CleverCrew

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder of iLocater. We are based in Germany, and we provide services for optimizing and managing physical infrastructure. We have a variety of software products and hardware sensors to do so.

What challenge were you trying to address with CleverCrew?

I’ve spent 10 years in the industry and have very good insight into software development. However, since our company is growing, we need additional resources for software development on the backend platform as well as for mobile development. The challenge was to find the right people.

What was the scope of their involvement?

CleverCrew has developed a cross-platform Android and iOS app for us which is just about to be launched. It’s based on an Android app we developed in-house specifically for Android tablets. With these applications, we will eventually phase out the Android app we are using.

The app has a lot of location-based features. We have to know the location of the infrastructure and the specific time. We have some very cool machine learning and artificial intelligence features as well. 

We use a variety of features like three-dimensional motion sensors, vibration sensors, location sensors, and 3D cameras. CleverCrew is helping us set up the infrastructure for the machine learning application, and they’re also developing the access point (AP) which we will eventually deploy to other machinery in the municipal sector.

What is the team composition?

We worked with four or five people from their team.

How did you come to work with CleverCrew?

We searched for developers with the right skill set, and I found them online through Upwork.

I did a limited project first and assessed their code, their feedback, and if they are able to ask good questions when it comes to our specifications of the software. I also accessed whether they provided valuable feedback.

It was really more of an extended job interview where we saw how they performed in a smaller project first. This method gives us an idea of the chemistry of the people we are hiring.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent around €10,000 Euros per month (approximately $14,490 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in June 2018, and the work is ongoing. We expect to keep them on for quite a long period of time.

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

We use Google Analytics, so we will track the specific KPIs once we deploy the new cross-platform app. 

From personal experience, I see fewer errors when we deploy the backend code than what I did previously. My gut feeling is that the quality of their work is really good because we don’t see errors or breakdowns.

How did CleverCrew perform from a project management standpoint?

We perform project management internally. But, the development from their side is very good. We have direct contact with their developers as well as their project manager. All in all, the collaboration is really good.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Based on the other companies we’ve hired over time, I would say their ability to give us qualified feedback on specifications really stands out. 

Also, their willingness to educate themselves and find solutions to problems is impressive. They have a great willingness to get better and evolve. 

One of their developers has the most impressive skill set and excellent chemistry I’ve ever experienced in the more than 20 years I’ve been doing software.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could improve their English writing skills, as I think that would improve their ability to attract more customers. They should also improve their machine learning and AI skills, but I know they are about to do that.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Potential customers should be open and transparent with them. They should respect that they have very clever people within their team and really learn from that.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a recruiting tech firm. The work that we do is specifically in building the pillar of the finance function inside of a fast-growing company. We work on understanding how people hire. We build research projects and we build technology that helps us understand why people make decisions the way that they do and helps them to make better decisions. We’re a recruiting firm that didn’t set out to be a technology company, but needs a lot of technology and research.

What challenge were you trying to address with CleverCrew?

We were looking to take two distinct prototype versions of products and start iterating on them and building them out more fully and testing different features.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They were responsible for helping us execute and test our ideas on what our technologies should and could do. In conjunction with our head of product, they defined the overall development strategy and what the methodology was going to be. They worked with the designers and product leader to start and complete the build of the product through various iterations.

We started with a simple workflow that would guide a client through an exercise to understand the requirements. CleverCrew redid the entire workflow and designed it to do discovery on what the client needs and why, and how that compares to other companies. They also created a candidate experience where they were invited in and were scoring against those requirements.

It went from one-dimensional client recruitment to a recruiter-to-client-to-candidate process with a unique experience for each of them to make sure the right decision was made. That meant selecting and analyzing the requirements, identifying gaps in requirements, the recruiter engaging, identifying the candidates, loading them in, having the candidates score against it, and then vetting by the recruiter. So, there’s three different experiences. The order of operations was first the client one, then the recruiter one, and then the candidate one.

They inherited a bad code base and they were literally cleaning stuff up. They were finding bugs that were really slowing the system down as we tried to migrate to a new API. That was the only time we ran into issues, but they inherited that.

They use LAMP stack. I’m not sure if that’s changed.

What is the team composition?

They have a lead developer, a supporting developer, a business analyst, and a QA analyst. They also have designers who would assist if our designers weren’t able to execute because we have them doing other things. Dmitry (CEO, CleverCrew) was the engagement manager, and he held the daily and weekly meetings with us to set up the next sprint.

How did you come to work with CleverCrew?

They were introduced by a former product manager who had researched and found them online and had done some pretty exhaustive interviews with 12-15 different firms.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $400,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in July 2015 and the work is ongoing.

