7Devs

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Product & Project Manager for Digital Mosaic Corp. Mosaic provides carwash owners, from independent operators to national chains, with an industry-leading digital software platform to run their carwash business on. Our cloud-based platform helps wash operators make more money, clean more cars, and ensure the best outcome of all — a consistent convoy of happy customers.

For what projects/services did your company hire 7Devs?

We hired 7Devs to build the mobile app (iOS and Android) components of our software offering.

What were your goals for this project?

Our business model revolves largely around providing our various clients with a custom, white-labeled, mobile app for their carwash operators. We set out to build a mobile app codebase that could be quickly and easily duplicated, reskinned, and deployed for new clients. 7Devs enthusiastically accepted the challenge and delivered an incredibly flexible and robust solution.

How did you select 7Devs?

I was not working for Mosaic at the time when the partnership with 7Devs was started, but my understanding is that our CTO had worked on previous projects with them and had a great experience.

Describe the project in detail.

We set out to build a mobile app codebase that could be quickly and easily duplicated, reskinned, and deployed for new clients. Early on in the project, we spent a lot of time in a "discovery phase", working with 7Devs to clearly outline and articulate our vision for the "white-labeling" structure.

Because 7Devs had never worked on a project like this before, they were very thorough in their process of acquiring a clear understanding of what our requirements were. The end product was a singular "master" codebase that we maintain and enhance with new features over time.

To build the apps for each of our carwash clients, be a branch off of this master codebase and spin up a new app with unique UI colors and branding. The content of each app (carwash locations, products, etc.) is dynamically controlled via our Admin Web-App and our API.

This formula has allowed us to create custom, white-labeled, iOS, and Android applications for over a dozen different clients across North America. In addition to the development of these mobile applications, 7Devs continues to provide us with development and QA services for the new features we constantly are building into the app.

What was the team composition?

When I transitioned into the role of Project Manager with Mosaic, I became the person on our team who was responsible for interfacing with the 7Devs team. At that time, the 7Devs team composition was: - 1 iOS dev - 1 Android dev - 1 QA tester Since then, we have brought on 1 additional QA tester to assist with the project.

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

The biggest success of this project was achieving a singular mobile app codebase that could be branched off of and white-labeled to any brand. This truly transformed our business and allowed us to pivot to a much more profitable and manageable model.

Today we estimate roughly 50k app downloads across our various clients. Furthermore, our app stands out in the industry as some of, if not THE best UX relative to any other carwash mobile apps on the market. Operators are constantly impressed by the simplicity, elegance, and quality of our app.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication is, without a doubt, one of the key strengths of 7Devs and the project managers that they employ. Even despite a major difference in native spoken languages, 7Devs employees speak eloquently and effectively (in English). This communication gives our team confidence and comfort as we rely on 7Devs for a significant portion of our software offering.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The pride they take in their work, their communication skills, and the quality of their QA testers.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We always hope for faster timelines, but we understand that 7Devs has a tried-and-tested process that they are committed to sticking to.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for Endanik, the parent company of Strings. Strings is a social media company for the publisher in all of us. It is an iOS app. We have a small team in the US and a small team in Ukraine. I’m the chief of staff for Endanik and the general manager in Strings.

What challenge were you trying to address with 7Devs?

In 2018, we were a pretty new app and we had a team in California. We were trying a bunch of different things to see what would stick for our app. We were looking for partners that were flexible. We needed a lot of help in developing our iOS social media. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had an iOS app that was very basic. They helped us develop all of our services. They created a desktop uploader because we had a lot of publishers who have tons of content on their computers.

We needed a way for someone to help us integrate features like the ability to send codes to a computer for phone users and upload pictures that would go back to the iOS version for the desktop users, too, so they've helped us.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with around 20 different people throughout the engagement. I personally work with their CTO and two iOS developers.

How did you come to work with 7Devs?

I wasn’t part of the company in 2018, so I wasn’t included in the process of choosing their team. However, we already had some developers in Ukraine, so that likely weighed into the consideration process.

Our team mentions that 7Devs is partner-focused and flexible, so those were some of the reasons we've continued to use them. They are willing to get the job done and take whatever role necessary.

Even when we had a bunch of engineers in California, 7Devs took the support position or back up role then, even though they had more experience. We ended up shiting and getting rid of some of our California team. 7Devs, along with our Ukraine team, ended up taking the lead role.

