Agile Freaks

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Programmes Director of Sibiu International Marathon

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Local funder that supports community development initiatives in Sibiu, Romania. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Agile Freaks to accomplish?

• Develop a secure website for our event.
• Develop more accessible features for our users that would increase event attendance.
• Help the team automate and optimise certain data management processes.

SOLUTION

How did you find Agile Freaks?

Referral

Why did you select Agile Freaks over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Agile Freaks were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

The Sibiu International Marathon (Maratonul Internațional Sibiu) website was developed to serve as a central platform for organizing and promoting the annual marathon event in Sibiu, Romania. The primary objectives of this project included providing comprehensive information about the marathon, facilitating participant registration, and promoting community engagement through support for various charitable causes.

Key deliverables of the project were:

• Event Information: Detailed sections outlining the marathon's history, race categories, schedules, and routes to inform potential participants and spectators.
• Registration System: A user-friendly interface allowing runners to register for different races, select causes to support, and manage their participation details.
• Cause Promotion: Highlighting various non-profit organizations and community initiatives, enabling runners and donors to choose and support specific projects.
• Donor Engagement: Features for individuals and companies to contribute financially, supporting runners and their chosen causes.
• Multilingual Support: Content available in both Romanian and English to cater to a diverse audience.
• Responsive Design: Ensuring accessibility and optimal viewing across various devices, including desktops, tablets, and smartphones.

The website has significantly contributed to the marathon's growth, with the 2024 event witnessing a record number of 8,953 participants across 11 races, supporting 51 causes—the highest in the event's history. The platform continues to foster community involvement and charitable contributions, embodying the marathon's mission to make a positive impact in Sibiu and beyond.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Some of the KPIs that indicate succes were: 

• Increased participation rates- The 2024 event recorded 8,953 participants, indicating strong engagement, a growth trend that is very likely to be maintained 
• Increased fundraising impact- The website facilitated fundraising for 51 causes, the highest in the event’s history, which were supported by almost 9000 donors. 
• Website engagement and user experience- the website had 1 million visitors between march and june 2024, slipt between desktop and modible, which shows great accessibility across all devices 
• Increased efficiency of the runner registration and donation processes shown by the record numbers 
• Website uptime and performance- Ensuring no major downtimes, especially during peak registration periods.
• Security measures effectiveness- No data breaches or transaction failures.

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

The project was managed exceptionally well, demonstrating strong communication, adaptability, and efficiency from start to finish. The team possessed excellent communication & collaboration skills, and had a solution-oriented approach propossing innovative approached to the requirements posed by us. Overall they were very responsive and flexible and that resulted in a high end final product. 

What was your primary form of communication with Agile Freaks?

Virtual Meeting

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

We loved our collaboration with Agile Freaks and enjyed working closely with them over the last year. We particularly enjoyed their partnership oriented approach, as felt we built this product together through a comprehensive and collaborative development process. We particularly loved the team's solution-oriented approach and commitment to the project's success.

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

Nothing. Everything was exactly as we imagined it. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of mediafellows

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

mediafellows is a trusted provider of software solutions for the media and entertainment industry. Our specialisms include technologies and operations in the audiovisual media marketing and distribution sector.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Agile Freaks to accomplish?

• Develop a mobile app for Android
• Develop a FireTV app
• Develop a Roku TV app

SOLUTION

How did you find Agile Freaks?

Online Search

Why did you select Agile Freaks over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned
• Industry Experience

How many teammates from Agile Freaks were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Development of generic Android Mobile, Fire TV, and Roku apps as a frontend for our “MediaStore” platform that supports multiple tenancy. The implementation of the app includes the following deliverables: 

• Project architecture setup and continuous integration (CI) setup
• Login screen, including a link to the forgot password page
• User registration form
• Home screen
• Featured content (slideshow)
• Genre sliders
• Content search
• User profile screen, with favorites, continue watching, recommendations, password settings
• Product screen with video screening option
• Secure video downloads for offline playback
• Omission of analytics events
• Publishing of the apps

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Mobile and TV apps that have been successfully released on the App and Play stores.

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

We agreed on what the project would entail, met every week to discuss how things were going, and used a communication channel on Slack for all ad-hoc communication needs and messages. Also, mediafellows was always told about the projects' status as they were being completed. All the important stages of the project were completed on time.

What was your primary form of communication with Agile Freaks?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Agile Freaks has always been transparent about their capabilities and capacities. Furthermore, the company has consistently met its deadlines for app releases, never making promises it cannot keep.

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

Agile Freaks could keep freelancers ready to help out with ad-hoc requests quickly.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Head of Digital of United Nations Global Compact

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

The United Nations Global Compact is the worlds largest corporate sustainability. We help participating companies do business responsibly by aligning their strategies and operations with the UN Ten Principles and take strategic actions to advance broader societal goals.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Agile Freaks to accomplish?

• Support Website Development
• Adopt modern/agile ways of working to scale the org
• Launch a complex survey platform to support core reporting

SOLUTION

How did you find Agile Freaks?

• Referral

Why did you select Agile Freaks over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

What was the size of Agile Freaks’s team?

