitate the development of innovative, experimental and clinical imaging technologies.

EXCITE Zurich advances basic and applied biomedical imaging research. To ensure this effort, EXCITE Zurich supports cross-cutting projects and offers internationally recognized educational programs in biomedical imaging.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire MicroscopeIT?

For the development of a mixed reality platform (or app) that allows the upload and visualization of segmented 4D medical image data on HoloLens 1 (and hopefully also 2).

What were your goals for this project?

The segmented 4D medical image data contains time-varying 3D spatial information of organ or cell function. This data must be displayed and manipulated in real-time on the HoloLens and also shared by multiple HoloLens users. The app should be open source.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

During an educational event, we personally met the CEO of MicroscopeIT.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They developed and helped designing the mixed reality application including detailed documention of project milestones, goals and progress. They organized all project meetings and designed a project webpage, www.essential-vision.org.

They placed and documented the source code of the app in github and generated a user manual for the app. They constructed an interface to convert and integrate (upload) pre-processed medical image data into the mixed reality application.

What was the team composition?

Our stable contact was the CEO of MicroscopeIT himself and a project manager. Both chaired and organized all meetings. Two programmers were permanently involved in the project. The entire team was (permanently) accessible via a web-based project managment platform.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The mixed reality app was demonstrated with great interest and very positive feedback during multiple educational events. Collaborators and institutes are providing various interesting biomedical image data for visualization and demonstration in mixed reality.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was very sleek resulting in an extremely short response time also to changes that were made at short notice. The use of web-based project managment platforms simplified the communication outside scheduled meetings.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Active and open communication, critical and constructive thinking skills, flexibility in mind and approaches as well as motivation and eagerness were all combined within a small effective team.

The team didn't stop at the pre-specified milestones. The team started thinking ahead making suggestions and presenting options on how to proceed. It was a great and exciting experience to work with MicroscopeIT.

Are there any areas for improvement?

For this project, I cannot specify a particular topic or area that must be improved. The intense use of web-based platforms for management, documentation and communication may require more support for less experienced partners.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m part of a two-person team working on an analysis program for poker players. We’re a small and informal organization, so I’m responsible for writing the code and designing everything.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with MicroscopeIT?

Although we have a relatively successful main product offering, we’re only two people. We needed more manpower to execute the many new ideas we have for different products. We’re interested in creating mathematical solvers of different games and were seeking others to help write the code and develop that software.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We tasked them with writing pure C code—without any frameworks or tools on top of that. The project involved classical, hard-core algorithms that are written in ANSI C. We vastly underestimated the scale of the project, so we’ve now halted all development after a three-month training session.

During that training session, we engaged with MicrosopeIT’s developers who worked to familiarize themselves with our code. They’d directly ask us specific questions about parts of the code without any go-between to avoid any unnecessary delay.

What is the team composition?

We were in touch with managers from different levels, including a project manager. Our main point of contact was tech lead, who wouldn’t write code but oversaw all developments. Otherwise, we directly interacted with the developers during training.

How did you come to work with MicroscopeIT?

I personally knew their CEO, whom I had studied and worked with before. When we met his developers, we could immediately tell from their CVs and past work that they were clearly competent and knowledgeable.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent a little over $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from May–August of 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Although my partner and I decided to forgo the project because of its unforeseen scale, we hold an extremely high opinion of all the developers. If we ever seek more work for any software project, they’re exactly who we’d look for. They’re highly skilled.

How did MicroscopeIT perform from a project management standpoint?

The developers were great communicators, and so were their managers. We were working better and better with each other every day.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Our tech lead also showcased a remarkable learning ability. Our domain is mathematically and programmatically very complex—but he seemed to understand its workings immediately. We were truly amazed by how fast they understood our requirements. Their intellectual ability to process and tackle problems is quite spectacular.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything. Everything on their side was perfect.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a co-founder and the head of sales for a software development agency. I manage new business projects and development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with MicroscopeIT?

We had a customer that required an advanced solution for which we didn’t have enough experience. They needed an advanced biometric and computer vision solution developed. We needed external help to kickstart the process, tell us which direction to go, and provide us with some fast results.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

MicroscopeIT developers helped us with computer vision and machine learning components for a biometrics solution on behalf of our customer. MicroscopeIT used the same technology stack as us: Docker, TensorFlow, and other standard tools for the Python stack. They helped us develop microservices and machine learning models that we later used for the web and mobile applications developed by our team. MicroscopeIT worked on a specific part of the solution, mostly related to machine learning. They helped us come up with different models and train those models.

