CyberCraft Inc.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm a lead software engineer at Ten-X. We specialize in developing mobile applications.

What challenge were you trying to address with CyberCraft Inc.?

We needed additional development resources to help us build our mobile apps. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

CyberCraft manages a variety of tasks for us, from prototyping to development and ongoing maintenance of our apps. We mostly build iOS apps, and CyberCraft has helped us with both design and development. They're based in Ukraine, so we give them our requirements, and they implement them. We review their code daily, and they incorporate our feedback.

What is the team composition? 

I've worked with their CEO and two engineers.

How did you come to work with CyberCraft Inc.?

Our director found them. We had a phone interview with their CEO and decided they'd be a good fit. 

What is the status of this engagement? 

We started working with them in September 2018, and the relationship is ongoing. 

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

They're very knowledgeable and deliver high-quality code. Also, they have fast turnaround times, so it’s been an effective process. 

How did CyberCraft Inc. perform from a project management standpoint? 

We have phone meetings once or twice a week, and we also use a ticketing system. They're great communicators, so we haven’t had any issues. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

We've worked with other offshore vendors, and many of them didn't meet even 50% of our needs. With CyberCraft, we've had far better results and much higher quality. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. If there is a problem, they address it quickly. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Engage with them and ask them questions. Also, give them as many details as possible because that will help them deliver better results. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the principal engineer of a compliance platform.

What challenge were you trying to address with CyberCraft Inc.?

We needed more quality assessment resources for our company.

What was the scope of their involvement?

CyberCraft Inc. developed our web application, which helps specialists assess and manage corporate risk. Before beginning development, we looked a year ahead and planned any future skill sets that would be required. Our team communicated all of our expectations including required skill sets, quality of deliverables, and platform design.

With an understanding of our requirements, CyberCraft Inc. then managed the entirety of the development process: coding, migration, and testing. Using JavaScript and Polymer Web Components, they built the frontend. Their team developed the backend with C#, MySQL, and Microsoft SQL Server. After, CyberCraft Inc. migrated the app from desktop to online and conducted tests.

What is the team composition?

We currently work with eight developers including team leads and QA teammates.

How did you come to work with CyberCraft Inc.?

Our CEO met their team at an event.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began our collaboration in February 2017, and it’s ongoing.

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

CyberCraft Inc. has done great work. There haven’t been any bugs in the system due to oversight or carelessness. Their team addressed all aspects of the platform, which has ensured quality. Our collaboration worked really well.

How did CyberCraft Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re well organized and technically sound. We’ve followed an agile process, which their team was already trained to do. We have scrum teams that are broken down into smaller groups of three with designated team leads. Each group meets at least twice a week for an hour and works in sprints.

Although there’s a 12-hour time difference between us, CyberCraft Inc. has been responsive. Any questions we’ve at the end of the day are answered before we walk into the office the next morning. They’re always available on Slack as well as through email, GoToMeeting, and the phone.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re quick learners and have a strong understanding of fundamentals. CyberCraft Inc. is highly skilled with impressive technical knowledge and a strong work ethic. With an intense attention to detail, they do quality work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

If there were concerns, we never let anything sit or wait as we’ve followed Agile methodology. Overall, I’ve been really happy.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Plan well. Develop a collaborative and transparent environment.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the former VP of engineering for a fintech company.

What challenge were you trying to address with CyberCraft Inc.?

We realized we wouldn’t be able to finish the cloud migration we’d started with our in-house resources within a reasonable timeframe because we had other commitments to our product roadmap. We couldn’t take the system out of production for long periods of time, so we needed support to complete the migration with minimum downtime.

What was the scope of their involvement?

CyberCraft Inc. migrated our in-house applications as well as our database cluster to the cloud. Our team’s engineers provided access to systems and supported integration with the work we’d completed for our roadmap. Their team managed code changes, data migration, and the solution’s rollout. Our applications were written by contractors who provided limited documentation, so their team had to rewrite the code. They also had to rebuild modules to support the movement of both OS and database engines, which they transitioned to a more cost-effective version. As well, their team restructured some of our services to be more cloud-native, forwarding some to run on AWS.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a team lead, a lead engineer, and four other engineering teammates.

How did you come to work with CyberCraft Inc.?

I’d met their team at a conference. We looked at other companies, but after talking to CyberCraft Inc. about their work we ended up going with them.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent around $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We collaborated between December 2017–February 2018.

