datarockets

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a company that designs connected hardware devices and integrated software.

What challenge were you trying to address with datarockets?

We reached out to them to build a software application for a product we were developing in 2019.

What was the scope of their involvement?

datarockets has been our primary software development team. They’ve built on top of our existing platform but also done work from scratch. The team uses everything from JavaScript to React, Electron, and PostgreSQL.

What is the team composition?

We currently work with about three people from their team, including two developers.

How did you come to work with datarockets?

We found them through a referral. I made a post on Facebook, and a friend suggested connecting with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2020, and our relationship is ongoing.

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

We shipped the product, and it came in on time — that was the most important thing. 

How did datarockets perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re excellent. We have weekly Zoom calls to communicate and use Shortcut for project management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Management is great. They have many internal processes that help manage their developers, which is quite rare. They’re team leaders, and the owners are sophisticated, smart people. We’ve enjoyed working with them over the years. They’re a talented, technical team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve been trying to add people to our team for a while, but it’s been difficult. However, the issue is everywhere, so it’s understandable.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Interview the engineers before you hire them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a manager at Bunz, a trading service. We have our own medium for exchanging values.

What challenge were you trying to address with datarockets?

I was looking for a technical team to help us with our system.

What was the scope of their involvement?

datarockets acts as a whole technical team. They’re making a change in our system and working on the development of our application from scratch. They’re responsible for building the whole technical part of it.

What is the team composition?

The leader of datarockets’ team is Pavel D. (CEO), and he has very talented developers working with him, including Pavel V. (Mobile Engineer) and Dmitry (CTO). They’re very capable at what they do, and they have very reliable resources, so I leave to them the most precious parts of the work.

How did you come to work with datarockets?

I found datarockets at Clutch. I was looking for the best possible software development company and read their reviews.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent a five-digits figure on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around late March 2020, and the engagement is ongoing. We signed a one-year contract first, and recently, we’ve signed a contract for another year. Based on what they’re doing right now, and if we don’t extend, we will end up having a two-year engagement.

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

I’m pretty happy with datarockets’ work. I don’t have the knowledge to judge if they could be better or faster, but what they deliver is sufficient. When doing a project like this, clients do not always deal with something easy. However, if I needed to go back and find a company to work with on software development, I would choose them again without any hesitation.

How did datarockets perform from a project management standpoint?

Communication is one of the best parts of working with datarockets. We have weekly strategic meetings, and they’re accessible at any time.

Because of COVID-19, unfortunately, we’ve had some limitations. If I could, I would visit them in person at least once a week. However, collaborating online couldn’t get any better, and running everything this way has gone pretty well — our communication is pretty successful.

What did you find most impressive about them?

datarockets’ biggest strength is their transparency.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Developing a medium- or large-sized project like ours is not always a fairytale, but at the end of the day, I’m extremely happy with our engagement.

I’m sure that we’ve had our problems, especially because it’s not an easy project, and we have a lot of people involved in it. However, I don’t think we’ve had any serious problems worth mentioning. datarockets has done an exceptionally great job, considering the environment we’re currently living in.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you’re looking for a development company, you should consider working with datarockets. They’ll give you peace of mind because they’re very transparent — it’s in their genetic code.

I know that there might be faster and better software development companies out there, but when datarockets says that they’re going to deliver something, they mean it — you’ll feel comfortable working with them. Additionally, their cost is very reasonable and fair.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder of YemenPortal.net, a search engine focused on news from Yemen. I manage the website since it was founded in 2007 and required it to be overhauled on its tenth anniversary.

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

We asked Datarockets to rebuild the search engine from the bottom up and add some extra features such as voting and commenting via Facebook. We also required adding filters and the ability to add sources directly over the website as well as allow registration and moderating sources.

We also required an iOS and Android app to interact with the website. The aim is to make the design more seamless and improved as well as allow democratizing the platform to give viewers the ability to interact directly through voting and commenting.

How did you select datarockets and what were the deciding factors?

We approached a company in Germany and they recommended reaching out to Datarockets since they suited our requirements and our budget.

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

Project steps: The first step was to provide Datarockects with an initial idea of what the website ought to include, the functionalities, the features, etc. Then several meetings were arranged to ensure the developers knew what is required exactly. Regular meetings (weekly or more often) were done to show progress and get feedback.

Slack was effectively used to stay updated and share information about the various stages of the project. Trello was used to measure progress, identify gaps, changes and additions and interact in a systematic way with the developers. Over time, we were able to see glimpses of the website emerging and feedback was provided at every opportunity when we got to see a new function or interface change.

