Dashbouquet Development

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of nSoft Company, a web development company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Dashbouquet Development?

We needed Dashbouquet Development to provide development resources for a large project that we had.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, Dashbouquet Development solved a complex technology issue that we had. Since then, they've worked on several other projects and continue to provide development services.   

What is the team composition?

Dashbouquet Development provides a team of developers and a customer relations contact.

Are there any employees from the service provider's team that you would like to give a shout-out to in this review?

Working with the frontend developers and the customer relations contact has been a very good experience. The customer relations contact is very helpful, attentive, and readily available. We won a few projects because he moves so quickly. The CEO is very helpful when we have complex architectural issues to solve.

How did you come to work with Dashbouquet Development?

I found Dashbouquet Development on Upwork.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost over $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our work with them started in January 2014 and the collaboration is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Dashbouquet Developers helped expand my business 2-3 times. I've won projects over large competitors and gained a lot of business because of the team's ability to deliver quality work quickly. Dashbouquet Development consistently provides the team I need in order to to say yes to any customer project. If the requirement is outside of their scope, they recruit the needed resource.  

How did Dashbouquet Development perform from a project management standpoint?

The team always provides very precise estimations for our customer’s projects and respects deadlines. The team is communicative when there is a need for more hours and they come up with different solutions to keep within the budget. They’ve even given discounts in order to meet the customer’s budget.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Dashbouquet Development is very good at what they do. They hire great people and communicate very well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Dashbouquet Development could expand their expertise in other areas. Additionally, it would benefit the team to improve their English proficiency.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Find out if the assigned developer has been working with Dashbouquet Development or is new to the team. Get to know the developer being offered.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm a senior HR specialist for a company that offers an events app that allows users to both access the event and obtain a 360-degree view of it, whether it's a football game, basketball game, travel excursion, educational experience, concert, or awards show, 

It's a subscription-based application that enables the user to be present anytime, anywhere in the world.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Dashbouquet Development?

They help us with staff augmentation and finding the proper talent for specific jobs. We're expanding rapidly as a company, and since it's very hard to find talent, Dashbouquet helps us with our hiring needs.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We do our own recruitment through job postings on LinkedIn and Bamboo. Whenever we find a position that's difficult to fill, specifically IT and technical positions, we ask Dashbouquet to help us.

We provide them with what we need in terms of job descriptions, and based on that information, they provide us with candidates. We then do a technical interview with them, and if all goes well, the candidate will get approved.

What is the team composition?

We currently work with four of their team members. They're mainly full-stack developers.

How did you come to work with Dashbouquet Development?

They approached us, and it happened to be a moment when we were really in need.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost is roughly $90,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

The partnership began in April 2022 and is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We checked with our managers, and they're all satisfied with Dashbouqet's services. We're happy with them and with our relationship.

They're very responsive, too. If we don’t like someone, Dashbouqet will replace them in just a few days.

How did Dashbouquet Development perform from a project management standpoint?

Dashbouqet's team works for us on an eight-hour-per-day basis. In terms of meeting deadlines, they set a timeline amongst themselves and report their work daily on Excel sheets. 

We typically communicate with their team via emails and Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of the people that Dashbouqet presents and their team's responsiveness both stand out.

Additionally, they're usually able to find talent for us given a very limited amount of time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not at this time.

Any advice for potential customers?

Be clear with your specifications. The clearer you are, the higher the chances of Dashbouqet understanding exactly what you need.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of user experience and brand experience for a digital token marketplace.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Dashbouqet Development?

We needed help building our website and a HubSpot integration.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The website already existed, but Dashbouqet revamped it and redesigned it. We provided their team with wireframes and user journeys. I brought in external expertise to help them with the HubSpot integration, but Dashbouqet did the backend work to deliver the integration.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with around five frontend engineers and project management resources.

How did you come to work with Dashbouqet Development?

They approached me for the first engagement, and I compared them against two other companies on my shortlist. I liked that they worked remotely and were scalable.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost is around $25,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked together since February 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We don’t have a benchmark to reference back to, everything has been delivered on time. We can pull in resources as they’re needed on projects.

How did Dashbouqet Development perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate over Slack and Google Meet, with daily standups.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I can’t pick out one single thing as they stood out in every way. Dashbouqet has been a very solid partner.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only improvement would be to see more project documentation. Schematics, and clean copies of code. Those types of things would be quite handy.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It depends on the project.  

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CFO and CTO of 100Shapes, a US-based design agency that specializes in UX services for large organizations. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Dashbouquet Development?

We needed Dashbouquet’s help with custom web development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We worked on a number of projects with Dashbouquet. One of the biggest projects we had was for a certification company. Our team was in charge of providing design services to them, and we oversaw the frontend development of a compliance tool. 

