AppWell.Health

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an iOS engineer for a mobile-first real estate product operating in New York City and Colorado. 

What challenge were you trying to address with AppWell.Health?

We hired AppWell.Health primarily for web and backend development. From time to time, they also assisted us with mobile development. The team also provided QA and project management support.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We meet in an agile scrum environment for daily standups, while the product managers run meetings. Our team then hands over business requirements from our product manager to their project manager. From there, the AppWell.Health team translates the requirements into technical implementations. After that, we go to a normal development cycle, working closely with their backend and QA engineers. Our members bring them challenges and problems, and their resources find ways to solve them. 

The website is written on Node.js, while the servers and databases are managed by AWS. AppWell.Health has implemented the Docker configuration to encapsulate those systems. Moreover, they’ve used AWS security products to analyze our mobile app for SQL injections that can cause breaches in security. On top of that, the team provides an extensive monitoring service for our web platform and database. If anything seems to be out of the ordinary — whether that be error logs, crash logs, or traffic logs — they call or email us about it, which lets our team respond in record time. On the QA side, AppWell.Health uses Postman. They also have an automated QA system running on GitHub, which is integrated with their delivery cycle on the backend. This gives us an additional layer of a QA process for delivering production-level products. 

For mobile development, AppWell.Health works on an iOS app. They’ve provided us with a part-time engineer, who has helped us run demos for investors in other countries. Their CTO also works closely with me during investor meetings. Moreover, the mobile app uses an API documented by Swagger, and the AppWell.Health team has written the entire API backend. That API interacts with the database of our users, which involves multiple real estate data providers. The API then aggregates their data and transmits it to the mobile app. 

Further, we’re also a brokerage, so AppWell.Health has also built a CRM tool for us. Our head agents can log in to the CRM tool to manage all agents that work underneath them. It also helps them manage all their clients coming through the mobile app. This way, we can digitize repetitive operations usually done in Google Spreadsheets and shared around via Google Documents. The CRM tool handles all of that information and takes the work out of the agents’ hands. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with 9–10 people either full-time or part-time. AppWell.Health has provided us with a backend engineer, a DevOps  engineer, a senior QA engineer, and a junior QA engineer. We also work with two project managers. These people work with our in-house team, which consists of a product manager, our C-Suite members, and me. 

Since we’re working in a scrum environment, we have a flat hierarchy, meaning everybody collaborates with each other openly. There’s no main point of contact, though we work directly with their project manager. That manager translates business requirements into tickets and implementations, but we meet everybody in their team daily. 

How did you come to work with AppWell.Health?

Our company’s COO had previously worked with AppWell.Health’s CTO on another project. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $100,000–$250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with AppWell.Health in June 2020, and the partnership is ongoing.

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

AppWell.Health has improved our API’s performance by 80%. The API can now pull and display 10 listings in 2–3 seconds; previously, it took 10 seconds. Moreover, the team has tripled the number of concurrent users the API can support. Its load balancer can now support 150 concurrent users, up from 50 concurrent users previously. 

Further, our website is mainly a lead-generating and marketing tool for our app. However, AppWell.Health has been effective at translating our brand requirements into a smooth-sailing website with a great parallax animation that truly captures our energy. Moreover, the team has been rigorous about translating our internal team’s web designs into pixel-perfect implementations. Getting the design right is important to understand our brand vision, and the AppWell.Health team has taken that seriously to deliver their 100%. 

How did AppWell.Health perform from a project management standpoint?

In terms of being within budget, we can’t ask for more. AppWell.Health meets our target week after week, plus they deliver requirements on time. Moreover, they’re adept at collaborating and brainstorming about the technologies available to them to deliver a feature that we want. Oftentimes, they bring attention to the services or platforms we don’t know about. 

On top of that, the AppWell.Health team brings an air of optimism to the engagement. They have a can-do attitude; in fact, one of their engineers always says that anything is possible. To that effect, they have truly cutting-edge technology. Moreover, when they’re building a feature, they always think about the security aspects of that feature in advance. They consider how it can affect our API and databases. In other words, they’re highly proactive in thinking ahead in terms of security and performance improvements. 

