10Clouds

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

They are very professional and they deliver what they promise and even a bit more. I had not expected that good of a result because the contract said that the web pages would be a low-fidelity mockup. I had understood that as something low quality, but it is actually good. Although there are no visuals on it, it is still fairly okay so I do not think they promised too much. I am actually surprised at how much I got.

The interface is now more convenient and easier to use. At this point, we can ask beta testers to have a look at it. Another month of work is needed before we can release and charge for it. But so far, what we have been delivered is what we were expecting.

How did 10Clouds perform from a project management standpoint?

We had several Skype meetings with 10Clouds once or twice a week. It was mostly with the project manager, but the other staff was also present. We also had discussions over their messaging system so that we could chat during the day. The UX developer had another system for showing me how he envisioned the platform. It was very convenient because he could make mockups of how the different web pages should look like. Then, I could come in and comment on them. They used JIRA, which made it easy for them to track who is doing what. It also allowed me to share data and see their progress. They also used other platforms for efficiently managing the work and communicating with us.

What did you most impressive about 10Clouds?

I appreciated the fact that it was the CTO and the CEO that I met with. They understood the project and were enthusiastic about the work. Other companies would assign a salesperson to meet with me; they did not know that much about the underlying technologies such as cloud-based services. I thought it was time-consuming for the CTO and CEO to meet with potential customers, making me unsure about hiring them. Being at 10Clouds was a really good experience for me because I got to talk to somebody who knew a lot and was not just a salesperson.

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

10Clouds has a very powerful team, with young, fresh, and innovative developers. I've liked working with them very much. 10Clouds is professional, with good knowledge, but they're also trying new things in order to get the job done.

I've appreciated our constant interaction process with 10Clouds. We've discussed problems together, finding the best solution, instead of 10Clouds simply executing our requests. They're in touch with the latest market trends and technology.

How did 10Clouds perform from a project management standpoint?

10Clouds delivered the work on time and within the expected budget. We initially used Slack, but I prefer to communicate via email, Skype, Google Hangouts, and phone. We also use Jira, Confluence, and InVision.

What did you find most impressive about 10Clouds?

I have no comparison points, given that I haven't worked deep in the app and web development spaces. I have worked for a big consulting company, and am used to projects in general. In this sense, 10Clouds' team was very focused, with a good feeling for timing and the workload, as well as for planning in general. 10Clouds has a positive attitude towards making anything possible.

Are there any areas 10Clouds could improve?

Not at the moment.

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

The product delivered by 10Clouds was mostly well-received. We often talk to customers who've had experience with one of our competing solutions. They've told us that our platform is fast in comparison. In general, I'd say that 10Clouds has provided a good implementation of our needs and their code was more-or-less spot-on. They've also been able to deliver quickly.

How did 10Clouds perform from a project management standpoint?

In the beginning, our definitions were a bit vague and weren't formulated in order to extrapolate what we actually wanted. So, the collaboration with 10Clouds didn't always work out. I've seen improvements in the last months as I've been able to communicate better with 10Clouds on how engineering is handled. We've worked closely together in order to improve the engineering infrastructure. It was a give-and-take process.

We collaborate with 10Clouds using Jira, Confluence and GitHub. Slack is also used for communication on a short-term basis. 10Clouds also provides server monitoring tools for us. We augment these with Trello on our side, which is used more for business aspects and long-term planning. Whenever something is ready for engineering, the card will be moved from Trello to Jira.

What did you find most impressive about 10Clouds?

One of the most positive things I can say is that they are eager to improve certain aspects of their business in order to make our lives easier. Whenever something doesn't work out as expected, we can communicate with 10Clouds. They offer solutions and try to improve the way in which they do things. For example, bug handling has improved, reducing the amount of communication which needs to occur. We've also established a good release process with 10Clouds. There were no surprises in our collaboration with 10Clouds, though I was sometimes irritated by certain issues. Given that I've worked with and for other providers, I'd say that there was nothing about 10Clouds which was considerably worse than the average.

Are there any areas 10Clouds could improve?

One thing which can still be improved would be the release process for mobile applications. It was an area where we expected 10Clouds to have answers. I found that 10Clouds engineered our app and then handed it to another party for the necessary housekeeping for an app store launch. I am familiar with server and iOS releases, but my experience is more on the enterprise side. 

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Our project is research-funded, so our budget is renewed on a yearly basis. The fact that we've had our funding renewed year after year means that the funder is pleased with what we're producing. This is the best measure of success, in my opinion.

I've come to default to 10Clouds for any project that requires development work, whether it's a large-scale one or we just need to throw up a website. 10Clouds is very fast, responsive and easy to work with. They have many in-house members who can cover a full range of things so, whenever we need to do a lot of back-end Python, Django, HTML or CSS development, 10Clouds will assign us resources who are experienced with the various tools that we are using. Whenever we needed to rethink a prototype from a design perspective, 10Clouds gave us a designer. There's been much flexibility on their part.

We had used other companies in the past, but 10Clouds was much better in terms of communication, and they produced good work. 10Clouds has actually rewritten a lot of the code produced by other people because it simply wasn't very good. It's not just that I've been happy with their work on our current projects, but they've done a better job than the people who worked on our previous projects.

How did 10Clouds perform from a project management standpoint?

Being a professor of computer science, I'm probably different to most customers. I had no problems managing the team from 10Clouds. I am very hands-on with them and probably know the code base as well, if not better than 10Clouds. I've been involved in the project since conception, whereas new developers from 10Clouds will come in every year. We don't work with 10Clouds based on estimates that they're supposed to stick to. We have a collaborative process. If anything takes longer to complete, it won't be a huge surprise because I understand why it's taking longer. For what we've been able to build, 10Clouds has been a very cost-effective solution. They do good work quickly and aren't very expensive.

We use JIRA for project tracking. We also have weekly calls using Google Hangouts, and we use Slack for communication.

What distinguishes 10Clouds from other providers?

I have frequent contact with 10Clouds's CEO [Maciej Cielecki], who reaches out to me just to see how things are going. Whenever I have a problem, I can contact him. He's been hands-on whenever we needed it and left us alone for the rest of the time. With any software project that goes on for this long, not everything will turn out right. I've always felt that we were able to sit down with 10Clouds and work any problems out, which gave me a lot of confidence in their judgment and abilities. When a developer says that a certain approach is the right way to do it, I will trust them. This is something that took a long time to develop.

Is there anything 10Clouds could have improved or done differently?

Through the years, there have been improvements that I've pushed to 10Clouds, including being more communicative with me about what's going on. This was because I was treated the same as most clients, who don't necessarily care about what library was being used, or what the right way or restructuring code was. I'm very involved, so I've encouraged 10Clouds to keep me in the loop about those things, and they have. There have been around half a dozen developers assigned to our projects through the years. The people working with us now are the best ones since the project started, so I'm very happy with 10Clouds at this moment. A new developer has been assigned to us today, and I'm excited about this. She seems to be very good. I think that we will continue to improve our efficiency.

I manage research labs and am looking for new funding. When I find it, I intend to give it to 10Clouds for them to do the work.