CyberCraft

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am a Director at a software company. 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

A software company specializing in the creation and delivery of Animal Health and Laboratory Information Management Systems for government and university entities, based on a thirty-year history of excellence in the agri-business sector.

As a leading vendor of Animal Health Information Systems with deep expertise in the implementation of animal traceability systems globally, we service clients and partners in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland and New Zealand. Our pedigree in relation to animal health computer systems is unparalleled.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire CyberCraft Inc. to accomplish?

• Compliment our own team
• Bring experienced developers

SOLUTION

How did you find CyberCraft Inc.?

Online Search

Why did you select CyberCraft Inc. over others?

• High ratings
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

What was the size of CyberCraft Inc.’s team?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Compliment and integrate into our existing team of developers quickly and help deliver a new product for us quickly

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• quality code delivered
• quickly up to speed
• number of resources available

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

We managed the project with weekly team meetings, The CyberCraft resources got up to speed very quickly and helped us continue to deliver modules on time.

What was your primary form of communication with CyberCraft Inc.?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Ease of doing business

Are there any areas for improvement or something CyberCraft Inc. could have done differently?

No not really

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I was the director of cloud engineering at a software company, leading Cloud engineering indicatives for our IIOT software platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire CyberCraft Inc., and what were your goals?

We had built several IIOT services , deployment tools for our cloud customers (SaaS). Our vision is to provide a seamless experience to our customer to be able to rapidly design , develop IIOT applications and deploy on our platform.

SOLUTION

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

We aquired a CICD tooling company. As part of that aquisitions , we have got CyberCraft , at that time doing core development (web and backend services) for that company's tooling. We liked the level of skills these cyber craft engineers having, and then we extended thier contract to help us provide engineers for our core development of our platform.

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

They have developed tools and services in NodeJS, ReactJS , Golang, AWS Cloud, CICD with Solano(custom) and Jenkins.

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

We have used 5-6 software engineers to help us build tooling as part of our Cloud Engineering team(60-70 engineers)

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Cybercraft engineers assigned to develop Our Frontend tools in the Analytics and CICD area, they have build and delivered functionality with good quality and >95% on-time as assigned tasks (given they are remote). These engineers requires minimal guidance, given we give clear requirements , mockups , engineers delivered and build application and backend services.

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

Cybercraft engineers are part of our core team. We use 2 weeks agile sprints , closely worked with our team attending standups and sprint planning.

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

These engineers were highly skilled and had a startup mentality. Given they have experience building products, it was easy for us set expectations , give requirements, so they can build them offline in Ukraine.

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

They were still a small company, but have highly talented people at the time. Timezone difference was a challenge , having less overlap...I wish they have a presense in the US, but again that would have come with higher cost. Otherthan that, quality of these engineers is good.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I was a software engineer hired to work with the Cybercraft engineers

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire CyberCraft Inc., and what were your goals?

We needed to build reliable financial software that big companies across America would use. Cybercraft was hired to provide the engineers, testers, and managers to get this job done.

SOLUTION

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

I was hired after Cybercraft was already working for modularity, and immediately joined the same team.

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

Cybercraft would have people talk directly to the stakeholders to understand the needs of the project, and from there the engineers would design a solution that would be presented again to the stakeholders. After that, there could be rounds of discussion on the solution presented and after everything was settled the engineers would start to code. For each part of the system shipped, the testers would start the QA process, and after everything was tested, the stakeholders would be informed that the software is live and ready to use.

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

Around 20 people from Cybercraft were working on this project. Including backend engineers, frontend engineers, project managers, and testers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The system has been used and approved by different companies in America after being shipped.

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

The team was divided into smaller squads, meeting every day for a standup session. The whole team would also meet every week for an all-hands. All other discussions were asynchronous through slack, and engineers were free to talk to each other whenever needed.

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

Their English level was very good, and they were all very communicative. Their technical skills were outstanding!