What is the status of this engagement?

It started in January 2018 and it is still ongoing.

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

The quality of their work is great. We have a very small team and when a project isn’t getting done we know it. We really think highly of our Ukraine team and they never have any problem with them, and they trust each other’s code. It is very rare for a development team to have to work with an outside agency and it is going well.

How did 7Devs perform from a project management standpoint?

The people I work with are basically the channel for us. Even though I am the project manager, they are doing a lot of hard work for me. They are very transparent about their deadlines. I don’t think I can recall any major deadlines they missed either.

They provide communication way ahead of the time on why we aren't going to hit a deadline. If there are some sort of issues or errors, it is communicated across the team so we are never surprised.

It has been a smooth process, they’ve been extremely flexible which is really important to any startup, especially in social media. No pushbacks, no fights, or anything like that has happened. They’ve just been partner-focused and are trying to get our objectives done.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are responsible and easy to work with. They are ethical partners, focused, and are willing to make things right.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only roadblock is that there are not a lot of English speakers.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

With 7Devs, they are the type of people that respond really well when you or your team is being direct. For example, when we give them directions, we tell them how it should look and what needs to be done. It is important to be very direct and don’t leave any loopholes or any open air.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Transchem is a leader in the vehicle washing industry, as a manufacturer of cleaning solutions and wash equipment. As Innovation Technical Manager, I oversee several hardware design projects.

For what projects/services did your company hire 7Devs, and what were your goals?

7Devs was contracted to develop a web portal for controlling a piece of IoT hardware being designed by Transchem.

How did you select 7Devs and what were the deciding factors?

7Devs has worked with other divisions of our company on several projects in the past. Their experience working with our industry has been highly valuable in getting our project off the ground.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

The scope of work included reworking a similar platform from a previous project to apply to our project. IoT communication was established to our hardware devices, and several control and reporting web pages were created. Key deliverable was a secure webpage allowing remote control and monitoring of several IoT devices. Work is based on the AWS platform, with most coding in javascript.

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

From a business perspective, we dealt directly with the CEO. We had a project manager assigned, along with 3 active developers working on various aspects of the project.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Too early to comment at this time.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

We had a weekly scheduled Zoom call to review milestones and collectively discuss issues. Ongoing communication was through both email and Monday.com.

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

7Devs has been committed to the success of this project, and have adjusted work hours to succeed while working with a 7 hour time difference from our company.

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

We have had some MINOR invoicing issues which have been addressed by 7Devs. These were related to proper job tags etc... being referenced on invoices etc...

Please describe your company and your position there.

KONEKT ApS is an IoT company that helps our customers develop smart interactive solutions that digitize or improve their ongoing businesses. Often we are brought on to projects that need to be connected to the users, a cloud, and some devices. We help bind these together.

For what projects/services did your company hire 7Devs?

We hire 7Devs for app development and light cloud development tasks. We cooperated on native IOS and Android apps.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal for the wusaa project was and still is to make an incredible and easy to use app that gives the user the best possible experience with our product.

How did you select this vendor?

We have worked with 7Devs on around 5 projects. They are reliable, and professional team that delivers what they promise with quality and on time.

Describe the project in detail.

The project contains a hardware device, that sits in the from the window of your car, and in countries where a "parking watch" is required to set the time of parking, this is done automatically. wusaa is the first product in the world to combine this with a mobile phone and automated app parking.

What was the team composition?

We had a project manager on our side, and on 7Devs side, and one app developer. On the konekt team, we have several team members that did graphics and specifications.

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

We are now left with a very nice app that connects via Bluetooth to our device and uses a triggering ending to decide on whether the user is parked or not. On top of that, we have a driver's log information ending build from the app side to deliver precise trip calculations for the user.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our workflow was very effective, we use zeplin to share graphics and Jira to share tickets. The teams did daily scrum meetings to keep the time schedule on track.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The team at 7Devs is very professional and always goes above and beyond to deliver the best possible result. I'm impressed with their skills.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Most of the team members are great at English and during our projects this improved a lot. But some of the team members could improve on the English, I suggest taking all seasons of big bang theory with out subtitles or dubbing ;o) Another point is on QA, it would be great to have more QA resources available to kick around the products.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a director of Afterwords, a new business with a focus on providing online services that help people better prepare for their future.