The requirements gathering was a collaborative effort. MicroscopeIT did a lot of research on their own, assessed the risks, and proposed multiple solutions to us. We decided together on which direction to take. This was not a standard Scrum project, but more of an R&D one.

What is the team composition?

There were around 15 developers from our side working on the backend, web, and mobile parts. We interacted with 3–5 developers from their team. Not all of them were engaged full-time. They worked in a model that consisted of 1–2 main developers who got advice from people with knowledge in the field.

How did you come to work with MicroscopeIT?

I met one of the owners of the company through the recommendation of a friend. They had very good credentials, having worked for Google in the past. They truly understood the subject matter.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost was around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with MicroscopeIT from March– November 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We wouldn’t have been able to kickstart our own team without MicroscopeIT’s help. We were able to do this based on their initial input and help. The customer we developed the solution for is quite happy.

They were always responsive and attentive to our needs. On one occasion, we didn’t properly communicate the expected deadlines, but they delivered on time. We were very happy working with MicroscopeIT.

How did MicroscopeIT perform from a project management standpoint?

They worked closely with our team, which was good. They were self-organizing and plugged into our structure well. We all used Jira, Slack, Google Docs, and GitHub. Using the same set of tools was like working with a remote extension of our team. We’ve met their founders face-to-face, but we generally worked in a distributed manner.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We gave them a very difficult problem to solve, which we weren’t sure was actually solvable. MicroscopeIT was able to provide us with solutions and ideas on how to approach it that worked in the end. They truly understood the subject matter of biometrics, computer vision, and machine learning. This is a rare thing to find in a company.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re a small team, and we sometimes felt that we couldn’t get more help from them or that we couldn’t easily increase the team size. It wasn’t a big issue in the end, but I can imagine that it could be a problem for someone looking for a bigger team.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

It wasn’t a typical agile, end to end project so it was difficult to define its end goal or deliverables. It was a working solution, and we had to use certain parameters to define what success and failure meant. We could’ve found ourselves in the situation where, after a couple of months of development, the outcome was no longer doable. It was important to understand that we can’t always get a 100% outcome.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our company manufactures a flying camera which automatically follows subjects around. Someone hiking or kayaking can launch the camera in the air, and have it follow a device on their wrist, automatically making videos.

I am a co-founder and the Chief Technology Officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Tooploox?

We have a companion app for the device which allows users to access its media content, calibrate it, and perform other device setups, as well as emergency land in case the tracking device is not operational. We didn't have an internal app team, so we contracted Tooploox.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Tooploox has developed the Android version of our app from scratch, and also developed a large part of the iOS version. We eventually brought on a head of mobile for the iOS side, but Tooploox is still running our Android app.

When we first started working with Tooploox, we didn't have a concrete conception of what the app should be, so they helped us through this process providing some design work. Tooploox also performed tests with our devices, most extensively on the Android platform. We require a lot of Wi-Fi communication with the main device for downloading video and control. There is a nice animation integrated into our app as well.

We initially worked with 2 developers for each platform. We only use 2 Android developers from Tooploox at the moment, since iOS has become internal. The transition process was smooth and not much of a challenge at all.

How did you come to work with Tooploox?

I had worked with a contact from Tooploox 5 years ago or more, and he got in touch with me when he heard about the new company. Tooploox was very flexible and willing to make our solution work, scaling their resources up or down depending on our needs. We weren't immediately ready to engage, but we continued the conversation over the course of 4 months. When the time did come, Tooploox was perfectly happy to spin up the resources.

How much have you invested with Tooploox?

The total cost of our project has been between $100,000 and $200,000. It has been quite a large project, with many internal pivots around what we wanted from the app.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Tooploox in November 2015, after a 4-month discussion period. Two of the developers from Tooploox will be visiting us in a couple of weeks. There is still ongoing work, but the final touches on the main product will happen at that time. Tooploox will then provide ongoing support. We're also considering contracting them for development on our website.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Tooploox has been very open to feedback. Our process occasionally didn't work as we would have wanted, with a confusing quality assurance cycle due to too many builds, but Tooploox was always open to the feedback and avidly asked us questions on what could be done to improve it. One of Tooploox's co-founders was involved in all our feedback and always wanted to make sure that they were delivering the best experience to us, without being defensive or having an ego.

How did Tooploox perform from a project management standpoint?