We use Jira and Confluence as project management tools. In fact, we use the whole Atlassian suite. AppWell.Health delivers product designs over Zeppelin, while the project manager organizes everything through Jira so we have a bird’s eye view of the engineering team’s progress at all times. Sprints have also been seamless. Meanwhile, we use Slack for ad hoc communications and Google Hangouts for daily meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

AppWell.Health has a distinct willingness to overdeliver. Whenever we give them a requirement, it doesn’t matter how complete our idea is. As long as they know where to start, they take things under their wing with a proactive attitude. Then, they think as forward as they can in terms of what services must be integrated and how the requirement may affect the health of the app. 

Overall, their big-picture mindset that they bring to the table is impressive. That’s healthy for a startup, especially when trying to get off the ground. We need real experts to support and guide our backend; we need people who are reliable and well-versed in our space. To that effect, AppWell.Health has given us great amounts of guidance and forward-thinking ideas. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

AppWell.Health provides you with a company within a company, meaning you must hire not only the engineer you want but also other people like the project manager and QA engineers. This makes them effective. They work as an internal company toward your goals, and the members are effective at working together and being organized. That’s a benefit for a startup because it removes the anxiety or extra responsibility of organizing someone else’s team. They bring all of that to the table, so it’s wise to hire their full service. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of Wellcast Health, a healthcare technology platform provider focused on large health systems, large ambulatory surgery, surgery practices, and more.

What challenge were you trying to address with AppWell.Health?

We hired AppWell to integrate web automation and blockchain-based informed consent. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We provided a formal scope document, a business requirements document (BRD), and some technical requirements. However, as the project progressed, it went beyond the traditional BRD.

AppWell manages everything from the initial scoping of the project, the project management side of things, automated QA, robotic process automation (RPA), design, development, and deployment. 

What is the team composition?

We work with 4–5 people from AppWell, but we look forward to growing their team.  

How did you come to work with AppWell.Health?

I’ve known AppWell’s founder for a number of years and we’ve worked on many projects together. He’s still engaged with some of the projects I’m familiar with and he’s also growing his team there. We’ve really built a good relationship with AppWell, and I know that they produce phenomenal results which led me to engage with them. 

How much have you invested with them?

I’ve spent over $100,000, but what we have budgeted for the year ahead is over a quarter million. For the next year, our budget is in the range of $250,000–$500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership began in July 2020.

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

We haven’t done a net promoter score, but the customer feedback we’ve received proves the impact of AppWell’s work. Our stakeholders appreciate the work that the team has done and constantly compliments their contributions. 

They’re timely and when there are minor defects, they fix things quickly. The team also constantly check-ins, and they’re candidly exceeding expectations and helping set the bar internally. Overall, they help us stay on top of things, and they’re showing us some areas of personal internal growth we need to see.

How did AppWell.Health perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management workflow is probably their greatest skillset that our stakeholders love. It feels like they’re really part of the team, so overall, AppWell has been outstanding. The project management tools they use varies because they adapt to our external stakeholders’ needs — and it’s one of the things we appreciate about them.

Sometimes we use FaceTime, Slack, and more. However, right now, we primarily use texting, Microsoft Teams, and iMessage. Above all, they provide a nice level of transparency, and there’s a lot of flexibility to really choose what’s best for our use case.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their level of expertise and professionalism impresses us. Appwell communicates outstandingly and constantly makes sure that everything is aligned and on track with our agreed goals. The team has also been flexible around pricing, and in many ways, they’ve gone above and beyond to deliver excellent service. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

The market’s tight right now, so I wish they have more people on their bench that are open for special projects. However, they’ve already responded well to that suggestion so I can’t say that it’s something negative about them.

They’ve done a really nice job of hiring the people we need quickly. Overall, it’s hard to say where they can be better when they’re already doing a great job of helping point areas where we need to improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The team is good from a consultative standpoint, and you can ask them a lot of questions. The more transparent and open-minded you are, the more the project will run smoothly. Additionally, make sure things are properly budgeted.