For what projects/services did your company hire 7Devs?

We had previously been working with another software development company to develop the first release of our mobile app, based upon React Native. Unfortunately that company went out of business when our project was not yet completed.

What were your goals for this project?

At the time we were seeking a new developer, the app was about 75% complete. While the user interface, general flow and back end were in place, the solution was buggy and some initial user testing had revealed a number of usability issues. We were therefore looking to the incoming team to address the defects, while helping us with redesigns and new feature implementations.

How did you select this vendor?

We were seeking a development team with proven experience in mobile app development, especially in ReactNative . We had met the 7Devs team when we had done our original evaluation of possible vendors and had been impressed by their professionalism and by their CEO, though ultimately we selected another company.

When that other company was later unable to continue the project, we approached Alex to discuss the situation and were able to quickly come up with a way forward.

Describe the project in detail.

We first had a discovery phase, during which time the 7Devs team reviewed the code, specifications, wireframes and backlog. A new backlog was identified, scoped, sized and costed, after which we ran a series of 4-6 week iterations, over the course of around 18 months.

During this time there were a number of design changes, leading to rescoping of some elements of the solution. The solution included mobile apps for iOS and Android, using ReactNative. User and acceptance testing was done by our team. We used Jira to assist with coordination of the project activities.

What was the team composition?

7Devs had a PM and a ReactNative developer. We had a separate arrangement with another developer, who was responsible for the backend .

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

When 7Devs indicated to us that they were going to move away from ReactNative development, we were able to come to a mutually agreeable close-out of the engagement.

The 7Devs teams were able to meet all of their obligations, building quality code and helping us get our application to a fit state for the final component, In App Purchasing. (IAP was never part of the scope of works with 7Devs.)

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The 7Devs PM was very effective in working with the extended team, coordinating resources and issues well. They used Jira to manage the tasks and interactions, which proved very helpful. Though they are an offshore team, we never had any language issues.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

7Devs are a very professional, well-organized and competent team.

Are there any areas for improvement?

If they offered ReactNative and IAP development we would be very happy to continue to work with them!

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of an on-demand healthcare platform. Consumers use our app to book caregivers and other healthcare professionals.

What challenge were you trying to address with 7Devs?

We built an MVP with another company, but we were looking for a more experienced firm to take the project to the next level.

What was the scope of their involvement?

7Devs took our MVP and delivered a fully functional platform using Ruby on Rails and React. In addition to developing an online enterprise platform, they built out an application for both iOS and Android. I wouldn’t say that the platform is finalized, but it’s able to onboard clients, book appointments, and support payment transactions.

Some of the key features provided by 7Devs include search functionality, the ability for users to extend existing bookings, and geofencing integration. They enhanced the system’s booking functionality further by linking interactions between the web platform and mobile app.

What is the team composition?

They allocated 5–8 resources depending on the project’s complexity. That includes front– and backend developers for both iOS and Android. They assigned QA resources as well. One of their project managers led the engagement.

How did you come to work with 7Devs?

They were referred to us by one of the developers from our previous provider. We were in conversations with 7Devs for several months to make sure they could handle our project.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent close to $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our involvement with them took place from July 2016–July 2018.

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

They delivered a market-ready product with a stable codebase. Since then, we’ve been able to onboard tens of thousands of clients to the platform. It currently hosts thousands of active caregivers to meet that demand.

How did 7Devs perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated with them frequently. In addition to regularly scheduled scrum meetings, we shared project documentation through Jira. Their transparency was critical to the project’s success.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We have the ability escalate project initiatives and communicate with their CEO directly. Most technology companies won’t let their clients go higher than a project manager when it comes to voicing concerns. Also, they utilize a hands-on process that’s more akin to the experience provided by smaller companies. In that way, they treated us like a valued partner.

Are there any areas they could improve?

7Devs should focus on becoming more client-centric.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

New clients should spend time with the 7Devs team to ensure everyone has a detailed understanding of the project’s requirements.

Introduce your business and what you do there. 

I’m the co-founder and CTO of an app-based IoT company in the carwash industry. Our apps can communicate with a piece of hardware to activate a carwash.

What challenge were you trying to address with 7Devs? 