Tooploox uses Asana internally, while we use Jira. They've integrated into our system, which has worked very well. We have standup meetings regularly. The project management is pretty standard.

What did you find most impressive about Tooploox?

Tooploox's flexibility and willingness to accommodate the customer's needs was a strong point, and it was clear from the start. We've worked with a variety of their internal team over the course of 2015, and Tooploox never had a problem with spinning resources up or down as we saw fit. As soon as we needed something, Tooploox provided it and stopped it when there was no longer a need. Tooploox also didn't want to have huge complicated contracts, but rather had hourly rates and allowed us to figure out how much development time we would need as we went along. Tooploox immediately delivered, without the need of months of planning.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our company offers one-on-one nutrition coaching aimed at modifying behavior and helping members with problems like obesity, hypertension, and diabetes. We match users with a nutrition coach through their mobile phones. We have around 50 employees.

I am the Chief Executive Officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Tooploox?

As an early-stage startup, we were well-funded through Google Ventures, Greylock, and others, but hiring resources still was a problem. We wanted to find a long-term partner, instead of jumping from contractor to contractor. We wanted someone that could make decisions, as well as provide access to more senior members. Our iOS app offers a complete toolset for coaches, and it was the area where we needed most help.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Tooploox stepped up to help on the iOS side, and also worked on our coaching app, bringing it to good form.

We've used between 2-4 developers from Tooploox's side, primarily working with the full suite of iOS tech. The web development was primarily done with Python.

How did you come to work with Tooploox?

I was referred to Tooploox by another Silicon-Valley-based company. We had other options, but I liked the backgrounds of the people on Tooploox's team. They had worked on good apps in the past, and shipped meaningful products.

How much have you invested with Tooploox?

The total cost of our project with Tooploox was around $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have recently sold our product to a medical startup in San Francisco, and have ramped up our engagement with Tooploox adding Android development and other tasks to the workload.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have been able to move 2 times faster because of Tooploox's involvement. The quality of their work is solid and we've gotten great feedback from users and coaches. Our team liked working with Tooploox, even though we were skeptical about using an offshore company. Our co-founder was one of the initial engineers of Mozilla Firefox and has worked with distributed teams throughout his career, and so have I. We knew right from the beginning that there are trade-offs to doing this, but Tooploox proved to be professionals and had a good understanding of how things work.

How did Tooploox perform from a project management standpoint?

The people are Tooploox are strong project managers. They worked in tandem with us, so it can be hard to isolate how well they performed, compared to us, but Tooploox was easy to work with and organized sprints well.

What did you find most impressive about Tooploox?

Tooploox's team has strong product insights, which is hard to find. More than any other contracting agency I've worked with, Tooploox was very invested in our product.

Are there any areas Tooploox could improve?

Tooploox is growing as an agency. There were times when we wanted more access to their team, but couldn't have it due to the large demand for Tooploox's services. This is a good problem for them to have.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with Tooploox?

Tooploox is very good at developing relationships, so having just a little more in-person time will go a long way.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We provide the largest fashion e-commerce aggregator platform in Poland and a few other countries. We show people products from different webshops and brands, and redirect them to those stores. Our company was founded 5 years ago.

I am the founder and Chief Executive Officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Tooploox?

More and more of our users visited our site through mobile devices, which is to be expected. Right now, about 50% of the traffic is done through mobile. In order to make their experience better, we decided to build an app, not only a light version of the website. We have built an in-house mobile team in the meantime but needed external resources in the beginning.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Tooploox has built our mobile apps for Android and iOS. We also have a home and garden website which is run as a second business and is the second largest site of its kind in Poland. Tooploox developed apps for this site as well. All apps were written natively for each platform. Tooploox was responsible for design, as well as changes and updates, ultimately offloading the work to our own team.

The apps were built successively, starting with the Android and iOS versions of our fashion store and finishing with the home garden apps.

Tooploox assigned a designer, a project manager, and 4 developers to our project.

How did you come to work with Tooploox?

We ran a competition for outsourcing agencies, and invited the better-known developers on the Polish market, as well as those with which we'd had some personal connections. We've worked in the e-commerce sector for many years, and know many people connected to the mobile market. We had worked with some of the people from Tooploox in previous companies, so there was a good indication that they'd know how to build mobile apps, both on Android and iOS, which are the 2 most popular platforms in Poland. Tooploox's founder had been the head of our development team for a previous business, before moving on to found the company. We compared pricing as well as involvement level for the agencies invited to participate and came to choose Tooploox. They had slightly higher prices but were the only agency capable of doing the entire job from the beginning till offloading the project to our internal team. Tooploox had the designers, project managers, and mobile developers available to do the job.