This was helpful to avoid continuing on something we felt was not on the right track and catch errors/misunderstandings early. Over time, we developed a habit of using the various tools effectively and reached a stage where we felt quite confident with how things were developing.

The deliverables were the website itself already linked through the domain name (built using Ruby on Rails on an Ubuntu server with Nginx and Puma), the source code in a GitHub repo, in addition to the source code for the mobile apps in iOS and Android. Access to the accounts controlling the apps

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

The main developer was the one we were in touch more often. But we also had a second developer as a contact person during various stages of development. At the very outset, the manager of the company is the one who we reached out to and was the one we interacted with regarding administration and financial issues.

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

The website remains working without a glitch after several years. The database is in dozens of GBs in size and the data is searchable without any issues. The website remained unmaintained without any issues. This is in itself a testimony of the effectiveness of the developers.

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

The management style was fluid and efficient. We had regular interactive through meetings over Google Hangouts, Slack, Trello and email. We also used the 10-month period to get to know the team more. They were quite prompt, would always listen to our request and comments and most of all, very friendly.

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

Their degree of professionalism and systematic approach to software development was quite impressive. I liked the fact that they are upfront and transparent as to what they can and cannot do and when. The tools they used inspired me to use them for some other projects, so they did have a lasting impact on how I would handle my own work in some ways.

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

I think they are extremely good as they are. While not necessary, I suggest they contact their clients once in a while for seasonal greetings or to just check up on how the products they delivered are doing. I am glad to say that they did offer help with patching up some outdated gems to cover some security issues, which is not at all part of their obligation but something I truly appreciated.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of DealMaker, a legal fintech startup.

What challenge were you trying to address with datarockets?

We needed to increase our development capacity.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They are seamlessly integrated with our development team. They provide additional resources for development, bringing best practices and industry experience.

The project involves our main, outward-facing solution. They provided us two developers that work as part of our team, attending our meetings, standup, the entire software development lifecycle, code reviews, deployments, etc.

What is the team composition?

They brought two full-time software developers to the team.

How did you come to work with datarockets?

We got in touch with them through an online search. One of their founders is here in Canada, so we got to talk to them in-person despite their team being offshore. That was an advantage. The main reason we chose to hire them was the information on their website, the quality of their portfolio, and the flexibility they offered.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $100,000 CAD (approximately $75,800 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

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

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

We’ve accomplished important things by adding them to the team. They enabled us to have high codebase test coverage and bring industry best practices to our team. There are very few defects or bugs in the solutions they deliver as well. 

How did datarockets perform from a project management standpoint?

Communication is good. There are some language barriers, but we’ve been able to overcome them. We’re in constant communication, making sure they have all the input they need. They’ve been able to deliver on everything that we assign them. We use Slack and Google Hangouts to collaborate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their process orientation is impressive. They’re really strong on sticking to a process and making sure they accomplish all associated tasks. They really pay attention to details, avoiding silly mistakes. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

There is room for improvement, not in the quantity but in the quality of the communication.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Let them bring their own best practices and processes to the table. Trust them. They will do a good job for you.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a partner at HolacracyOne. We do holacracy, which is a new approach to organizational management. It is not a hierarchy, but it also isn’t flat; it is a distributed authority system. We provide training, consulting, and we have software products to support the process.

What challenge were you trying to address with datarockets?

We wanted to grow our development capacity and be able to add more features as cost-effectively as possible. They came in as development support to augment our staff, and became a part of our team.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They focused primarily on GlassFrog development, which is a software product that supports a company running Holacracy. It has support for the specific kinds of meetings that you do in a holacracy organization and it keeps track of all the governance records in the structure of the organization.

There is a long list of features that they have worked on at this point. There is a lot of legacy code involved. They have taken on leadership role surrounding our code standards and developing a modern codebase.

We’re using Ruby on Rails on the backend, and we now have GraphQL API, and the frontend is React and Relay. We adopted Webpack as the build system for the frontend, but we had a lot of stuff in the older asset pipeline packaging system.

What is the team composition?

It has varied over time. I think we started with two or three people, and we have been as large as five. We had five up until recently, but with the pandemic, we had to scale back a little bit to three people.

How did you come to work with datarockets?

A colleague found them initially, but he is not with the partnership anymore. With datarockets, it looked like we could grow our team cheaper than hiring all US-based partners.

How much have you invested in them?

We have spent between $250,000–$500,000 so far. We pay between $10,000–$25,000 a month as the team size has gone up and down.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in April 2017, and the work is still ongoing.

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

I would say that in some ways, bringing them on board was an upgrade of our development culture which I wasn’t necessarily expecting. We have a number of smart developers in the space. I was expecting to augment our capacity, but I wasn’t expecting that it would actually improve our standards. I was surprised that they improved our development culture as well as our technical excellence. I think that says a lot about the quality of the developers that they brought.