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

Every day-to-day feedback that their engineer or managers would get would immediately get addressed. As for now, I can't think in anything they could have done better.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I was the senior QA manager on a new initiatives consumer product at a large cyber security company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire CyberCraft Inc., and what were your goals?

We were building a brand new product that included hardware, firmware, mobile app, a web dashboard and cloud infrastructure. In bringing up a brand new product end to end, we needed support in building test frameworks and writing automation tests for the project, as well as manual tests to run regression and exploratory end to end testing.

SOLUTION

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

CyberCraft was recommended to us by an employee who had worked with them in another startup environment and had had a very positive experience.

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

The project assigned to CyberCraft included building out a test framework in Python for device software tests, writing automation for networking products, building a test framework with Cypress and testing web UI and APIs. Additionally CyberCraft also provided a team of manual testers to run through end to end tests on the mobile app integrated with our hardware, cloud services and web dashboard.

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

The team we worked with was roughly 8 engineers, half dedicated to manual testing and half with automation experience in Python, Cypress, and networking technologies.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

CyberCraft was heavily involved in maintaining a high bar of quality and identifying critical bugs before our 1.0 launch. After 1.0, they were a key part of each software release cycle (cycles typically ran 6-8 weeks) for the next year as we shipped our maintenance releases.

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

CyberCraft was highly organized and efficient in communicating with us. They filed issues and responded to work requests over Jira, they documented much of their process in Confluence, they were actively engaged with their counterpart QA and development teams over slack and regularly met with us over zoom, at least a few times a week.

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

The dedication, work ethic, and constant communication from CyberCraft was great. It was the best of any offshore QA team I have ever worked with in the last 10 years in the industry.

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

CyberCraft always stepped up to the challenges we presented. They pivoted when asked to and were always willing to incorporate our feedback into their approach. There was nothing big that they needed to do differently, and when we made minor requests for changes in process they always complied.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the former CTO of a real estate company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed an app that gave our users access to the real estate market via Android and iOS mobile devices. Our company already had a mobile app built using my local team, and we wanted to create its next version — that was where CyberCraft helped. For further context, we had a website at that time where end users could bid, and it worked well. However, we got feedback that customers wanted a mobile app, so we built it.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

CyberCraft helped us do refactoring and build new features for the app. To do that, we asked them to provide us with development resources that would work with my team to build the new version of our app.  

In terms of features and functionality, the app allowed users to buy and sell real estate — it was like eBay for real estate. Sellers would get notifications on the bids on their properties, while buyers could search for properties. Before buyers could bid, they’d show proof of funds. From there, the highest bidder would win the property, and we’d facilitate the transaction.

What is the team composition?

We worked with an Android developer, an iOS developer, and one QA specialist. 

How did you come to work with CyberCraft Inc.?

CyberCraft reached out to me and said they had good resources and talent. That was how we connected with each other. 

How much have you invested with them?

We worked on the project with CyberCraft for over 1.5 years.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project was from September 2018–January 2020

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

As we were building our next generation app, we pushed to high quality.  

After launch, we had the app ratings of 4.8 stars and positive customer feedback.   CyberCraft had very skilled and seasoned engineers who cared about hitting timelines and delivering high quality products.

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

The CyberCraft team’s work quality and English skills were good. We had sync-up meetings two times a week, and they sent out reports via emails. Simply put, they were proactive — their project management exceeded our expectations. 

In terms of tools, we used Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket. To communicate, we use Slack on top of emails. Our weekly meetings were done via Zoom calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Overall, I found that CyberCraft focussed on hiring strong technical folks who also were easy to work with.   They were a great resource that I could rely on.

Are there any areas they could improve?

What I appreciated, is that when we gave them feedback that they were there to listen and adapt.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you need some technical resources, I suggest that you try them out to see if they can help you.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I act as Sourcing Manager for a Nordic mid-size high-end software design and developer company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire CyberCraft Inc., and what were your goals?