With Dashbouquet’s help, we designed a tool for the client that let people review films, tag films while watching them, and submit ratings. This project took more than a year. Dashbouquet and our team conducted constant user testing to tweak the product. 

Apart from that project, Dashbouquet worked on the frontend of a complicated web app using React. Their resources provided the technical architecture needed and the resources required to complete it. For this project, they used CSS and JavaScript to build the frontend from scratch.

What is the team composition?

Dashbouquet provided us with developers, QA testers, and a project manager. I had close contact with the project manager and direct access to the developers. 

How did you come to work with Dashbouquet Development?

Someone we knew worked with them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around £300,000 (approximately $350,000 USD)

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement lasted from December 2018–June 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our project for the certification company was a big success. We managed to deliver everything to the end customer on time — the client was truly happy with our work. The project was a bit tricky since we were replacing an old platform and bringing a lot of new functionality to the customer’s staff. However, they said the product allowed them to work three times faster than before. On top of that, they were getting richer data. 

How did Dashbouquet Development perform from a project management standpoint?

Dashbouquet’s project management was truly good. They were prepared and went above and beyond the call of duty. In fact, their resources were ready to work late hours for us and charged reasonable overtime rates if we needed them. Moreover, the team was transparent whenever they thought things would be delayed. They never missed a deadline, too. 

In terms of tools, we used Jira, GitLab, and GitHub. Dashbouquet adapted to our and the end client’s systems, so they also used Trello and Redmine, along with time-tracking software. To communicate, we used Google Meet and Slack — they were always available for a call or email. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team was truly accommodating. They were flexible and able to scale up when we need them even on short notice.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re a big company, so we might not get the same developers as before when we have to scale up. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s not ideal for us. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have regular contact with Dashbouquet. The more you bring them in, the better and more invested they become.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of Pyroscope which is an open-core company meaning that we are mostly open source, but also have a closed-source enterprise product that complements the open source product

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Dashbouquet Development, and what were your goals?

As an open source project and a very small team, there are a ton of requests that we get from users who are trying to get a single open source project to solve a very wide array of use cases.

In our particular situation, we are a storage backend for performance monitoring data, but that data can come from multiple different agents (Go, python, ruby, ebpf, dotnet, java, php, nodeJS, etc) and to be able to support all of these different languages on the backend as well as support these languages on the frontend is a very difficult task for us to manage with our small team.

Meanwhile our goal is to get as many people from all these different use cases using the open source project as possible AND having a good experience so that we can then ultimately funnel them into our enterprise product (if the require the enterprise features).

SOLUTION

How did you select Dashboquet Development and what were the deciding factors?

We've worked with over 50 different contractors / contracting firms to help us ease the burden of being able to accomplish some of the tasks, but over time we started to find that working with contractors can be a very difficult and resource-consuming process.

Some of the criteria on which we evaluated our contractors were as follows: - How good is the contractor at communicating their progress with us - How good is the contractor at understanding the task that we're giving them (and making sure they ask questions).

Moreover, Can the contractor be self-sufficient and go above and beyond what we're asking - Can the contractor learn the context of our project to be able to make the necessary decisions without us having to walk them through every single one.

Latsly, Is the contractor affordable And ultimately after working with this Dashbouquet for a while we found that they were far and away the best on almost all of these data points.

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

This part is difficult to even describe because the breadth and depth of the projects that dashbouquet has helped us with spans across so many different areas: They were able to build a Node agent that allowed for node and javascript users to be able to use our software, They built out various key frontend features for our main project of Pyroscope.io.

They were able to refactor our frontend to make it so that it is significantly cleaner and better designed to do things like "light mode. They were able to help us with someo f our adjacent projects such as our flamegraph.com website and make it also serve as a funnel into pyroscope.

They were even able to help us do some full-stack work that included more than just javascript and did some golang stuff as well Ultimately they were instrumental in helping us to get our first customers and also gain a lot of traction with the open source community

How many people from the Dashboquest Development team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We've worked with 4-5 people from the vendor's team and they were mostly senior frontend engineers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

- We were able to 3x the speed at which we were closing frontend issues - We were able to increase revenue by 2x by being able to support different languages and potential customers - we've increased our DAU by 30% since we started with dashbouquet

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

The management style is by far the biggest differentiator for dashbouquet compared to the other contractors / contracting companies that we've worked with.

They have not only several engineers who work with us, but they also have a product manager who is able to both keep their engineers on track and also communicate with us on the status of the various projects.

This organization makes a massive difference in the quality of work and the quality of communication between us and then as we get very detailed updates and on progress made and future due dates every single day

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

The most impressive part about this company was the fact that they don't just have a bunch of engineers, but rather a full-service software development team.

