Volare Software

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of ValueWest, Inc. We do real estate appraisal work.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Volare Systems?

We needed to rewrite our web app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They built the app with a model-view-controller (MVC) pattern and an ASP.NET framework.

We had a whole list of improvements we wanted to make and they helped us accomplish everything. One of our biggest priority Then we wanted to add more flexibility to some of the grids. We launched filtering capabilities once the data was returned.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with Joe (Owner & President) directly and a developer assisted him.

How did you come to work with Volare Systems?

I wanted to work with a local company with a background similar to what I wanted to do. I met with Joe and we reviewed our existing application. We discussed what we were trying to accomplish and came up with a plan. Their portfolio demonstrated that they had the skill set we needed to meet our goals.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from June–November 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project has been very successful. Through no fault of theirs, we’re still struggling to launch certain aspects of the backend. However, I’m completely satisfied with their work and my customers are really happy with it.

How did Volare Systems perform from a project management standpoint?

They use Trello, email, and phone calls to communicate with us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They made suggestions to help us improve the platform. They pointed out details that I hadn’t thought about and what the benefits could be. It made for a better application.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing I would expect them to improve on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Listen to them and learn from their experience. They were able to provide valuable insight into how we could improve our platform.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of process engineering at Amerit Fleet Solutions. We’re a nationwide maintenance and repair provider for fleets across various enterprises. I manage a team in our IT department.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Volare Systems?

We hired Volare Systems to help us improve some of our business processes.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Volare Systems is working with us to automate data transfers between our in-house fleet management system and the third-party systems that our clients use. Our current system is primarily a repository of maintenance and repair histories for each of our vehicles. Their team is building a software solution that will use this data for invoices and other documentation. They’re also integrating several APIs to facilitate various other interactions.

Additionally, they’ve provided consulting in terms of translating content between systems. The team guided us in identifying the right kind of interface to use and setting up administration functionalities. They also created a notification process to help us resolve issues with internal clients.

What is the team composition?

They’ve assigned two software developers to our project. One of them, in particular, I work with very closely. I also communicate frequently with Joe (President, Volare Systems).

How did you come to work with Volare Systems?

I’d previously worked with Joe and his team while I was at another firm. We’d partnered with Volare Systems for several years on a complex project that also included software development. During that previous engagement, Joe and his team were very collaborative and showed a vested interest in providing innovative solutions and ideas.

When I started in my present role, I decided to reach out to Joe because I had that history with him and I knew how he operated. I also felt like he could read my mind when it came to addressing our business problems. Choosing him and his team was a no-brainer.

How much have you invested with them?

At this point, we’ve spent around $80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We officially hired them in January 2019, and the project is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Unfortunately, we’re dealing with some issues from the third-party side, so the solution is still in production. That being said, they’ve been able to build components quickly, and we’re now well aware of their development capabilities. We’re looking forward to pursuing future projects with them.

How did Volare Systems perform from a project management standpoint?

We’re very happy with their workflow. They use Kanban to manage scheduling and task assignments.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team is almost embedded within our team, and they’ve been able to thoroughly understand our business. We get the sense that Volare Systems is invested in our success and will continue to deliver high-quality work. Their team is always thinking ahead, frequently presenting creative ideas and solutions. That’s a hard thing to ask of a vendor, and they do it intuitively.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Off the top of my head, I can’t think of much that they could improve. They could work to preemptively suggest solutions before engaging with clients. For example, they could put together mockups so that future clients can see their ideas before the project begins.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the lead software developer at Optis. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Volare Systems?

Volare Systems came in as a full-stack developer to help us upgrade our main product line. We wanted to bring in new coding skills and methodologies to revamp our core platform, which was 10 years old. The site is for managing workers compensation, accidents that happen to employees, and long or short-term disability claims. As a record source, it manages absence data for staff members.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Volare Systems started by organizing the UX/UI and setting up the fundamental pages for user security, administration, and management. Their mentality was to keep it structured and straightforward at first and expand later. They sat in on our design meetings and established the groundwork for functionality. 

