Arbisoft

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the Director, Quality Management of a software company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

travel search website

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Arbisoft to accomplish?

• Provide Quality Assurance engineer contractors for testing and test automation

SOLUTION

How did you find Arbisoft?

Referral

Why did you select Arbisoft over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Arbisoft were assigned to this project?

30

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

Arbisoft provided us with their QA engineers for testing and test automation development. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Arbisoft prepares their QA engineers in both hard (testing theory, methods, best practices, automation tools) and soft (communication, going extra mile, teamwork etc) skils. Arbisoft QA engineers are doing an excellent job in both test and test automation sides of quality assurance for our worldwide travel search website.

We constantly rate our Arbisoft QA engineers with high grades in our annual feedback/performance cycles.

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

Arbisoft has a culture of teamwork, high ownership and dependably delivery. Their Quality Engineers respond to feedback, project and priority changes, process improvements quickly and well, are eager to learn and apply best practices of testing and test automation in our project. Our testing is done on time and with good coverage, our test automation code is also delivered with good productivity and code best practices applied.

What was your primary form of communication with Arbisoft?

Virtual Meeting

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

Arbisoft contractors work very hard and are productive every hour of every day. They are willing to go extra mile all the time and always deliver for their customer.

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

Since we work in customer/vendor relationship, Arbisoft engineers are very reverant to us customer and respect this customer authority while I dont mind then to work with us as equals and feel free to challenge the way we do things and work on continuously improving things in our quality process.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of Sozie

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

The Sozie Platform is a product marketing solution offering off-site promotions and user content that drive orders and sales on brand and retailer sites.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Arbisoft to accomplish?

• Develop Platform
• Source Engineering Talent

SOLUTION

How did you find Arbisoft?

• Referral
• Clutch Site

Why did you select Arbisoft over others?

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

How many teammates from Arbisoft were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Sozie engaged Arbisoft for our entire tech dev needs. The team of Arbisoft engineers that they outsourced to us functioned as a central part of our team to build our initial product, iterate in pivots and deliver success for our Company. We continue to work with Arbisoft for ongoing tech support and team capacity extensions.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Rapidly iterating to find product-market fit and find sustainable success with winning and delivering for our B2B clients.

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

They were agile and responsive. They delivered on time, within reason there were somtimes delays. Sometimes we looked for greater engagment at a strategic level.

What was your primary form of communication with Arbisoft?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Outsourced team members truly operated like core members of our own team. Arbisoft put in incentives and measures that enabled this alignment. We also had complete ease in being transparent for which, credit goes to them as well for enabling a conducive environment for easy communications.

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

We communicated areas for improvement early and Arbisoft were receptive and agile in addressing our concerns.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the VP of Engineering of Open edX Project

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are a social enterprise dedicated to expanding access to education and deepening its impact for millions of learners.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Arbisoft to accomplish?

• Marketing website migration
• Custom Python software development

SOLUTION

How did you find Arbisoft?

Referral

Why did you select Arbisoft over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Arbisoft were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

We have executed multiple distinct projects with Arbisoft as they have a team with a great deal of breadth of technical expertise.

One recent project was a significant rearchitecture of our Wordpress website.  This project improved our ability to manage the website content through flexible, custom post types.  Additionally, the team helped us migrate to the Elementor framework, making our site much easier to maintain.

Separately we work a team of Python/Django engineers to help sustain portions of our open-source learning management platform, the Open edX platform.  That team has ramped up quickly and taken on ownership and maintenance of siginficant parts of the platform.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Performance of our marketing website
• Maintainability of our marketing website
• Predictability of platform maintenance

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

Attention to detail and predictably delivery are strengths of Aribsoft.  Depending on the project we either staff project management internally or work with a project manager on their side.  Both models have worked well.  We appreciate that Arbisoft are flexible in their approach depending upon our needs.

What was your primary form of communication with Arbisoft?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

They bring a consistent, transparent, and open approach to projects that require diverse technical expertise.

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

Every project has opportunities for improvement, but we always have open communication channels with the team and apply agile practices to improve as we go.  

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Director of Sausage Dog Design Ltd.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Creative studio offering tech companies brand development, as well as marketing and web design services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Arbisoft to accomplish?

• Development of Wordpress sites
• Ongoing maintenance and design updates

SOLUTION

How did you find Arbisoft?

Worked together on a project in the past

Why did you select Arbisoft over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Arbisoft were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Arbisoft developed several Wordpress sites for us which were deployed on the Google AppEngine by their DevOps team. Over the years we have encountered maintenance and security challenges which Arbisoft have reliably dealt with. I appreciate the responsiveness and friendliness of the Arbisoft team and the fact that they offer full stack services. They have also successfully supported us with the development of a website on Shopify. Arbisoft is my go to partner for software development. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Website development and maintenance in line with client expectations including frequent design updates. Ongoing tech support/maintenance and security checks to ensure the sites run smoothly and securely. 