The fact that they take the time to communicate with each other between engineers and their product team allows for them to solve a lot of the problems before they even communicate with us which allows us to all move together forward collectively much more quickly and efficiently.

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

The one area of improvement is that occasionally because they do work together as a team sometimes we don't get to see the actual code that's being written everyday and thus occasionally when they are on the wrong path it can sometimes take a little while to correct and do everything correctly

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Red Rover, a startup that serves K-12 education institutions, primarily public school districts, and charter schools. We have back-office software in the people management space, and our flagship product deals with tracking employee absences. It also matches and places substitutes in classrooms. On top of that, we’ve added a time-tracking system to it for hourly employees. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Dashbouquet Development?

While building our product in late 2019–early 2020, we knew we needed to have a mobile presence as one of our key differentiators from older players in our space. However, I had a small team, and they were focused on building the functionality of our server and web interface. As a result, I hired Dashbouquet to bring their experience in React Native to the team. They also helped us implement the app’s Android and iOS interface. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Dashbouquet implemented all the transaction features of our mobile app using our graphical API, React Native, and the designs that we gave them. 

Moreover, they helped us implement push notifications for the app. We first identified Firebase, but we ended up implementing a library called Notifee. It helped us deal with more advanced notification handling inside the app. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with a product manager and tester. Initially, we also had two developers, but we cut that down to one developer in the middle of the project as we got out of the critical parts. 

How did you come to work with Dashbouquet Development?

I was looking specifically for companies with React Native specialization when I found Dashbouquet on Clutch. After searching their website, I had an interview with their sales representative. I was pleased with their communication, and our business relationship started. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The engagement lasted from November 2019–August 2021. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We received great feedback for the app; customer testimonials indicated that users loved our app more than what they could get from our competitors. We also used the app in our sales demos. Moreover, since it was an enterprise app, we didn’t measure its mass adoption. In other words, users didn’t have to pay for it; it was only there for people who wanted to use it. As such, we had no quantitative success metrics. 

How did Dashbouquet Development perform from a project management standpoint?

I was unsure about project management when I first engaged with Dashbouquet, but I was pleased with how it worked out. Our team had a loose project management style; we worked closely and were fluid on tasks since we had a lot to do. In the end, the Dashbouquet team adapted to that.  

Their project manager used a Kanban approach to the project, always asking us what we needed to work on next. They also asked a lot of questions and figured things out by inspecting our web code. As a result, I didn’t need to spell out everything. In fact, they even caught bugs while they were inspecting the code to know how the web and mobile apps would interact. 

We met once a week for status meetings and used Slack for discussions during the week. When we were pushing for the app’s release, we met more often. We also had a separate Kanban board on Jira, where they worked on tasks. Moreover, the team was highly responsive whenever we reported issues. For example, when I pushed out tester releases to a group of users and reported bugs to the Dashbouquet team, they’d cleared the issues up before we did the release. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The degree of their communication and flexibility across cultures and languages was a pleasant surprise. We wouldn’t have stayed engaged with them for as long as we did if they didn’t communicate flexibly with us. They were kind and did their best. On top of that, they took ownership of the project and provided real value as we threw out ideas to them. Overall, they were a highly independent team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We dove into the code before Dashbouquet was done with it, but as we dug deeper and took over the code base, we saw that their TypeScript skills weren’t strong. Much of this was technical; simply put, we weren’t getting all the benefits that we’d like to get from the TypeScript. 

That was the nature of their independence; I didn’t review or force standards on that part, so this was partially my fault. Nonetheless, it was a little disappointing that we had to clean up the TypeScript. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you have specific designs, technical direction, and a backend build, Dashbouquet will do great at translating those into a solid mobile app. They’ll also effectively provide direction around testing and app store delivery. 

For context, part of what made our engagement successful was that the web app was already written and defined. We also already had a strong technical direction for our team and for them. Our visual mockups were created in Figma, and that was combined with specific technical guidelines — this made us successful. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the chief engineer at Enclave Networks Ltd. We’re a funded scaleup, and we build secure network software for the cybersecurity industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Dashbouquet Development?

At the end of last year, we identified that we didn’t have any frontend, modern web application with building experience.

We had some web experience, but we didn’t have the right skill sets. Since we didn’t want to hire a full-time employee, we needed to reach out to someone who could help us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The primary purpose was to build a new website. Initially, we had a period to test out Dashbouquet Development (Dashbouquet) and see if they were able to deliver what we needed. Then, in December, we kicked off into higher gear, stepped up the amount of resources we were using, and effectively started the bulk of the project.

We went through the first phase through the entirety of the first quarter of 2021. In that time, they were able to take us from nothing to a functional live portal, which was built in React using Typescript. We provided our own UX, and they used the Material-UI design library.