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

It was helpful to have CyberCraft Inc. assess the problem because we were somewhat new to the cloud. They added great value to the whole migration such as when they suggested we switch our database engine, which we hadn’t even considered. They provided us with a lot of assistance.

How did CyberCraft Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

CyberCraft Inc. split the project into achievable chunks, which allowed us to follow their progress with minimum help from our side. We had weekly project updates. If the team had any questions, we held ad hoc meetings too. They used Slack and Skype because we use those tools. CyberCraft Inc. was accommodating day-to-day.

What did you find most impressive about them?

CyberCraft Inc. had good communication; we had to step-up our information sharing, which was key to the success of our collaboration. Their team transferred knowledge smoothly. They were able to wrap up the project and leave our engineers with all the information they needed to continue supporting and developing the new applications. CyberCraft Inc. was focused on delivering value to our company.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They flagged any issues. If there was a miscommunication, it never happened again. No one’s perfect; everyone can improve. They adapted if we identified ways for them to better support us.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Both sides of the engagement must communicate to have a successful collaboration.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president & CEO of a SAAS company. We build a platform for continuous integration and delivery, as well as some storage products and cost optimizations.

What challenge were you trying to address with Cybercraft Inc.?

We wanted experienced high-quality software engineers, at a reasonable cost. We were looking for people who could operate with guidance. They also needed a strong engineering background, not just in web development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We built a Cybercraft team with Eugene (CEO, Cybercraft) that was integrated into our own team. We were able to find strong team leads with impressive academic backgrounds and wide experience. Although they’re offshore, we consider them part of our team and part of our family. They tend to work on everything except UX, just because we wanted someone in the same time zone for that.

Our clients would come to us with a large automated test suite, and they would need to be automatically parallelized, distributed, collected, and piped back. These systems would push 10-15 terabytes of data per month, with petabytes of data stored in the backend.

We split our team with Cybercraft into two teams: one team was responsible for implementing wireframes and web frontend components. The other team builds the control plane and machine learning, as well as cost optimization in the backend. It’s really a full-stack operation. This is much more sophisticated than traditional web development.

As a result, when customers come to us with a batch job it only takes 30 minutes, which would normally take 40 hours, if run locally. There’s a lot of performance optimization. Primarily, they use Postgres, AWS, Golang, JavaScript, Ruby, and Python.

What is the team composition?

We began with a team of four and grew to 20 members. We have two senior team leads based in Ukraine.

How did you come to work with Cybercraft Inc.?

We knew Eugene personally before he started Cybercraft. We knew him, both by reputation and by having worked with him, which gave us the confidence to work with him again.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested $1 million–$10 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in October 2014, and our engagement is ongoing.

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

This team is producing code on par with the best of the people we’ve worked within the United States. Overall, they’ve provided good results at a great price.

How did Cybercraft Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

There isn’t as much of a project management function, as you might find some contact dev shops have, by design. We work with them in an agile way, and they deliver the projects on time.  Whenever they run into issues, they’ve been really good about explaining those risks before they materialize. From a software engineering and project management standpoint, they’ve done a good job, despite there not being a specific PMO function.

We use Zoom for our standups and also communicate through a chat system. All of them have strong spoken English, and we haven’t had any communication issues. The only way we operate with them differently than our core team is by recognizing the time difference.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Overall, they have a technically strong team. They typically have both an undergraduate and a master’s degree in computer science from Germany. They all have a strong technical background, even the most junior members. Their senior engineering members are seasoned and can predict where the risks are, which is exactly what we need. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think as their team grows, some of the project management office function is something they’ll need to add.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s important, early on, to establish a strong working environment, and to provide frequent feedback. They work best with a product person who can give product specific feedback and direction.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was a professional services consultant for Industry Built, an ERP system provider and developer. Our company was recently bought out by a different organization.

What challenge were you trying to address with CyberCraft Inc.?

We had a tight deadline and needed a partner to develop some new modules and add new facets to our existing ERP systems.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The previous version of our ERP had six facets that were underdeveloped, so we needed to get them up to speed and functioning. The two modules we needed developed within the larger ERP system were for fixed assets and equipment rentals. The former dealt with equipment that depreciated over time and the latter was more for manufacturers or resellers who tended to rent equipment out instead of selling it.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a project manager, developer, two testers, and a business analyst.

How did you come to work with CyberCraft Inc.?

A colleague recommended them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $120,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The partnership lasted from March–November 2018.

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

They developed high-quality modules that improved our overall system. By the time we launched, they’d completed 90% of our documentation and all task cases.