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

We work with Arbisoft very closely and collaboratively and deal directly with the developers and DevOps. That makes for a smooth and efficient process. 

What was your primary form of communication with Arbisoft?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

All team members are very responsive and communication skills are of a high standard. The team is very flexible and resources are sometimes allocated at very short notice which is fantastic. 
The time difference has very rarely been in issue and in fact often works to our advantage.

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

We have worked together closely for a long time and have fine-tuned our collaborative approach over the years. We are very happy with the partnership. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Engineering Manager of KAYAK

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

KAYAK helps travelers find the best travel options at the lowest prices by comparing thousands of providers globally

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Arbisoft to accomplish?

• Product Development
• Bug Fixing
• Architecture

SOLUTION

How did you find Arbisoft?

Long-Time Customer

Why did you select Arbisoft over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Arbisoft were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Performing ongoing product development, bug fixing and architectural improvements to our Android application. Working with Product, Design and Quality stakeholders throughout the company. Collaborating with other staff engineers on the Android team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Increased output of our product development pipeline. 
• Fixed a number of bugs from our backlog. 
• Accelerated progress of architectural initiatives.

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

Arbisoft contractors are members of our engineering team. Like staff engineers, they rely on internal engineering and product managers for prioritization and delivery management.

What was your primary form of communication with Arbisoft?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Arbisoft is committed to building a strong culture of continuous improvement and growth. They take care of their employees and are known as a good place to work. Communication with them is effective without unnecessary overhead. Resources are talented and motivated.

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

I communicate any areas of improvement directly to contracted engineers, and they are diligent with acting upon it. We also engage in regular competency reviews to evaluate the performance of each engineer, where feedback is communicated more formally.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of Radical

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Radical makes custom bras, right from your phone.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Arbisoft to accomplish?

• Create an app that allows someone to get 3D-scanned for a bra and be able to order a bra directly from an app.
• Develop a backend interface for analyzing people's 3D scan, and approving their scan for manufacturing

SOLUTION

How did you find Arbisoft?

• Referral
• Other

Why did you select Arbisoft over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Arbisoft were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

From scratch, Arbisoft designed and fully developed Radical's software. This included - 

• Designing and building our app, which includes three main modules: 

1. A login experience with two-factor authentication and a social login option 
2. A scanning process, in which a user can take a 3d body scan 
3. A checkout process, which includes options to add discounts, track orders, request a return, etc. 

• Designing and building our backend interface to review user profiles / orders

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Arbisoft consistently set deadlines, met those deadlines with ease. They developed a TestFlight app we were quite happy with, and that which also greatly pleased our customers

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

Always on time. Very smooth communication over Slack, email, and Zoom. the SLA's were always clearly communicated. We actually had some last-minute faster deadlines come up, and they worked with us to see how they could help push forward changes at a faster pace. I greatly appreciate the team's dedication to helping us meet our goals

What was your primary form of communication with Arbisoft?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Creative thinking, kindness, and breadth and depth of their knowledge. Arbisoft is an incredible organization. I had a great experience working with all of their staff. I also really enjoyed all of the creative problem-solving. We could test out a few different features and decide what worked best for our needs. 

They also have great internal communication. The team worked wonderfully together and in turn, worked wonderfully with us. They addressed all of our concerns with a balance of care and swiftness. I love working with them. It feels collaborative and fun - which is just a joy to have in the workplace!

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

The only potential downside to working with Arbisoft was that we are 12 hours apart. I actually didn't find this a hindrance since we had such communication that the large time zone difference was very easily navigable.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and engineer of Braces On Demand. We’re a tech company in the orthodontics space and we focus on 3D printing orthodontic appliances.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Arbisoft?

We needed someone to build our web app and provide us with custom software development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We first engaged Arbisoft to connect our native app with our third-party 3D printing software system. They wrote all the codes and did the backend to allow us to deliver our 3D printing files remotely. They achieved that relatively quickly and once that was done, we branched out with them to create the basic architecture to build our web-based app and its UI.

We’re still working with them in sprints where we’ll come up with a new feature for the app, and they’ll go through a series of content creation, approvals, testing, and validation before moving onto the next sprint. 

What is the team composition?

Our main point of contact is Haniya (Sr. Software Engineer) and we typically work with about 3–4 people at any given time.

How did you come to work with Arbisoft?

Arbisoft was actually recommended by one of our co-founders. We met with their CEO, who was a Stanford graduate, and we were just really impressed with their capabilities. At the time, we were still in the exploratory phase of our business, so I felt very confident hiring them to help us set the scope of what we were trying to accomplish.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve invested somewhere between $25,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The ongoing partnership started in October 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Arbisoft always delivers on time and they completely tailor the resources to the budget that we have. Their company is incredibly friendly for startups, as they provide the ability to get the most out of their programming assets.

Additionally, they’ve never missed any tasks since the start of the project. As far as hitting deliverables and creating functioning codes for the ambiguous scope of work, I couldn’t possibly praise them any higher — we’ve gone from having an idea to having a fully functioning software system and website.