Now, we’re working with them on development resources to maintain and extend the portal. We’ll be adding new features over the course of the year.

What is the team composition?

It has ranged from one senior developer all the way up to two senior and one mid-range developer. They’ve been pretty flexible in letting us adjust as we go.

How did you come to work with Dashbouquet Development?

I had interacted previously with someone from Dashbouquet on LinkedIn, so I reached out to them. I looked into Clutch, and they had great reviews. Then, we did a proof of concept just to check.

How much have you invested with them?

Up to date, we’ve spent about $70,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began the project in October 2020, and our relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I’m very happy with what they’ve delivered. They’re some of the finest developers that I’ve worked with in my career. I communicated our deadline, and they fundamentally managed to deliver on time. They developed the product in three months, and there weren’t any critical issues once we went into production, which is a great metric for any product.

Furthermore, they’ve been really enthusiastic about working on the project. They ask questions and check assumptions all the time. They’re an active member of the team, and I really value that.

How did Dashbouquet Development perform from a project management standpoint?

They do some light project management on a day-to-day basis. I generally come up with a long-term engineering plan, and they just estimate the work that needs to go into that.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have an excellent work ethic, both as a business and as individuals. They get stuff done, which is a great compliment for engineers.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you understand the scope of the project you want to start. We had a clear vision on what they were going to build, and that helped them give us the right people to do it.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and co-founder of Marble App. It’s a new 3D web app that allows users to link existing social media accounts and streaming video/gaming accounts into one app.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Dashbouquet Development?

We needed some development and marketing work done.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, Dashbouquet was helping us build a web app version, prior to going to a React Native app. They integrated three.js with React Native. 

They rebuilt the React Native app from the ground up, making changes based on feedback. They helped us personalize the app, which is available for iOS and Android.

They also used Node.js, offering users a more customizable experience. They do some marketing for us, as well.

What is the team composition?

We started with two developers, and have increased to six developers currently, as well as Yuri (Project Manager). Some of the people on the team are Vitaly (CTO), Alex (Team Lead), Konstantin (Team Lead), Yuri (Dev), and Alex (Dev).

How did you come to work with Dashbouquet Development?

I know we found them organically, possibly through referral. We spoke with them on a call, and we were like-minded in our direction of thinking for the project. They also have competitive pricing and offer several bonus services to their clients.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend between $500,000 - $1,000,000 per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

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

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve worked in two-week sprints with deadlines. They did well with that and deliverables. We’ve been able to completely redesign the platform in a React Native app that can be deployed for iOS and Android, in just a few months. It has been a huge learning process for all of us.

How did Dashbouquet Development perform from a project management standpoint?

Dashbouquet is excellent, I would give them a perfect score.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very nimble and agile, while juggling several different initiatives being worked on simultaneously. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have your designs, documentations, envision storybooks, everything, put together ahead of time. They’ll take it and get things done for you.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

SitEinander is a mobile app for community childcare where parents can meet other parents nearby, plan playdates and trade free, spontaneous babysitting among trusted friends.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Dashbouquet Development?

Our company has completed the first phase of the development and went to the Stores. But we had issues with project structure. The application was raw. We needed someone who would do a lot of refactoring and bring the application into a general orderly form and fix bugs so that we could move on.

What were your goals for this project?

Get the app more user-friendly for the users by improving the speed, fixing bugs and optimizing the user-interface.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

My teammates met them at the WebSummit conference in Lisbon last year. We were looking to extend our team in order to ramp up the speed and quality of the development. My colleagues had a very positive conversation with their salespeople and the pricing was good, so we decided to bring Dashbouquet onboard right away.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Once we started we had a couple of discovery calls with a project manager and developer to determine the scope and discuss the workflow between both our teams. The first big step was to conduct a complete audit of the system and clarify what kind of work is needed and how much time it will take. After that, we divided the tasks between the two teams (ours and Dashbouquet's). Work was done on weekly sprints. Tasks were always collected in the backlog, the developer took them to work in priority. At the end of each week, Dashbouquet provided a report in the visual presentation form of the work done and a detailed report on the hours spent on each task.

What was the team composition?

There were a project manager and a developer on the Dashbouquet’s side. Also 1 developer, 1 technical expert and 1 designer worked on our side.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We were so satisfied with the work of Dashbouquet that I recommended them to a lot of people in my network

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

They are super organized, very clear and have a very professional communication. We connected over the phone several times a weeks and used Slack for all other communication. DB always presented the results after one week (in a way also non-technical people understand) and always kept us informed on the current state of works and budget expenditure.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their communication was always super clear, polite and efficient. The whole team is hard-working and very experienced and they deliver what they promise.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Everything was perfect