We need a software development partner to work together with our client projects. In this project, we had 2 CyberCraft's backend developers working as our remote team. The goal was to tap into the tech talent pool in Ukraine, and enable more flexible and cost-effective product development services for our clients.

SOLUTION

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

We have a wide network of different developer companies, especially in Ukraine. We had discussions with management teams from several short-listed companies, and "tech talks" directly with engineers. Eventually we chose to work with CyberCraft as their engineers proved to be very skilled, easy to work with, and the overall cost was competitive.

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

Mostly Ruby on Rails backend development.

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

Two developers, senior and mid-level, working together with out own teams.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The developers proved to be competent and delivered good results as expected. Details under NDA.

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

The "high-bandwidth" day-to-day communications between the developers in different locations were smooth.

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

The developers are both professionals and nice people to work with.

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

Both parties could have set expectations more clearly for the management level cooperation at the beginning of the cooperation to avoid minor misunderstandings during the operations.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO and one of the founders of Codemate. We provide software development, design, and maintenance services for digital platforms and applications. We have offices in Thailand and Singapour.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

I hired CyberCraft to support one of our development teams that needed more resources to develop an application for one of our clients. Our developers were busy on other projects, so we needed external help.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

CyberCraft’s developers helped us with Ruby on Rails development. Specifically, they developed the backend for one application built for a group of restaurants.

What is the team composition?

CyberCraft provided us with developers to work on our project.

How did you come to work with CyberCraft?

I found them through a friend who specializes in finding Eastern European companies for development projects. CyberCraft had the best development resources available, which was why he recommended them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent over $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together on this project in June 2021, and it was completed by the end of 2021. However, we’ve been using them to develop other applications for different brands, so our partnership is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

CyberCraft’s developers were able to complete all the tasks we assigned them properly, and the quality of their work was at the level that we required.

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

Although we had our own project managers, CyberCraft's developers did a great job following the project, and we had no problems whatsoever. They were very communicative and did the things that were required. We used GitHub, Jira, and Slack to manage the project, as well as Google Meet for our meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The project had started about a year before CyberCraft got on board, so there was a lot of information that they needed to process in order to understand their tasks. Still, they started working on the project very quickly, and they didn’t need much time to get familiar with it, which was impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve? 

No. Although there always are some challenges when working with remote teams, we had no issues serious enough to mention. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Choose your software development resources very carefully so that you get what you need; you need to find the right people in order to have a successful outcome.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Head of Engineering for a B2B Design company headquartered in New York.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire CyberCraft Inc.?

I needed to scaleup my engineering team to tackle a growing backlog for our custom applications.

SOLUTION

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

I spent 6 months searching for a partner to scale my team. I chose CyberCraft because they are professionally managed, and their engineers are highly-skilled professionals.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

I built two Agile teams by integrating CyberCraft’s engineers with my own. These teams successfully refactored my eCommerce website and another custom enterprise app to the latest tech frameworks quickly and efficiently.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

I provided CyberCraft's recruiters with job descriptions of the talent we wanted and discussed our tech stack and roadmap. CyberCraft provided resumes for our review and hosted video interviews for the candidates we liked. Upon selection, CyberCraft managed onboarding and outfitting team members with equipment, tools and work space.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the engagement that demonstrate progress or success?

Since refactoring to code base, many features and enhancements have been added that have helped boost online revenue by ~20% and operational efficiency by ~ 100%.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Team collaboration was very effective despite time zone disparity. The US and Ukraine teams shifted hours to accommodate periods of face-to-face meeting and collaboration.

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

CyberCraft is able to attract and retain highly skilled, professionals. I have enjoyed working with the same team members for three years now.

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

None to speak of. CyberCraft Inc. was always open and flexible; we enjoyed working with them over the last three years.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the technical lead for a talent advisory that manages the career trajectories of senior executives.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire CyberCraft Inc.?