How did Arbisoft perform from a project management standpoint?

We typically communicate through email when I have multiple points to make and I need to be as detailed as possible. Other than that, we use JIRA to manage our project. Moreover, we’ll have weekly calls to catch up and review certain aspects of the process.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What distinguishes Arbisoft is their ability to assist you in setting the scope of the work. I don’t know much about computer programming, so they brought their expertise to help us figure out what was needed — they have a wealth of knowledge that they share to make our business more successful.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’ve seen what we’ve done and how far we’ve come, but I wish we could have quarterly meetings with them, to recap where we were in our previous quarter. I think having a forced mechanism of review would be helpful for our progress.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would definitely say that it’s worth spending the time to dial in on the scope of work, even if it’s ambiguous. Therefore, I’d suggest having more meetings upfront to set the foundations of what your project is going to be.

I think the biggest mistake that people could make is skipping the time in setting up their scope and then changing it halfway through — so relying on Arbisoft’s expertise would make the process worthwhile. Their help made such a big difference for us, because they got the right people to lead the project, and the right resources at the right time — they made sure that we were successful.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the VP of engineering for Lola.com, a travel and spend management company for businesses.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Arbisoft was hired to develop and maintain a number of backend data ingestion processes, services to augment functionality on our site, as well as embed with our teams to provide an increase in team throughput.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Several executives at Lola have previous successful experiences with Lola.

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

Built and maintained a data ingestion processes that pulled information from multiple travel providers and combined it into a single local data set. Tech: Python, ElasticSearch, Postgres * Built new services in our Lola services platform to integrate with third parties that provided augmented data on various spend related activities for customers. Tech: Python * Server as scrum team members on multiple teams. Tech: React, Python, Kubernetes

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

At any given time there were between 4-7 people on the team

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to build and launch a completely new product line quickly in large part because of the efforts of the Arbisoft team. They helped expertly maintain and improve our existing product allowing us to put more of our resources into the new product. Arbisoft also built a service for this new product line that dramatically improved the flows for one of the primary use cases.

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

I worked primarily with their project manager who used a similar toolset as us. Much documentation was done in Google docs. Wherever possible we integrated the team with our toolset for communication and project management (Slack, Jira, Confluence, etc)

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

The ability to get up to speed on poorly documented parts of our codebase was impressive. They were able to take often loosely defined tasks and quickly come up with a solution, asking the right question of us to provide clarity.

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

It took us a little while to find a groove that worked really well. We found that the more me just treated them like other members of the team and embedded, the more success we had.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior product manager at JobCase, an internet tech platform that matches employers with job seekers. Our demographic tends to more blue-collar-oriented.  

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Arbisoft?

As a social media platform that’s similar to LinkedIn, it’s very difficult to succeed in the space without a mobile app. While we were traditionally a web app, we were looking to break into the mobile arena. We didn’t have the inhouse resources for mobile app development, so we engaged Arbisoft.  

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our own designers developed wireframes and comprehensive mock-ups for the mobile app. The Arbisoft team took these specs and design guidelines and launched into development utilizing React Native. Their main scope of work has been translating the features that already exist on our web application to this new mobile platform.

Having said that, they’ve also provided feedback and suggestions for improvement for both design and functionality.

What is the team composition?

While I oversee most of the project management, we have a project manager on their side, and we have two engineering teams. I believe that it’s around 13–14 people in total.

How did you come to work with Arbisoft?

We were introduced through a few of our coworkers. They’d worked with Arbisoft at previous jobs. They seemed like the best fit for us because they had extensive experience in React Native and had done so many mobile applications. The references we received were also very strong.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership began in December 2019, and the project is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

While I can only provide anecdotal feedback, the impact of their work has been significant. We’re close to completing our first mobile application, which we didn’t really have a strategy for in the past.

They’ve delivered feedback on certain features that already exist and have made thoughtful suggestions for improvement that we’ve already begun to implement. We’re grateful for the fresh perspective they provide.

Additionally, thanks to Arbisoft’s collaborative nature, some of our in-house developers are also picking up React Native. The educational outcome of our partnership has been excellent.

How did Arbisoft perform from a project management standpoint?

I think they’re very good on this front. As a product manager, I handle a large scope of specs and cannot always validate the entirety of their work Despite that, they excel at navigating some uncertainty and raising questions early.

For example, they won’t wait to get to a specific ticket or feature before asking us a question about it. They’re always looking at the larger picture and will bring up concerns a week or two in advance. I’ve always appreciated that.

We use Jira for project management, hold daily standups, and communicate on Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their teams really know what they’re doing. They’re very, very good at what they do.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not really. I don’t think I can think of anything that they could do differently.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We came in with a clear vision of what we wanted, along with designs and specs. Arbisoft has performed very well under that scenario, given a clear direction and fleshed-out requirements. I’d suggest that you provide a pretty clear idea of expectations and requirements, because they’re clearly able to execute on them.