CodeTiburon

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our organization is 10xTravel. We work with travel companies on generating leads and bookings. I'm a director.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with CodeTiburon?

We needed an outsourcing partner because we had reached our capacity of doing the work in-house. We worked with CodeTiburon on custom software development for mobile applications and a website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We did cross-platform mobile apps for iPhone, Android, and iPads. For the website development, CodeTiburon used Angular JS and JavaScript technologies. I have worked with CodeTiburon for three years on a lot of different projects.

How did you come to work with CodeTiburon?

I found CodeTiburon via Upwork. I found them responsive and easy to work with. Even though they are based in Ukraine, they have a project manager who has very good written and spoken English. He runs the entire project and is the main point of communication, so you don’t have to deal with the developer directly which makes the whole relationship a lot smoother.

How much have you invested with CodeTiburon?

We have spent between $15,000 and $25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with CodeTiburon in July 2014, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The quality of their coding was commented on by the clients and users. The experience of using the applications was better than before I started working with them.

How did CodeTiburon perform from a project management standpoint?

They provided a dedicated point of contact, and they were quite good at giving deadlines. There were a couple of issues about the price, and they had some capacity issues when they were very busy with the work. Otherwise, everything about their project management was good. I wouldn't have kept working with them if they hadn't been.

What did you find most impressive about CodeTiburon?

They are very organized, and they are good at doing estimates. They’re not the cheapest developers to work with, but they do make an effort to specify the cost up front so there are no surprises with deadlines which I think can happen with a lot of other companies.

Are there any areas CodeTiburon could improve?

I think that their pricing could be a little bit more competitive compared to some other companies, but I think you certainly pay for the service with them. Compared to some other companies in Ukraine, they have quite a lot of resources. The only negative is that they are on the top end of the pay scale in compared to their competitors.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a startup and we are doing two activities mainly. With CodeTiburon, we provide the web and mobile app development for the French market. We have also developed our own software. I am a co-founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with CodeTiburon?

We have two products that we developed with CodeTiburon. One is a platform that provides content management with approval workflows. We also developed the web and mobile platform that offers rapid messaging and provides some intranet/extranet services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

As a startup, it was important to us to find developers at an optimized price because it’s quite difficult to find good developers in France. The French market is difficult because we have a lack of developers, so the good ones are very expensive. With CodeTiburon, I was able to get a team, including a developer, project manager, UX [user experience] designer, and some people dedicated to testing. When I approach a new project with CodeTiburon, I usually first provide them a functional scope of work, describing what we want. We then have a UX design phase where we define all the features of the development, including some prototyping and visuals that we can show to the customer. After this phase, we then have a project manager or developer that does the testing, and a program director that makes sure everything goes well.

CodeTiburon is a dedicated team, and we have quite a strong partnership, so it felt a bit like they were a part of our company. Thanks to CodeTiburon, we developed a strong prototype for the MVP [minimum viable product] of our app that convinced an important customer to sign with us because they trusted our capability to deliver on time.

How did you come to work with CodeTiburon?

I found them by chance. Before starting my company, I was working for a hardware vendor. It’s a big company, and CodeTiburon called me to see if they would be interested in getting some offshore development services. I had already planned out the project, so I told them that the company was not interested in that; it was not our business. However, personally, I was interested in getting in touch with them and seeing if they could work with us. I selected CodeTiburon because they were able to make a very detailed plan of the technologies they would use. They explained the architecture and provided a lot of details that convinced me that technically, they were very good. It was very important to me to feel that they were a solid company, and that is what I get from them. Because they have my product in their hands, it’s very important to me to have some continuity.

How much have you invested with CodeTiburon?

The project size was $400,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with CodeTiburon in November 2014, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I am satisfied with the work CodeTiburon delivered. Sometimes we faced problems regarding resources because they are not a very big company. At the same time, it makes me an important customer for them. They always commit to finding solutions because when we develop a project, it’s not always perfect. We have to keep working on it and resolve some bugs. What I like about CodeTiburon is that they never give up until they find a solution, even if they have to spend time on their cost. Regarding feedback, it’s like any product. Sometimes there are problems; sometimes it’s good. CodeTiburon improved a lot with our project compared to the beginning in terms of methodology and tracking time. They are good technically, and they are good in recruiting people.

How did CodeTiburon perform from a project management standpoint?

With CodeTiburon, I work with two project managers depending on the project. First of all, they speak English; that’s very important. They are very good in providing regular outputs of the project, describing where we are and so on. To be honest, sometimes they missed some important information, or they were a bit late with the communication, but it happens. Globally, I think they are quite good, and I am satisfied with the project manager that I have.

What did you find most impressive about CodeTiburon?

What I like most about CodeTiburon is that they are very honest. We work more like a partnership than as a customer and provider. They will advise me not to do something even though they could earn more money. We have now been working together for three years, so we know each other quite well.

Are there any areas CodeTiburon could improve?

They need to have more resources on the mobile app side. There are no problems with web development or project management, but with UX design they are a little bit bottlenecked in terms of resources to manage all projects.