We needed additional assistance working on the front-end engineering side of an application called Contender. Contender is a green-field server-side application used as a collaboration tool for advisors, recruiters and investors.

SOLUTION

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

I look for companies with a developer ethos that regards software as craft. The resumes presented to me by CyberCraft were impressive, and the team clearly understood best practices for creating high-quality software.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

The project followed an Agile methodology with week-long sprints and two standing meetings (demo and scoping) per week. A multidisciplinary team (design thru infrastructure) took Contender from blank canvas to MVP. The relevant technologies are React, Python, and various Google Cloud managed services.

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

1 senior web application developer working (remotely) alongside another.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The business the software was intended to serve is doing very well. The solution is highly regarded and gaining widespread industry adoption.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very effective remote workflow. Their team graciously shifted hours to facilitate overlap periods for meetings and collaboration.

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

I've seen plenty of large offshore software consultancies that achieve competitive rates enabled by being established in a region with a lower cost of living. Unfortunately many of these companies are set up like factories: churning through staff whom they treat as commodities. CyberCraft is the polar opposite: a boutique of experts motivated by their passion for technology.

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

Initially there seemed to be some hesitancy to speak up and offer opinions. This began to shift over time as the team came together over the course of the project.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of an advisory firm.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

As we’re a startup, we were looking to build out a platform to fuel our business growth.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

CyberCraft Inc. helped us build an app for our business. We had separate design and product development teams in the beginning, and CyberCraft Inc. provided us with one of their resources to join our team and build out the app.

The app was a communication tool to create efficiencies both in our business and with the client. It was also intended to become a revenue-generating platform down the road.

What is the team composition?

We only worked with one engineer from CyberCraft Inc. We also had constant communication from CyberCraft Inc.’s people here in the US and with their CEO.

How did you come to work with CyberCraft Inc.?

I knew one of their members from the US before starting my company. When I realized that I needed help to build out this app, I reached out to this person, and they told me that they were starting the CyberCraft Inc. project — it was perfect timing. They helped us get the resources for our team quickly.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $10,000–$25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from around Oct. 2020–April 2021. The project has been recently finished, and the development took around 7–8 months. We worked on the MVP, so we will go back to CyberCraft Inc. later in the fall — we’re ready to keep building out the app.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The platform that we now have is great — that was a good result. When we were launching the MVP, we did testing every day. There were bugs that we needed to fix, but they were caused by the complexity of our platform, and none of them had to do specifically with CyberCraft Inc.’s work.

Additionally, I really enjoyed working with the resource we got from CyberCraft Inc., and I considered him as part of our team. I liked and trusted him — he was phenomenal. He really brought great value to the project.

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

CyberCraft Inc.’s project management was great. We had great communication with the resource they provided, with the person I knew from the US, and even with the CEO. The invoicing and paying were very easy. They also did great check-ins and constantly looked for feedback. They were always looking for other ways to help us — it felt like a real partnership, and I really appreciated it.

What did you find most impressive about them?

When I first reached out to CyberCraft Inc., they promptly provided me with someone who was qualified for the job and was a good fit for the team — that was a very efficient process. They reacted quickly and provided me with different resumes to look through and choose from, which was great. We quickly and easily got this person on board.

When we were unwinding and slowing things down close to releasing the MVP, I felt that our communication was also great. They reached out to me to make sure that everything was going well and see if we still had tasks to give to this person.

Even now that our engagement is on pause, they check in every now and then to see how our business is doing. They feel like a true partner and do that very well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There was a time when we wanted to add another resource from CyberCraft Inc., and they weren’t as fast and responsive as in the beginning. However, that little delay made us realize that we actually didn’t need another partner — it was a blessing in disguise.

As much as I like giving constructive feedback, there was nothing they could improve on. It was a great experience, and our engagement was really smooth.

Any advice for potential customers?

The way we engaged with both the CyberCraft Inc.’s team in the US and the team overseas was important. Building the relationship with both teams and receiving both advice and workforce is a great combination — it works really well.