Angry Nerds

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

There is a difference between Xamarin and native development. Angry Nerds has never started a native project from scratch, but we are very satisfied with their performance to maintain and optimize projects created by other development companies. One of our projects had some issues around design, and the CRM [customer relationship management] did not turn out how we wanted, but Angry Nerds was open to improving it and helped us satisfy the client.

How did Angry Nerds perform from a project management standpoint?

Angry Nerds had been missing a middleman for Xamarin development projects, and they have recently hired a project manager. Besides our two developers, we needed someone who could communicate deadlines, quality assessments, and other items we needed to be aware of. Because Angry Nerds' owners are developers themselves and didn't have someone who could manage schedules and communication properly, we've had some quality issues. There was time pressure on both of our sides, so the results were not always great. We can't fully blame Angry Nerds since we didn't communicate our full expectations. Had we done this from the start, everyone would have been able to work through projects. We have had discussions about the process and came up with solutions together. Everyone makes mistakes, but what matters is how those mistakes are corrected. Angry Nerds has hired a project manager who will be able to provide documentation around our processes and showed they were able to think alongside and together with this project manager, which we think will smooth out the process.

We use our own instances of Basecamp and JIRA. Angry Nerds uses Team Foundation Server internally. We had a discussion around this since we had never worked with it ourselves. We find JIRA to be an overall better tool, but Angry Nerds convinced us that TFS is optimal for creating Windows or Xamarin-based projects, so we are trying to use it at the moment.

What did you find most impressive about Angry Nerds?

Angry Nerds has the ability to think along with our own team. This is something we ask of each partner, but they've shown it proactively. Besides this, the owners of Angry Nerds are very easygoing people. They're nice to talk to, which makes doing business easier for us. Angry Nerds wants to do the best work possible for a project, even if that ends up costing them money.

Are there any areas Angry Nerds could improve?

They are still a startup company with a small, 12-person experienced team. We are trying to help them grow by establishing a more efficient relationship, helping ourselves in the process. Communication between our project manager and theirs is an improvement point, but this is being planned at the moment. Angry Nerds has hired someone for the task. Besides this, I'm very satisfied.

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

Our solution had been at a pre-MVP stage, and this was the first working deliverable we've had. It consists of a Microsoft Azure backend and an Android frontend. We've continued improving the platform even after it was delivered. There have been 20 people testing it, and there's been testing on our side as well. We've identified 30–40 bugs, which have been handled within a week or two.

The basis for the development has been a set of 20 user stories, and we've developed 15 screens for the application, with the main one being a map.

How did Angry Nerds perform from a project management standpoint?

Angry Nerds has performed very well. They have honored the specifications, provided valuable feedback, and proposed improvements during the entire project.

All promised features got implemented on their initial version and within the promised time frame and budget. We had a fixed-price offer based on a fairly thorough specification and design document. We had a close collaboration with weekly follow-up meetings and full transparency using Microsoft Visual Team Studio Services. This was very much appreciated as it gave us good insight into the actual status of the development activities.

Because we had a complete specification and design, we have not yet seen much of their design capabilities yet.

Angry Nerds has run the project as a series of one-week sprints. We had regular meetings on Monday, and also some on Friday for work reviews. There have been three people engaged in our project: one frontend and one backend developer, as well as a project manager. I have also visited Angry Nerds at their office and saw that there was an actual team behind the name.

What did you find most impressive about Angry Nerds?

The best part of Angry Nerds' work has been their speed. It was quite impressive to launch the product in only two months. Their backend development is particularly strong, including the setup of our service on the Azure cloud and the security scheme of the infrastructure. Angry Nerds is also strong in building mobile apps. They have delivered a fully-functioning product.

Are there any areas Angry Nerds could improve?

I haven't seen much of Angry Nerds' work on the design side, so I'm not sure if this is a strong point for them. They told me that their designer has been away for a few weeks, but we gave them fully-designed material anyway.