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

95% of firms in our space would never contemplate a project like this because it’s outside the typical process that recruiters are used to. We couldn’t have executed this without a good team. We did try another team for a period of time with a different project, but it didn’t work out. CleverCrew helped us execute a vision that we couldn’t have realized without them.

How did CleverCrew perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management has been effective. We haven’t followed a strict schedule. We use Trello for a lot of our work. CleverCrew tried three different methodologies, and we’ve landed at one that is a bit of a hybrid of agile and another methodology. It’s done quite well for us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are very interested in solving the problem of an offshore engagement. They’re open to trying new things and will offer different styles of working together. For a company like ours, that’s really important, because we can’t do all that thinking alone. There’s what they deliver and then there’s how they deliver. It’s a win-win because they’re very interested in the how.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’ve talked to them even about their sales funnel and they have a good offering. I think they should double down on their development and marketing because they need a sales channel development. They could probably support more because what they’ve done well is getting the right people in their company. However, the marketing and the sales have really been an afterthought for them. They need more robust business development activity. I’d also say not to grow too quickly and lose the technical expertise.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that you have a point of contact. Having someone who has product experience and at least understands working with dev teams and running them is important. They’re as effective as we are at giving them what they need to be effective. Having that personal insight on your side is really important.

They don’t nickel and dime us, but I think people nickel and dime them. I’d look at understanding what the company needs to succeed and be effective. I would ask that question. I would then make sure that I have the tools internally to be able to support them and to understand the business. Educate them on how the market operates so that they reflect that in the solutions that they build. When I do that, we get great outcomes.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of a web and mobile app development company that’s been in operation for the past 16 years. We also provide digital marketing.

What challenge were you trying to address with CleverCrew?

They’ve been our partner for backend development for a number of years, and we’ve worked on numerous projects together. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

One of the projects we’ve worked on is a social media community-driven platform. We needed to work out all the requirements and do the development work itself. I believe it was ultimately a 2,000-hour project and we worked closely with CleverCrew’s team through it all.

We were at the frontend of the application, handling management and directing the design and layout. We coordinated with CleverCrew on the backend work, which included programming, engineering, architecting, and so on. The main technologies used were PHP and PostgreSQL, and we ran it on a cloud-based Linux platform.

With another project, we developed something similar to a stock trading platform. Specifically, it was an information marketplace for professional stock traders, who could join the platform and sell their stock picks. The platform allows users to track who the best traders are, and it can be used by normal people to evaluate those traders. Stock picks are purchased through the website and are only paid for if they generate a profit.

We had to integrate a real-time stock feed into the website, which was a complicated, mission-critical part. It dealt with financial information, making it a high-risk project. CleverCrew pulled it off, making it all happen on the engineering side.

What is the team composition?

We’ve generally worked with only a few contacts there to keep the development process efficient. I usually work with Dmitry (CEO, CleverCrew), and the project manager on our side works with one to two people on theirs. I don’t know how many developers they’ve assigned to us, but I would estimate it's between four and five.

How did you come to work with CleverCrew?

Their founder used to work for an agency that did work for us. He ended up splitting off from that agency, and part of the deal he negotiated was that he could keep our account. He left the company with a number of its employees.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost is possibly around $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with CleverCrew in May 2015, and the collaboration is ongoing.

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

CleverCrew has been a good technology partner for us. Dmitry and I are very tight, and we’ve helped each other out over the years with different things. We’ve grown to have a good relationship and have turned into friends over the years.

Good-quality people that we can collaboratively work with are hard to find, and CleverCrew has been good for us in that regard. They have a similar mindset and ethos to ours, which has helped us get our products out at a high-enough quality to make customers happy. The deliverables are bug-free, and we haven’t faced a lot of problems with the products we’ve put out.

How did CleverCrew perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve typically worked in one or two-week sprints with predefined tasks. We keep track of our burn rate and status and have meetings every week, or even multiple times per week. We’ve used several software tools to manage the process, including Pivotal Tracker, Trello, BugHerd, and Google Docs.  

They’ve performed well in terms of project management. Nothing is ever perfect in life, but they’ve been great in terms of communication and hitting deadlines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of work is really good, and this is the most important thing at the end of the day. Communication is good as well in terms of getting on the same page and making sure there aren’t too many misunderstandings. We’ll always have some, though, when dealing with a 500–1,000-hour project, but in the grand scheme of things, the way we work fits theirs, and this makes it work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Everyone can improve. We’re looking at ways to branch out our integration and have them start doing some of the engineering tasks that we’ve handled internally. They’re not used to doing some of those things yet, though. Over time, I guess they’ll add some talent to handle these different aspects, and I think that’ll make them even better.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Our approach is a bit different compared to other companies. We put everything in writing, documenting everything thoroughly and making detailed specifications. When working over long distances, it’s very important to be very clear about what the goal is and to leave as little to the imagination as possible. This is true when working with anyone based on our experience.