Code&Care

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Connect A Voice. We’re an information service that provides data collection activities to agencies that support people with developmental disabilities.

What challenge were you trying to address with Code&Care?

We were looking to hire someone to work on our production system.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Code&Care provides ongoing development for our system that is about three years old and constantly evolving. The second major task they provide is ongoing maintenance and support of the production system.

What is the team composition?

I work with a project manager and two developers.

How did you come to work with Code&Care?

I was impressed with their ease to do business and their commitment to excellence was very impressive in our initial discussions.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent just over $31,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in May 2020 and the relationship is ongoing.

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

Code&Care has been able to meet our needs. As a CEO, it’s important to me to have partners that understand what we’re trying to do in the market and not only do technical work but also support our overall mission with individuals with developmental disabilities. They’re very diligent in how they approach the work and committed to getting it done on a timely basis.

How did Code&Care perform from a project management standpoint?

Good, they’re aware of what’s going on. They do a good job of scheduling as well as keeping me informed on progress or issues. We do a weekly status call with them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their commitment to excellence is very impressive. They don’t let things drop and they’re good at taking ownership of the task and making sure it’s performing well. The team doesn’t need to be reminded of anything; they have great initiative.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not at this time.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Share your needs with them and discuss your working relationship to make sure it’s a good fit.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Moxie Girl. We improve the mental and behavioral health of teen girls. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Code&Care?

We hired Code&Care to help with the building of our web-enabled and mobile apps.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We weren’t brainstorming from the start, we had an MVP and we needed someone to help put more details into it. I also needed more consistent development support. As a result, we started handing Code&Care an existing code base and we talked about what the goals were going to be for the product for the next 12 months. That’s how we built out the scope of work for how they were going to step in and how they were going to start providing development support for the project.

They were helping build out the reward section on our platform. Moreover, they were helping create community into the app and help develop a couple of interactive features too. More importantly,  they were helping us take it from web-based to mobile — the mobile app is available in iOS and Android. 

They also conduct research for us and whenever they do that, they come up with solutions.  The team predicts development cycles and executes them.  I can come and say I’ll hand some UX flows over, and we will handle the UI/UX design and Code&Care will handle the technical implementation of it. The team also handles our testing efforts. 

They'll find a solution to bandaid something if we need something quickly, but if we have more time, they'll find alternative solutions. Overall, we started with a very specific scope of work, and as the months went on we moved to a much more agile development style, which is my preference for development.

What is the team composition?

On a daily basis and depending on the month, we have 2–3 people from their side. There's one dedicated developer and a few members will plug in and out from time to time.

How did you come to work with Code&Care?

It was from a direct outreach from Andrew (CEO). He went to Louisville 15–16 months ago and he reached out and we met to talk about what our needs were at the time.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership started in October 2019 and we’re still working with them. We’ve been working together for a little over 13 months now.

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

We’re consistently growing month every month since the launch in the mobile App Store. I would say that the work they do has been very valuable and cost-effective. 

They’re also very flexible in terms of code cleanliness, process, code reviews— they just do a great job at communicating if something is going to be delayed, and communicating the reason why. They've also been good at working together to choose which is the best solution whenever we have time problems such as time constraints. On the other hand, if I say the exact scope of work and that we're not deviating from it, I'm sure they will adhere to that.

How did Code&Care perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management is excellent, and I probably sent them notes weekly just to say thank you for the project management side of things because they’re good. Our project manager has been great — she's good about running the daily calls and making sure that tickets are cashed in, ensuring the time associated with tasks, and other details that are critical to delivering software features on time. Those things may not always be in the mind of a product manager, and especially not in the mind of the CEO, as we're not only building a product but we're also growing a company at the same time. 

They really take a load off on the project management side and it’s a really useful gap that they build there. I really trust their project management capabilities. I’ve worked with a lot of development shops over the past 15 years and I can’t say that all about all the ones I’ve worked with. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a unique culture. Above all, they're kind, committed, and dedicated to the success of our project. They're friendly and adaptable. They're in our Slack and they interact with our team members — they just embed really well and that doesn't always work and with other shops. Code&Care does a good job of being very versatile by treating our project like it’s their own. 

They’re also very respectful that even if they have an opinion about something, but if a project manager says that it isn’t the way we’re going to do it, they’ll fall in line and they’ll do what we ask them to do. However, they will also hold a discussion on the right technical choices.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There are just some small things they could improve on. Early on, some of our developers have spent a lot of time trying to figure out the solution on their own versus tapping into their team of experts because that’s one of the benefits they have. A developer may be dedicated to our project, but there may be 25 other developers in the company they can go the question to. They can focus on just having an earlier choice of asking for help if they get stuck on something so there are not two days of swirl, but maybe just 2–3 hours. I've already seen them do that in our project.

