CodeCoda Ltd.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am CEO and founder of MoreThanDigital, an internatial leading platform and initiative helping companies with economic development and education solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire CodeCoda Ltd., and what were your goals?

We developed for 3,5 years a concept to measure the full extend of a company from financials until to qualitative elements to make a 360° assessment and "fitness test". The challenge was to program a self-service platform that had many different elemements and needed to be thought from the scratch up in a new way as nothing was on the market before like this.

SOLUTION

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

CodeCoda was standing out due to the expertice Dr. Andreas Maier and his team putting behind it. We chose them as they were the only vendor to really understand the big problem we want to tackle and also made sure that we have all the best ressources in order to make this platform reality.

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

We had several discovery workshops where we really got into every detail and every aspect of the project until the big scope was set. Due to the nature of this platform and missing "comparisons" we then decided to go for agile methodology and make sure that we have fast iterations. CodeCoda has an own project management platform set up for us, so we could see what was going on and also the project managers were very responsive when it came to feedbacks, iterations and also "stops" when something was moving into a challenge to discuss. This lead to a good pace and also a great result.

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

There were several people from UX/UI, Project Managers (Overall and a specialized Technical Project Manager), several Front-End and Back-End Engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We managed to bring eh project to life and also found solutions for pretty much every challenge we had. It was really great that the team was also "on fire" for the mission and vision we had and got the extra mile to make it work.

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

We had several offline meetings, several online meetings, we mostly tracked everything with their own project management solution but also used Slack and calls for efficient communication.

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

We had direct access to the whole team, the CEO Dr. Andreas took personally care that all the solutions were found to all challenges. What was by far the most impressive was, that they could find solutions for many challenges where other companies weren't able to do so.

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

Everything was great and exceeded our expectations. It's hard for us to say where something could be improved as this was literally a journey that went "step-by-step" and we needed to explore on the way what was working and what not - so more than thankful that the team made such an effort in making Insights reality.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of YOU INTL Ltd. We create backends for accommodation businesses. For example, let’s say a hotel needs to communicate a specific availability to online booking engines like Booking.com and Expedia. For customers looking to work on multiple distribution platforms, the process becomes hard to maintain. Our engine integrates with all big providers and gives customers a single-entry point for their accommodations. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with CodeCoda?

We have a lot of API functionality in the backend, and we’re talking to thousands of hotels at the same time, which can result in hundreds of thousands of concurrent requests. We needed help balancing the load of our API.    

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

CodeCoda reworked large parts of the API when we started. They worked on the backend platform used by hotel owners, including its API implementation, cloud infrastructure, and the whole DevOps part.
 
We’re using Java on the backend, and PHP for some smaller parts. We’re using Apache Cassandra as a database. We have chatbots and a couple of cutting-edge technologies that aren’t commonly found or provided by developers.
 
What is the team composition?

We worked with 12–13 people from CodeCoda, including two project managers.
 
How did you come to work with CodeCoda?

One of CodeCoda’s business developers got in contact with us while we needed their services. We got in touch with other companies as well, but CodeCoda’s offer was the best.
 
How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $200,000.
 
What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with CodeCoda in January 2016, and they provided ongoing maintenance. We’re planning to start a new project with CodeCoda this autumn, and they will continue to maintain the original part—mainly the cloud infrastructure. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have a fully working business, which is a measurable outcome in itself. Using their experience, CodeCoda helped us improve on our originally planned functionalities, making them more logical for hotel owners to use. They’re a team of smart people with broad experience in several industries. They’ve helped us a lot when our requirements weren’t 100% clear or when we weren’t completely confident with our ideas.
  
How did CodeCoda perform from a project management standpoint?

CodeCoda uses Jira for task management, and we have full access to the boards. They also have a proprietary platform for time tracking linked to the committed code. We can see what the developers and background people are working on currently. If we need to give an explanation that isn’t clear in the requirements, the project managers put us in touch with the developers straight away.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Our last outsourcing experience didn’t pan out as we hoped—we felt that we overpaid and the company underdelivered.  We haven’t had that feeling with CodeCoda. I come from a development background, so I know what good-quality code looks like. CodeCoda continually delivers high-quality code on time or even faster than we expect. I can trust their team to know what they’re doing and to seek clarity when our instructions are vague or incomplete. We’re not getting just what we ordered; we’re getting something that works. 
 
Are there any areas they could improve?

The team tries to communicate a lot, but I’m quite busy, so it can be too much for me. I do understand that CodeCoda needs my approval to do things, but they can overcommunicate. This is a personal thing, and I don’t think it should be used against them. It might be a good trait for some clients.