6-10 Employees

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

The AF's team supports agile development for our main and sub websites and profile management. This includes full agile development methodology and pipeline management for about 15-20 points/sprint with full stack support (front end, back end, testing, data architecture,UX design and product management). One large initiative this year for a survey launch included project management support that spanned 4 organizations to coordinate the final delivery.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• 35% increase in web development (ticket completion & velocity)
• Successful launch of our pilot online survey in 2022, 97% completion rate above target

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

Every member of the AgileFreaks team that I've had the pleasure to work with is professional, collaborative, and efficient. Combining the best elements of Agile methodology, extraordinary people selection/empowerment, and an inspiring level of ownership, AF's gets things done. They leverage a deep set of expert resources, tools, and approaches to manage every stage of the project.

In addition, they continue to help our organization raise the bar in terms of our controls, documentation, processes, and expectations of what we can accomplish.

What was your primary form of communication with Agile Freaks?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The project and process transformation AF's has helped our organization is impressive. What I find unique is how they delivered the work in a collaborative way that empowers our staff. AF's is deliberate in ensuring that every project milestone is both a technical and an organizational capability accomplishment that brings us closer to scalable and low-code operations.

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

Not to avoid this question, but the communication with AF's is very open and direct. When there's an opportunity for improvement (on both sides), its quickly raised and addressed. More a suggestion. We've built some really solid relationships over the past several years with AF's. While the virtual working relationship is supurb (and the 7hour time difference means they are always a few steps ahead) I feel like the core team are like family.

I would love the chance for a family reunion... perhaps an AF's event in EU that showcases AF's project work and a chance to meet the team?

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a television company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Agile Freaks?

Agile Freaks provides a host of services, from software and mobile development to backend support across our streaming products.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

They’ve built all of our core streaming technology to make it compatible with Netflix and Roku. This includes native client-facing mobile apps as well as custom development specific for the Roku streaming box.

Beyond that, they’re skilled enough to support our in-house team on various projects. Their capabilities span HTML, React, Ruby on Rails, Python, Java, and AWS architecture.

What is the team composition? 

I started working with their two founders, but the team has since expanded to about 10–15 people. Depending on the project size we might rely on their QA resources, project managers, product managers, iOS and Android developers, and more.

We have a long history with several of their team because they’ve been there with us since the beginning. That’s great for an outsourced company because it speaks to Agile Freak’s ability to retain talent, and we’re able to work with some of their highest tenured members.

How did you come to work with Agile Freaks?

My predecessor brought them on right before I joined, so we started roughly around the same time.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked with them since late 2014.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They help us follow best practices. For example, one of their projects involved rebuilding a PHP stack with modern standards using Ruby and test-driven development. The previous stack was constantly breaking about 3–4 times a week.

Now, we have 96% code coverage for our backend API, and our systems have maintained 100% uptime for over six months. That’s been par for the course with their quality. We don’t have any concerns from our operations or QA teams about the reliability of their code.

Their support has also allowed us to increase our deployment rate across our apps, service side, and more. Before, we’d see about 10 or so releases in a year, but that’s jumped up to nearly every day. Last year alone, we made 300 releases.

In terms of the mobile apps, we were able to bring them in-house to focus on creating a cross-functional team between the client and server sides. We were able to pull the ratings from 1.5 stars to upwards of 4.5 across the board, beating out our competition. 

How did Agile Freaks perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re fantastic people who are extremely conscientious. I put a lot of effort in making sure that all of our outsourced vendors are treated as equals to our team. The dynamic doesn’t work if your service provider feels like just another disposable contractor.

I was able to instill that culture with support from the leadership at Agile Freaks who are also extremely engaged in the process. As a result, everyone is outspoken. If they don’t understand something, they set up meetings with us to figure things out.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The core of their mantra is to always release the best code possible. That means they’re vocal enough to tell us if they feel that something isn’t the right solution. Then, they’ll work with us to figure it out.

The team does best in a collaborative environment where they can work with our product team, reevaluate sprints in the most optimal way, and be efficient in figuring out solutions. Call it their engagement, accountability, or drive — whatever it is, it sets them apart from most places. That’s had a huge influence on our team internally, too.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s great that they’re more interested in long-term partnerships, but it can be hard at times to scale up in the short term. If I asked for 10 additional people for about three months, they likely wouldn’t take on that project.

That just means that they’re not like a typical resource placement company. They want to build real, solid teams to build strong products, so prospective buyers shouldn’t think of them as an elastic set of resources.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Get to know them with a test project. There’s no better way to get a feel for someone than working together on a project.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CTO of Universum Events

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

MyConnector is the swiss knife of event management platforms, flexible enough to accommodate almost any use case, and complex enough to cover all the fine details that agencies need and clients love.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Agile Freaks to accomplish?

• White-label events app
• iOS
• Android

SOLUTION

How did you find Agile Freaks?

Referral

Why did you select Agile Freaks over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me

How many teammates from Agile Freaks were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Agile Freaks had to develop an iOS Version of the Mobile Application from scratch, and collaborate on the Android Version of the App's Development.

The scope of work included Flavoring (single event/multi-events app), SSO authentication, Regular Authentication, Event Listing, Social Wall, Content Pages, Auction System, Chat System, Notifications System, etc.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The main metrics were the estimates given for implementation and bugs on release.

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

Everything was delivered on time, with a response rate less than 2 hours (for issues on release).

Generally speaking, the quality of the deliverables was high, will few to none issues, always implemented in the agreed timeline.

What was your primary form of communication with Agile Freaks?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The quality of the deliverables.

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

We are completely happy with Agile Freaks' services.