Another thing would be more direct testing before things are released for review. They do a lot of testing, but I think there’s always an opportunity for improvement just in having a test engineer that always has the devices where they’re launching the app on the device, running through the user flows, and looking at the breaking bugs on the UX side. Basically, they can have someone who's not just focused on the tech development side. That could be a few of the issues we have, but it’s never anything breaking, it just would be nice to have that extra level of polish. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I think daily stand-ups help a lot. I would suggest this not only to Code&Care, but to other agencies, and our own product development team as well. I find daily face-to-face Zoom or Google Hangouts calls is the best way to build a relationship and keep the work going. It’s so easy to get caught up with going back and forth over email or Slack, but I think part of our success together has been that we have a relationship. There’s a little bit more of an emotional commitment to our success as a combined team and I definitely would recommend that daily connection.

I would also recommend letting Code&Care run the project management side. Give them what the guidelines are and let them run project pieces because they’re really good at that. Furthermore,  be very specific about what the UX should look like and hand over a complete UX and designer flow as possible because I think they are really good at delivering on that tech. Having UX/UI flows crystal clear takes a lot of ambiguity that causes misunderstanding, mistakes, and more.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the founders, shareholders, and the director at a financial services firm.

What challenge were you trying to address with Code&Care?

We needed help with development in three main areas including client onboarding, client services experience, and the advisor experience. We had an in-house application in place and decided to make our offering more professional.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provided a web application to help with our operations. It’s a single page application, constructed in React, using Google Material-UI and TypeScript. It can be used on mobile devices as well as a browser. The specifications they work from are from mockups that our internal designers produce. We provided an external API, which they connected the interface with. They deliver applications to us and our internal team does the QA process.

What is the team composition?

We work with two developers and one project manager.

How did you come to work with Code&Care?

We were introduced to their managing director. They came over to Birmingham, and we discussed our requirements were. We got a feel for how Code&Care approached things, and we learned that they work in a very similar way to how we develop in-house. We also wanted to make sure that they had a good command of English, which they do. Finally, the time difference is only two hours, which works out well for us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent 40,000 pounds (approximately $53,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started together in May 2020, and our work is ongoing.

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

We’ve had to return some things to Code&Care for re-work, but they work quite well in the development environment that we’ve asked them to use.

How did Code&Care perform from a project management standpoint?

We have standups with them every morning. They produce reasonably accurate estimates and their communication is great. We use Jira and Confluence for project management, and we use Slack to keep in touch.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’ve got great expertise in React. We’re also asking them to use TypeScript instead of JavaScript, and the quality is very good.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would be an advantage if our work was directly aligned and not two hours apart. That’s just an environmental circumstance, though. Sometimes we get a bit off the mark when communicating about extremely technical jargon, but they always catch up.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to have your requirements nailed down. Make sure you have the tools to communicate with them immediately if you need it.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and COO of Newtrul, a digital freight marketplace. We integrate with transportation and management systems of brokers and shippers available for truckloads, over the road freight.

We provide a UI for carriers, dispatchers, load planners, and operators which would be the trucking companies. They can search through that freight by putting in search parameters based on their needs. We return results of the shipments that meet those needs and enable them to digitally book or bid on it.

What challenge were you trying to address with Code&Care?

We needed help with integration and architecture development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have them working on our integration services. One of the developers is a jack of all trades. He does architecture, database, integration, web applications, and anything we need to be done. Another developer came on to build out our single page application product offering. We’ve moved him over into integration services because that’s a higher need.

What is the team composition?

We started with one developer and now we have three.

How did you come to work with Code&Care?

We met them through Upwork. A couple of their developers were on that platform, and they met the requirements for the type of talent we were looking for. Our company has a pretty robust interview process. It’s a three-tier interview process.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2020, and the work is ongoing.

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

We just built out an integration that has had 27,271 bilateral calls and only had three failures. It’s an incredible success rate of 99.999%. All three developers are quality developers. Our first developer is a superstar, he’s phenomenal. He is so valuable to us because he thinks of the second and third order to deploying code before we do.

If we push code that’s changing this UI, it’s also going to impact this integration of service that we sometimes miss. He thinks of things from a business intelligence perspective and that’s greatly appreciated. He has saved us a lot of tech and business debt.

How did Code&Care perform from a project management standpoint?

There haven’t been any issues with project management. We have a standup every morning. They’re always on time and available. We handle the prioritization and don’t lean on their team to handle project management. Our team assigns the projects that need to get done then tells them the requirements and timeline associated with them. They take it from there.

What did you find most impressive about them?