We had originally developed a hybrid carwash app but decided to move to native versions. Since we didn’t have the technical capacity in-house, we outsourced the development to 7Devs.

What was the scope of their involvement? 

They built native Android and iOS apps from scratch using Kotlin Android and Swift respectively. Both apps had rather complex systems with numerous high-level features, so 7Devs created a UI to accommodate that. The team then incorporated basic e-commerce elements, integrated a membership and loyalty program, and fleshed out the user management authentication system. Since launching the apps, they’ve transitioned into more of a support and maintenance role.

What is the team composition?  

The team fluctuates depending on the amount of work we have. We typically work with a project manager, an Android developer, an iOS developer, and a QA specialist. At our highest, we worked with three Android developers, three iOS developers, and two QA specialists along with a designer as needed. 

How did you come to work with 7Devs? 

We found 7Devs through a referral after reaching out to a number of companies. A colleague a had worked with them before and recommended them to me, so that was an important factor when considering them.

How much have you invested with them? 

We’ve spent over $100,000 so far. During development, our average spend was between $5,000–$10,000 per month, but there were times when we would pay more or less. The most we’ve paid was about $16,000–$17,000 per month.

What is the status of this engagement? 

We’ve worked together since September 2017, and it's an ongoing engagement. It’s been a lot of hard work, and they’ve pushed through.

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

Both apps have been a huge success. It’s rare for a bug to make it into production because 7Devs has such a thorough QA process. As a result, we get a lot of compliments on the stability of the apps with virtually no customer tech complaints. This has saved us a ton of money since we don’t have to allocate significant resources to answer phones and handle tech support.

How did 7Devs perform from a project management standpoint?

One of the traits that I’ve enjoyed the most is their organization. They manage projects really well and communicate often. We interface on a daily basis, but they also provide weekly progress updates. I appreciate that they’re not afraid to inform us if there’s an issue—whether it’s because the timeline is in jeopardy or if we’re facing scope creep. Their English skills are strong, too.

What did you find most impressive about them? 

Their development skills are obviously excellent. They have an outstanding QA process, providing virtually bug-free software. Strong project management also makes them stand out. 

Are there any areas they could improve? 

No, I can't think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s essential to be very clear about what you need them to do because 7Devs is responsible enough not to start development without comprehensive project requirements. I’ve found that it can take a long time for all of us to be on the same page in terms of what we’re building when I’m not being clear. This forces me to do my due diligence upfront and make sure that everything is in order.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product design manager at Greenwave Systems, an IoT company that creates B2B products.

What challenge were you trying to address with 7Devs?

We were struggling to find development resources in Denmark for various projects. It’s a demanding area at the moment.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve engaged with 7Devs on five projects. There have been several iOS projects and one Android product. We have built graphic interfaces, and their team implements them. Currently, we’re working on WAVELY, an IoT SIM card product. Since we’re on our own telco, we sell connectivity to IoT businesses, specifically SIM cards for machine-to-machine use. We’re using three AngularJS developers to build the frontend, and our backend team is working on the APIs.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with three frontend developers and a project manager throughout the engagement. We have our own backend team.

How did you come to work with 7Devs?

Four years ago, we were looking for an agency to develop a CES prototype. After getting in contact with Alex (CEO & Co-Founder, 7Devs), we gave him our SOW. During our multiple interviews, we enjoyed the pushback we received from 7Devs. Their team had different demands and were honest about what requirements couldn’t be done. They gave us comments we didn’t obtain anywhere else.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with 7Devs in December 2015, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

We wouldn't have gone to the market at a quick pace without them. Resource-wise, our business was stuck, and 7Devs helped tremendously. 7Devs fits our business model quite well. All internal feedback from our team has been positive. Their team does a significant amount of work for us. We give them all the credit. Customers have said that everything is working to their liking.

How did 7Devs perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management style is a highlight. Communication is, for the most part, facilitated by one of their project managers. In some instances, I communicate directly with someone on their frontend development team. We have weekly calls and use Slack for other correspondences.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their flexibility, speed, and communication skills are noteworthy.

Are there any areas they could improve?

If we ever identify an obstacle, we directly give their team feedback.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

In order to have everyone on the same page and receive the right work for your money, it’s important to start these engagements with a prototype. Once everyone is satisfied with the results, the real work can begin.