Band of Coders

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the founder of Capital Slack. We're a marketplace that connects owners of commercial real estate with lenders.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Band of Coders?

We were working with another development team, but we were not happy with them. We were looking for a new company to finish our MVP.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were developing a web platform. The product was almost finished when Band of Coders took over the project, so they’re managing the final development stages. The platform allows users to submit an application for a loan. It also has a communication functionality, which works similarly to a cloud collaboration tool.

What is the team composition?

We work with four or five members of their team, including a local project manager.

How did you come to work with them?

Since I had a bad experience with my previous developers, I wanted to find a company I could trust. We were a start-up, so we were on a budget and didn't want to hire U.S. developers. I liked the fact that Band of Coders has been in business for a long time. They have a local office in the U.S. that leads their team in Argentina, so I knew that if anything went wrong, I could get hold of them. Argentina is in the same time zone as the East Coast and their team seemed quite talented, so I decided they'd be a good fit.

How much have you invested with them?

I've spent about $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in November 2017 and the relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They work well as a team. I keep changing my mind about the scope of work, which is why we haven't finished the product yet. If there are any bugs, they work quickly to address them. I’ve been very happy with them.

How did they perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re doing a great job. We use Asana to create and assign tasks. Once the task is completed, it goes to me for quality assurance and I sign off on it.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m a non-technical founder of a technology company and I don’t have a CTO, so I always rely on my local project manager to give me guidance when I have technical questions. That helps me make sure we're on the right path. I wouldn't be able to handle a team of overseas developers by myself. Later, I might hire a technical person internally, but at this moment, they're a perfect solution for me.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can't think of anything specific. I've been pleased with their work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Spend time on the design before you hire a development team. My biggest mistake was trying to do the design and the development at the same time.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the Digital Project Director on the Digital Environments team for North Point Ministries. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Band of Coders?

We don’t have enough in-house developers to do all the work we need done.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

So far, they have mostly done website maintenance, such as PHP upgrades and migrations to Heroku. They’ve done feature updates on some of our applications and they’ve assisted us with writing user stories for our legacy products. Most recently, they’ve performed feature updates on the back- and frontend of the websites of two of our annual events and updated one of our major database systems.

What is the team composition?

It can vary by project. For example, on all of our projects involving a developer writing code, there was one constant member of their team with different colleagues helping him. For other projects, there wasn’t a constant team member and who we worked with could change from one project to the next. There are two or three other developers on their team that have worked with us.

How did you come to work with Band of Coders?

I believe my boss heard of them through contacts and a local networking event. We enjoyed meeting with them and our main contact at Band of Coders was great about fostering the relationship and being flexible in allowing us to work with them on a project-by-project basis rather than through a monthly retainer.

How much have you invested with them?

$10,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in June 2017 and it is ongoing on a project-by-project basis.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Their work has made it easier for us to manage our workloads.

How did Band of Coders perform from a project management standpoint?

We use project tracking software with them. We provide the user stories and the acceptance criteria, and they make sure that’s what they are testing against and they submit comments and move cards accordingly.

For one of the two most recent projects, they gave us the designs and then coded them; for the other, we provided them some designs and they implemented what we gave them. The firm’s top people also attend debriefing sessions after projects are completed to ensure any feedback we may have will be implemented.

Whenever there is something that doesn’t work correctly or didn’t turn out as we asked, they’re always great to work with about that. They’re highly responsive and will make sure to fix it. However, as they have completed more projects for us and have had the chance to become more familiar with the codebase for our apps, there have been less of these situations.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team has gone out of their way to create a relationship and make sure that we're well taken care of. That goes a long way for us. They're very flexible and, even though we don't have ongoing work for them, they are always quickly available when we need them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve talked through certain things, such as how we can better work together in certain ways. That’s not really a ding on them, though. That’s just about process and how we make sure things run smoothly.

A few times, there were some misunderstandings of expectations and what exactly we wanted for a task, but the longer we work together, the less this happens.

Although each project has been on time, when there is more time until the deadline, they tend to wait toward the end of that time to do the work. We find it may be helpful to begin a bit earlier, which would help our code review process, which checks for bugs or errors.