Wayfare

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Progress development manager of TVH Parts

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

TVH Parts is a global one-stop shop for parts and accessories for material handling, industrial, construction, and agricultural equipment, including a vast range of forklift parts, and also offers services like electronics repair and training.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Wayfare to accomplish?
Progress development team augmentation

SOLUTION

How did you find Wayfare?

• Online Search
• Referral

Why did you select Wayfare over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Wayfare were assigned to this project?

14

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

30+ year old monolithic bespoke (Progress OpenEdge) ERP solution with > 10 000 000 lines of code. SVN Mono repo with bespoke CI CD pipeline - average of 500 commits/month - 1 300 files modified/month. 11.7 - actively migrating to 12.8.

13 Product Squads working in an agile way. 
Hybrid operating model that combines the strengths of internal and external resources.

Availability KPI of 98.3%

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Output: Stories & story points delivered
• Success: quantity, while also looking at defects after release

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

Project management & planning is handled on our side, so not applicable

What was your primary form of communication with Wayfare?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The seamless integration of resources in our product teams allows us to truly consider the developers as one of our own. The stability of the team on the Wayfare side helps a lot.

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

Sadly, the company's geographical location and resources make it challenging for the teams to meet in person. But we try to bring a small delegation from Romania to Belgium at least once per year.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of product at ClubReady, a full-service provider of boutique health club software solutions. We work on everything from point of sale to analytics to payroll.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Wayfare?

We were looking for someone to implement our UI designs. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Wayfare is building our UI in React, following Figma wireframes from another vendor. They are connecting the new features to our backend API, and they’ve been developing the updates from scratch. Currently, they’re working on our scheduling application. 

What is the team composition?

We work with four developers and a project manager. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent close to $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since August 2021, and our relationship is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Wayfare’s development output has been good, and I don’t have any complaints about it. The project is complex and requires them to interface with another development team — overall, they’re excellent to work with. I’m 100% satisfied with their services, and they’ve exceeded my expectations. 

How did Wayfare perform from a project management standpoint?

Wayfare is great at project management, and they deliver their work on time. We communicate through Zoom and Slack. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Wayfare’s expertise in React development is impressive. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Although there’s room for improvement on Wayfare’s speed, they’re generally good to work with.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have Wayfare involved from the beginning of the project, and make them work on good UX designs. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm product director at NewCold, a fast-growing advanced automated warehouse and cold chain logistics company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Wayfare?

We needed support for our hybrid development team in developing our proprietary warehouse management system (WMS).

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Wayfare supports our hybrid development team in developing our proprietary WMS based on Progress OpenEdge. The team has helped us with the realization of sprint goals, the implementation of new features, and the transformation of the GUI to a web-based UI. The team has also developed various logistics solutions to enable our warehouses to work more efficiently and with higher quality.

What is the team composition?

We work with 2–5 teammates from Wayfare.

How did you come to work with Wayfare?

NewCold was already working with Wayfare when I joined the company.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Wayfare in September 2023, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Wayfare has delivered additional non-functional modules, such as a logging module, and many functional modules that have had a direct business impact. We've also seen improvements in our team's velocity, happiness scores, and business feedback.

How did Wayfare perform from a project management standpoint?

Wayfare's project management is great. The collaboration within the team is strong, and Ovidiu is exceptional. He empowers the team effectively while maintaining a deep, continuous, and contextual awareness of what is happening across all activities. Unlike managers who rely on frequent passive verification, he consistently demonstrates a complete and accurate overview of the team's work. This level of situational awareness is exceptional and unprecedented in my professional experience.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Wayfare's technical proficiency across the entire team is very strong. The team clearly demonstrates that Progress OpenEdge is far from obsolete and remains a powerful and effective technology. In addition, Wayfare's engagement with our efforts to reshape the way of working and the software development lifecycle is constructive, positive, and highly productive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Although we don't expect this to be fully in place from the start, there's a noticeable difference in cultural style regarding directness, given that we're a Dutch company. I'm sure this can be improved through continued engagement in open, positive, and appropriately confrontational discussions that focus on improving outcomes for the team and organization as a whole.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Itris delivers web-based ERP software for social housing corporations in the Netherlands.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Wayfare?

We needed Wayfare to help us develop a new and innovative part of our application, which required both backend and frontend knowledge that we didn’t have in our own organization.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Wayfare helped us create an application to collect late payments from tenants and help employees get insights into the number of late payments and the amount of debt. The application contained a dashboard, filterable action list, and a custom-built timeline on which the user could plan future actions. The application could create and send letters through third-party services and store all necessary results in the core ERP, both for an individual as well as in bulk.

Wayfare implemented a dashboard, filterable action list in both list form and Kanban form, a page to follow the individual debt collection process, KPI dashboard, creating and sending letters and emails in bulk, sending payment links, and settings pages to customize the process per customer.

Currently, one backend developer is still working with us to maintain the application and help us modernize other parts of the ERP.

What is the team composition?

At most, four developers from Wayfare were assigned to the project at a time, with a project lead checking in once in a while.

How did you come to work with Wayfare?

We found Wayfare through our network. Our previous manager of innovation was an acquaintance of Wayfare’s owner. We chose Wayfare because of their good references and the direct contact we had with the management.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2022, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We used agile methodologies with sprint goals to track progress for the features. Success was measured in features delivered. The most significant ones were custom features like the flexible timeline with the customizable default process steps, the creation and sending of the letters, and the bulk functionalities.

How did Wayfare perform from a project management standpoint?

Wayfare colleagues were part of the team, which also had developers on our side. As such, the project management happened on our side. The Wayfare team members definitely respond well to our needs and act as in-house developers.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m very impressed with the fact that Wayfare team members always felt like a part of the team and acted as such, being critical when needed and thinking along when solutions were needed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there weren’t any.