How much have you invested with Tooploox?

The initial cost of our project with Tooploox was $150,000. There were some additional requirements which we asked for after launching the apps, and ended up spending a total of $200,000 until the work was moved to our internal teams.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Tooploox in April 2015. The whole process took 6 months from inception up till the functional apps were moved to our internal team. Our project with Tooploox has been completed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our general feeling is that we wouldn't have been able to launch the apps as fast by working with someone else. Tooploox proved to be a hands-on agency, and handled a lot of the product work on our behalf, doing what was needed in order to launch the apps. We didn't have previous mobile experience, so we weren't the best partner to build an app for, given that we weren't able to create precise, detailed scopes in the beginning. Tooploox did a great job of launching the app within our timeframe, even though the scope proved much bigger than initially thought.

The only quantifiable metrics are the feedback on Google Play or the Apple Store. We have good reviews, but it's hard to say if those comments are a result of Tooploox's work or a reflection of the product itself. We didn't have any technical glitches, and there were no bugs reported by users or through our tests, which is definitely a success.

How did Tooploox perform from a project management standpoint?

The scope of the project inflated during the production period because of us, but Tooploox still met the time criteria. They managed the project well and provided the actual project manager, even though it was our account. We lacked experience in certain aspects of mobile development, so Tooploox's team helped us understand how things worked at a project management level.

What did you find most impressive about Tooploox?

It's hard for us to compare Tooploox to others because it was the only mobile project we'd undertaken at the time, as well as the only big external project for our company. It's extremely important for us to build products in-house because we can own them in this way and build what we want. Even though Tooploox was an external team, they tried to get an understanding of the product and what we do and provide insights.

The main reason for choosing them was that Tooploox acted like more than an outsourcing agency, which would simply build our app and forget about it. Tooploox became a part of our team and visited our offices in order to gain an understanding of how things worked. Tooploox recommended many things which we wouldn't have otherwise done, which was valuable.

Are there any areas Tooploox could improve?

Communication about the status of current work could be improved on Tooploox' side. They generally did a good job, but there were times when we weren't sure where we stood about a particular app.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of a financial services company.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Travel loyalty program.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Help initialize our backend.
• Front end development.

SOLUTION

How did you find Tooploox?

• Referral
• Other

Why did you select Tooploox over others?

Pricing fit our budget

How many teammates from Tooploox were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Initialize supabase backend, develop front end screens including onboarding.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Functioning web app that allows users to sign up and earn and track how many airline miles they have earned.

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

Mostly on time, though some estimates were off.

What was your primary form of communication with Tooploox?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Their engineers cared about the project.

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

Tooploox with very short notice decided to pull their engineers out of our project and terminate our agreement because a bigger client needed more allocation. They let us keep one engineer part time to help with the transition and then used that to negotiate an even higher hourly rate for him. Just a month after that, they laid off one of the engineers that previously worked on our project and refuse to allow us to contract with him ourselves unless we pay a ridiculous fee.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the VP of Engineering of an it services company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Provides transparent access to the broadest selection of digital assets for climate action.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Organize QA Practice within the company
• Automate Tests
• Support Testing

SOLUTION

How did you find Tooploox?

Referral

Why did you select Tooploox over others?

• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Tooploox were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Introduction of QA Process within the company based on industry standards and best practices. Work on automated test suite for the web application. Support in manual testing

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Improved product quality, less bugs, faster release times.

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

Tooploox were very quick to respond to any queries or requests we had. They delivered on time and were a good fit for our existing company culture

What was your primary form of communication with Tooploox?

Virtual Meeting

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

The Tooploox team would go above and beyond of what was required.

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

Not really.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of a startup. We are a two-sided national entertainment marketplace that helps organizers book talent for live performances and appearances using one consistent and easy digital platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Tooploox?

To consult with us on implementing payment processor - Stripe.

SOLUTION

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

They were part of our Techstars program!

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

We are pre-revenue so we need to have Stripe implemented to process payments and all that goes along with that.

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

Kinga is main contact, but I've spoken with a couple of architects and developers as well.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The consultation was very thorough. Now we have to focus on implementation

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Workflow is good

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

The team is very smart and they are really well-versed at working with startups.

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

No