111 Minutes

What was the scope of their involvement?

111 Minutes helped us with our cloud solution. CiraSync is a server that manages your accounts, and it is used to synchronize accounts, calendars, files, folders, and all the other stuff for big organizations. Whenever someone in the organization of 10,000 people changes a phone number or home address, it is securely synchronized across the board and every other person in the company has the updated information on their iPhone or Android device.

The three major features were: browsing for available public folders, synchronizing the GAL [Global Address List] to user’s iPhone contacts, and working with advanced calendars. All of the events in these features were synchronized as well. We did group browsing for contact profiles.

The scope was planned initially very carefully. They took into account all of the risks and the pressing time. We were sending progress reports that included task stages, bug reports, and what was left to do. We also have weekly demos when some functionality was already tested by their team, and ready to implement. The process was smooth because of that.

What is the team dynamic?

There was the iOS developer, the backend developer, the project manager, and the QA. It was really easy because it wasn’t a big project, but we still had to deliver really fast. They delivered and the team was really manageable with 4 people. They did everything as promised. I was the acceptance manager above our project manager. I wasn’t involved in the day to day operation, but I was involved in all of the acceptance criteria. Whenever they were releasing something each week, I was present during those calls and demos.

How did you come to work with 111 Minutes?

Our project manager and some tech leads in our company heard about 111 Minutes before; we also have the Ukrainian office. They heard they were competent and we did some preliminary search on a website. They checked their reviews. We had a few calls with them and they sounded confident and professional. It’s always difficult to find the right vendor. For this task, we were lucky enough that our team had preliminary knowledge about a company. We had them on our radar initially, and we also looked at a couple of bigger companies. We decided to go with a smaller company because it was a boutique experience. We knew that we would get a small team and the team would be dedicated and the guys would be driven. We decided to go with this approach rather than going to a bigger company that has all the bureaucracy and process in place and would probably take forever to complete this. It’s not huge, but it’s a very precisely planned project.

How much have you invested with them?

$9,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2017 and finished in May.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We made a detailed spec in-house using our own developers, designers, and managers. They outlined our vision and created some wireframes. We wrote out in pretty good detail what we wanted and passed it on to 111 Minutes. After we gave the specs, 111 Minutes provided specific cost and timeline estimations. They also gave feedback, questions, and suggestions about the product.

The biggest functionality of our platform is that it would let users find peers by region and based on the chronic illnesses they suffer from. 111 Minutes helped us sort out how users could filter by location and condition, making it a clean UI [user interface] experience. With an app, there isn’t that much space for poking around, but they followed the rule of having only one feature per page.

They also suggested moving forward with an MVP [minimum viable product] on iOS. They put together a basic version of the application as well as a website mockup, both of which we liked. We decided to move forward not only with a full-fledged iOS app but also an Android one.

When we started, I was introduced to my counterpart from 111 Minutes. I believe that we worked with 5 full-time developers, some of whom may have been rotated during crunch times. We had 1 Java developer, 1 for iOS, a couple of Ruby on Rails developers, and a designer who also did frontend work.

How did you come to work with 111 Minutes?

We started asking our friends in the tech world who were facing similar challenges. Everyone has a horror story about outstaffing and outsourcing. After we sent requests for proposal to around 15 companies, one of our tech people brought in the name 111 Minutes.

111 Minutes was the strongest in terms of open communication and past work. We were surprised by how open they were. I’d worked with other companies where everyone said “yes” to everything and failed to deliver on it. 111 Minutes was open to telling us when an expectation could be challenging and if we should reorient our timeframe. Whenever there was a roadblock, they were upfront about it. They explained to us what the situation was and how they intended to resolve it. We use the Agile methodology in-house and felt that they were taking that ethic to the vendor-employer relationship.

How much have you invested with 111 Minutes?

So far, the cost of their work has been around $60,000–$65,000. We’ve been meeting our budgets, and we are happy with what we have. We’ve blown money before on providers who couldn’t deliver as well as on people who low-balled the estimate as a trick to get us to sign on.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with 111 Minutes in June 2016. We haven’t launched it yet, but the web, Android, and iOS apps are complete. We want to publicize the platform and make sure that we have enough users in place at the autumn launch. There is still some ongoing collaboration with 111 Minutes, but I’ve moved on to a different project so I can’t give specifics.