If you’re looking for talent at their price point, you’re not going to do any better. They’re providing incredible value for the price point we have them at.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s always room for improvement but I can’t specify anything. What they do, they do really well. They have a portfolio of a lot of different talent levels and specialties. I can call and tell them we’re migrating from PHP over to Node.js or React Native, and they’ll have four people we can interview the next day. It can’t get better than that.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Interview the candidates. We’ve interviewed four candidates and one didn’t pass our interview process. That’s why we have that interview process. Have either a specific project with requirements or have specific questions with respect to the technical requirements of the project.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a telecommunications company located in Buffalo, New York. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Code&Care?

We were trying to make a new version of our auto dialer solution when we hired Code&Care.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were working with a vendor and we were building almost the entire project around this vendor's API that we were using to send calls out through. However, we discovered six months into the project, that their pricing model for using that API was different than the original pricing they gave us. The cost was just out of control and we had to change the entire foundation of the server to send calls in a different way. With the help of Code&Care, we were able to do that. 

They are building our auto dialer solution using the Laravel PHP framework with a Vue.js frontend. We’re still testing the new version while using the old version. 

We’re continually adding new features. Furthermore, because it’s a contact center solution we have to do a lot of testing each time before we can actually roll it out. Things are going a little bit slower now because they allowed us to go all the way down to just one program until things go back to normal in our industry.

What is the team composition?

We had six people during the initial sprint. Right now, we’re still working on deciding the features and troubleshooting issues that come out, so we only have a project manager and programmer right now. 

How did you come to work with Code&Care?

We were very apprehensive about outsourcing. However, when we started chatting with them on LinkedIn and one of their team members met with us in person, it put us at ease with the idea of outsourcing and got the whole project going.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $140,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started collaborating in March 2019, and we’ve been working together for almost two years. 

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

We usually give them a 1–2 wish list of new features at the beginning of the month. After that, we measure their performance based on what they complete at the end of the month.

I could say that their work has definitely added a lot of value to the company. We now have a workable and proprietary version of our auto-dial software, which has been an enormous benefit for us.

How did Code&Care perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management has been great. The team is always able to jump on our Slack. We do most of our communication there. We also conduct check-in calls every Tuesday to make sure we know what everyone is doing. Overall, I think it’s been pretty good.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I don’t think a lot of places use open-source phone servers now instead of premade API. The fact that they were able to pivot and get that done without leaving us out to dry, I couldn’t imagine most places would have been able to do that. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think there’s anything they could improve during the COVID-19 situation.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Listen to the team's recommendations. There were a couple of times when they brought up some things that were red flags with the API that we listed and ended up having to switch away from. Let them know what you’re trying to get done. Don’t micromanage them too much because they may be able to come up with something better than you're going to think of.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of Viven Health. Our company builds online interactive environments to teach people how to prevent colds, the flu, and other infectious diseases.

What challenge were you trying to address with Code&Care?

Code&Care does all of our development work.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Code&Care develops different interactions on our website. If you were to go to our website, you’d be able to find out how to prevent the cold and flu through the various interactions Code&Care has developed. Users answer multiple-choice questions and navigate through the different environments that Code&Care built.

These environments include the different places a person passes through every day, such as the home, workplace, or hospital. Users need to find the best way to navigate those environments so that they can prevent an infection, such as by sanitizing their hands or putting on a mask. 

The more complicated side is what we call a builder. Code&Care created an environment for us where we can build out a case. We can add in the background that we want, as well as any interaction they’ve built for us in the past, such as handwashing. We can also add text and other items to these cases, which can then be deployed for users to interact with.

What is the team composition?

We work with two people from Code&Care — a project manager and a developer. I mostly deal with the developer and speak to him directly. If I have any higher-level, project-related questions, I have the project manager come on so that we can organize how it will be developed.

How did you come to work with Code&Care?

We found Code&Care through LinkedIn.  

How much have you invested with them?

Throughout the project, we’ve spent around $100,000

What is the status of this engagement?

The engagement started in January 2017, and it’s ongoing.

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

I’m very happy with the team’s work. I’ve used domestic developers in the past, and one of the problems that I’ve always encountered is completing projects on time. Code&Care has almost always been right on the money when it comes to completing a project I need to be done in a specific amount of time.

The quality of their work is good, and that’s one of the reasons I’m really happy. The best thing about them is their ability to complete projects on time, with very few bugs or issues once the project is completed.

How did Code&Care perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management is wonderful. Code&Care is adaptable. They have their own project management tools, and they’re also able to adapt if a client has their own way of managing projects. We take a hybrid approach, where we use some of our tools and some of theirs, and they have adapted to that very easily. Also, we often have to shift from one project to another quickly, and they’re able to adapt to that well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re able to complete projects on time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Honestly, no. I really like working with them. They do a great job, and they adapt. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be as detailed as possible in your project specifications. The more detail that you give to them, the easier it will be for them to create a timeline and complete the project as you want it done.