How did CyberCraft Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

We had some issues at the beginning of our partnership, but they changed their team around, and it got much better. They were on time and made sure not to exceed costs. We met regularly to discuss project progress.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Even though they were remote, they were extremely organized and easy to work with. They listened to what we needed and delivered exactly what was requested.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We were confused about all the different systems they had for uploading content or submitting problems, so it would’ve been helpful if they had one centralized system.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Be open and speak up if something doesn’t meet your expectations. They’ll listen and try to fix it.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I worked with CyberCraft on a project for a client that wanted a consumer-facing mobile application that would help users remember special events—like anniversaries, birthdays, or holidays—and buy gifts for the people in their life.

What challenge were you trying to address with CyberCraft?

The client needed software development in regards to the rapid prototyping of a mobile application, as well as marketplace testing and iterative development updates.

What was the scope of their involvement?

CyberCraft engaged with me on this project. I gave them requirements for a software development team and they found developers in their local area in a fairly short amount of time. That team then used my sketches and requirements for the app development. It is a cross-platform mobile app that runs on both Android and iOS devices, so they used React Native and associated platforms, like Xcode and Android development kits.

They presented their work proposal to me, I signed off, and they began working on software development iterations in one or two-week sprint cycles. After each iteration, we would coordinate with the client to get feedback and reviews, which we would take and implement, repeating the cycle until we had a product that everyone was satisfied with. The project ended with successful beta testing and producing a usable mobile app.

Within this process, the team also ran a design sprint exercise where they brainstormed different UI options, produced artifacts, and had those reviewed by the client.

What is the team composition?

There was a team lead on their side that filled both project management and technical architecture roles. The team ranged in size but typically stayed around three people.

How did you come to work with CyberCraft?

I’ve worked with CyberCraft in the past—across multiple projects with different clients—and have always had a positive experience with them. I continue to work with them because they build productive teams that deliver positive results.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost was $80,000–$100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in February 2017 and ended in October 2017.

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

The app hasn’t gone to market yet, so there aren’t any metrics to share. However, we received positive feedback from our client. The team quickly took care of any bugs or crashes, and they carefully implemented feedback from reviews.

How did CyberCraft perform from a project management standpoint?

They understand scrums and Agile development based on sprints and had no problem setting and completing milestones. We had regular reviews and communication over email, chats, or video meetings using Google Hangouts. I’m not familiar with their day-to-day processes, but their local project management is working because the results were great.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was most impressed with the consistency of their results. In my experience, CyberCraft has universally built good teams that have an open, mature approach to software development. Whenever issues were raised and recognized, the team dealt with them professionally. They were easy to work with and produced good results.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Overall, I was satisfied with their work. I didn’t get a lot of exposure to the CyberCraft staff that worked more on the UX front, so I can’t speak to their strengths in that avenue, but it’s not something I would call out as needing improvement.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The CyberCraft team is always open to feedback and looking for ways to improve, so my advice would be to take advantage of that and be an engaged client. You will see the best results if you develop and implement a communication strategy upfront that keeps all parties involved.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Polymorph is an advertising network. I'm the principle architect, so I cover infrastructure and data management.

What challenge were you trying to address with CyberCraft Inc.?

We were looking for developers to help us with day-to-day management.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We're a native ad network. We have an open network for basically anyone and native ads fit contextually within a website. Sometimes, we cover 40 billion requests in a month. We're growing and getting a higher volume of traffic, so CyberCraft has been helping us maintain a high uptime (our uptime is 99.9%). We cover days during the regular working hours, while they cover nights. They use AMS (Amazon Web Services) and Auto Scaling to help us with development. We also have a team in India, so we're balancing the workload between different teams.

What is the team composition?

We work with a senior engineer and an intermediate engineer.

How did you come to work with them?

They were recommended to me.

How much have you invested with them?

We pay them about $10,000 a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

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

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

I'm very satisfied with the quality of their work. CyberCraft has been a tremendous help for us during the night in terms of the code they push out and their knowledge of unique systems. (We have a team in the U.S. that responds to any issues during the day.) Also, we value their feedback on the product we're currently working on.

How did they perform from a project management standpoint?

We have standard standup meetings biweekly and we use a Slack channel to communicate throughout the day. They're based in Ukraine, but we haven’t had any communication barriers. They're very responsive and resolve any issues immediately.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their engineers are very knowledgeable and have experience with Unix systems and data centers. That is very helpful when working with virtual machines.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can't think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have solid goals and an open line of communication. Documenting everything may help avoid communication issues.