Our company uses the .NET stack, and Volare Systems contributed the Microsoft MBC knowledge to build a Kendo framework, which is a JavaScript jQuery library. The model has a three-tiered architecture with separate layers for the UI, business, and data access. Everything is based on a SQL server. Requests to access data go through an Ajax API call that connects to the backend system. 

The owner is easy to talk to and a great teacher. He spent a week training another developer and me. We got our team of 3-4 developers up to speed within a week. After they showed us how to write it, we could apply the design across the entire site. Including grids, buttons, and lists gave our core grid a sleek and consistent look. 

Rather than read-only reporting, our site involves a lot of data entry and input. They used a Knockout JavaScript add-on to keep track of the state of forms. When users fill in one of the many forms on our website, it keeps track of changes as they type. An Entity Framework handles all the forms' create, repeat, update, and delete (CRUD) operations.

What is the team composition? 

We only interacted with Joe (Owner and President, Volare Systems), who worked with another systems architect. 

How did you come to work with Volare Systems?

My boss and I found Volare Systems through a recruiting company who reached out to them for us. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $75 an hour for about 40 hours a week for eight months, which totaled roughly around $80,000. We took some time off for holidays. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from August 2014–March 2015. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Volare Systems offers full stack development, but frontend is where they really shine. Drawing from their extensive knowledge, they showed us how to use brand new technology. They have an excellent method and program clean, common sense code that's well-organized and doesn't include any fluff. The design is sleek and has a great UX. They brought in useful tools and a design mentality for the UI side. 

Even though it was a replacement upgrade, we also touted it as a new product. We set up all our new clients in the system and are slowly migrated our existing ones over. Volare Systems built our site to handle an astronomical number of users. Our clientele includes major corporations from the shipping and energy industries. With hundreds of thousands of employees, they could have thousands of workers out on leave daily because of injury. Out of 50 companies, there are probably 1,300 people on our site simultaneously at any given moment. When I left the company, it was highly used and performing well.

How did Volare Systems perform from a project management standpoint?

It was just perfect. Volare Systems used an iterative, Agile methodology as we went through the software development cycles. Since this was four years ago, we hadn't even used Agile yet. They had the expertise to adapt it to our company culture and needs. I never had to worry about staying on track. They finished almost all our projects on time and helped lead meetings during different phases.

Joe was great at communicating the project status and was honest about roadblocks. He didn't shy away from cranking through tasks that required extra time. He even found time to help others while still working late at night to finish up his. We needed close attention, so he worked in our office every day and gave him a desk and a keycard. At some point, he just felt like part of the company. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I can't stress enough about how good Joe is at communicating and working with many different types of people. Personality wise, he is patient and professional, even with junior developers. Our president, CEO, and project owner raved about him. I'm currently at another company, and all the developers know him. He is a thought leader for the Microsoft stack in Denver. On his blog, he writes a lot of posts about new technologies and projects.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Our project was four years ago, so they might be a bit more experienced now. The architect had strong opinions about her approach. Joe commented that the architecture was overly complicated, but his role wasn't to combat that. It felt textbook, included pieces we didn't need and didn’t consider the actual user size. I don't think anyone could have; the architect was pretty stubborn about her designs. Finding a way to voice those concerns would have been helpful. They might have talked because things changed a bit at the end. It ultimately didn't turn out to be an issue.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the former CIO of a public-school district in Colorado. One of my main responsibilities was overseeing the activities of our development team.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Volare Systems?

Our academic leadership wanted to implement an innovative curriculum management system. After conducting an extensive RFP process, we were unable to find an off-the-shelf solution that would meet our needs, so we hired Volare to build a custom, web-based platform that supported the business requirements of our academic customers.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Volare partnered with a business analyst to gather data and information on the requirements for our custom software, then relayed them to the development team. Their team handled development throughout the entire project cycle.

They started with programming the application and designing the browser interface, then worked on a recommendation feature at allowed teachers to share, rate, and comment on valuable in-classroom and teaching content.

What is the team composition?

Volare provided resources on a task-by-task basis. I estimate the team size ranged from five to ten developers for each stage.

How did you come to work with Volare Systems?

In our competitive proposal process for locating a qualified software development partner, the Volare team brought the most compelling response to the table. We selected Volare because we liked their agile development approach, and we were reasonably confident that they could deliver.

How much have you invested with them?

If I recall, we spent around $800,000 on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them for one year, July 2011—July 2012.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The curriculum solution received notable national attention from thought leaders at other districts who were participating with us in a $100 million initiative with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York that sought to build technology systems that would improve academic outcomes for students. Our peers from the districts who were participating with us in the initiative were impressed by the visionary nature of the curriculum solution.

In terms of the development process, the Volare team met nearly all of the designated milestones. There were some challenges stemming from the difficulty of helping the customer understand realistic expectations for project timelines, as often occurs in complex custom software projects.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Building a custom software solution from the ground-up is always a complicated and demanding process. For the most part, Volare did a solid job of translating business requirements into a solution that gained wide acceptance among the educators at our district and that earned national kudos for the compelling nature of the solution.

Are there any areas they could improve?

As with most software development houses, they could be more careful about understanding the scope of the project and adjusting their workflow and price accordingly. This was their first project in this field, and I expect that this type of wisdom will come with experience.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior technical process manager at a Fortune 50 company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Volare Systems?

We had a client-server system that we needed to make into a more mobile platform so our people could use it out in the field. We also wanted a platform that was built on a newer architecture and coding language.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They built the new system in HTML 5 and ensured that it was compatible with our current system, so that we could use the same SQL database architecture. They also use cloud architecture, in partnership with another company, to make sure that they meet our storage capacity. 

What is the team composition?

In the very beginning, we only had a couple of resources, but we had five and a half when we ramped up, with the half resource being a tester.

How did you come to work with Volare Systems?

Our original provider reached out to them after they didn’t have the coding experience or skillset needed for our project, so it wasn’t a direct relationship. We’ve gone on to work with them for years after that though.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $2.5 million so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them three years ago.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They've delivered a tremendous amount of code with every release, and they’ve documented those releases with our other third-party vendor. Their system has ingrained efficiencies that were based on our business requirements. They’ve been easy to work with and they've consistently delivered what we’ve asked of them throughout the three years we’ve worked together.

How did Volare Systems perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve used a couple of different Agile project management systems since they've been with us – we’re using Kanban right now. They keep the boards up to date with the projects that are currently underway so we can see any open requirement or coding questions that we need to answer.

We’re quite hands off after we give them something, but it works. They’ll give us updates as to where it stands in the pipeline, but other than that, they’ll just deliver it back to us. They meet due dates when they have the required information – when they don’t it’s due to a delay on our part. I've been very pleased with their overall project management style and their actual delivery.

What did you find most impressive about them?

One of their fortés is quickly adapting to whatever scenario they're in. For example, they didn't know our core business when they were contracted to help us with this project, but they learned it very quickly – the terminology, the business problems that needed to be solved, and the architecture that was already in place that they'd have to interface with. They were in a continual learning mode throughout the project, and their learning rate is quite rapid. This means I don’t have to explain the same thing more than once.

After they’d been working with us for a year, they started to bring us ideas that the industry was pushing forward that they thought we’d benefit from. They go above and beyond what we ask of them to do, which I appreciate. They love determining how else they can help a business. They also let us know when they think a project doesn’t make sense, especially when it comes to UX issues. They provide both guidance and alternate options, which is nice if you’re not savvy about available technology.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of any off the top of my head. They were scalable, which helped us - if we had a lower budget, they were willing to scale back or up as needed. I just don't have a lot of negative things to say about the interaction.