They were familiar with all the relevant technologies, and in fact, have been able to show us things and nuances in the same tech that we’ve been using for years. They have that level of knowledge.

How did datarockets perform from a project management standpoint?

They have been very consistent and have delivered reliable and predictable results. They help support a pipeline that we can rely on. We have maintained a pretty consistent feature velocity. We track things in Pivotal Tracker and at this point, more of our story feature points are done by the datarockets team than our internal developers. We also use Slack and have daily stand-ups on Zoom. We are a remote company and Slack is the company communication hub.

They really feel like equal partners in the development to our internal folks. They have a really solid overall agile development skillset. They came in and plugged into our process pretty easily. Even while managing several priorities, they are able to make good judgment calls themselves.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their commitment to technical excellence is impressive. They have high standards for the quality of code.

Recently, datarockets finished moving all of the JavaScript into the new system. It wasn’t something that we pushed necessarily, but it was something they had to drive to do. They did a good job of balancing that with the feature development but not getting so involved in it that it took away from feature development.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There is a range in the skill level or experience level of the developers in our team. It is almost like there is almost a senior developer level, and then junior developers. It is a mix and it is a blanket price per hour for a developer. That is totally fine because on average it is an amazing deal and I wouldn’t expect to be able to get all senior people at that price point, but it is nice to have at least some more senior people. I don’t know if that is an area of improvement, but more sort of a reality.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a SaaS company.

What challenge were you trying to address with datarockets?

We hired them to assist with our development backlog. We had trouble hiring people locally, so we decided to outsource.

What was the scope of their involvement?

datarockets managed several CRM integrations and created features to improve our product. They integrated our product with other companies’ systems as well as focused on frontend and backend web development tasks using Ruby on Rails. 

What is the team composition?

We mostly worked with two developers but engaged a total of four for a short period of time. 

How did you come to work with datarockets?

We searched for companies and found that datarockets is based in Toronto, which we liked. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2019 and ended our engagement in December 2019.

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

datarockets produced good work that we reviewed frequently. Their team put together many features that we released to clients. 

How did datarockets perform from a project management standpoint?

datarockets had good processes that we still use. When they started on a new task, their team needed time to ramp up because our codebase is complex. They dug into projects and gave good suggestions. We appreciated their ideas.

What did you find most impressive about them?

My partner worked with other outside providers and found many didn't consider the big picture. That wasn’t the case with datarockets. They thought through what we wanted to accomplish and gave us good feedback. We changed the course of the project because of their feedback. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We only had a bit of trouble with the time difference. Their developers were in Belarus, so they started working in the early hours of our morning. If they ran into any issues, they couldn’t get feedback until a few hours later. We developed processes to mitigate that as a problem.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you’re going to hire datarockets but don’t have someone who is technically strong to work closely with them, take advantage of their project managers. We didn’t do that because I worked with them directly. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing director of wefindvenues. We’re an online platform that connects venues with customers looking to host corporate events (e.g., meetings, conferences, incentive trips, parties). We predominately serve locations in the UK with about 2,000 venues currently listed and 5,000 spaces for hire.

What challenge were you trying to address with datarockets?

One of our founders had originally built the platform in Ruby on Rails but left to start on a new project. So, we reached out to datarockets to take over the development support.

What was the scope of their involvement?

datarockets initially joined the project to fix bugs and sort out the platform’s infrastructure. Every few weeks, they would address any issues we had and make minor improvements. Since then, we’ve expanded their role to include developing the latest iteration of our product. They’re currently working to improve the way venues interact with our platform.

What is the team composition?

The main team consists of a project manager and two developers. I coordinate with the project manager to determine what we’re doing and occasionally contact the others through Trello. I also speak with their CEO to sort out payments and schedule time slots.

How did you come to work with datarockets?

We found them on Google while searching for affordable Ruby developers. Our technical lead interviewed their team and felt confident in their abilities, so we moved forward with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

Their work started in October 2018 and is ongoing. We’re planning to enter a roughly 6-week project with them to develop a new iteration of our platform.

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

So far, they’ve only fixed bugs and made minor improvements, but my team is a lot happier now that we have development resources who can address problems as they occur. We look forward to working with them on our platform’s next iteration.

How did datarockets perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management skills are fantastic. We communicate through specified channels to keep organized, including Trello, Slack, and weekly planning meetings. The team keeps me updated without being prompted, and they never hassle me with unnecessary questions.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their communication is second to none, and they have a well-organized workflow. I appreciate their insistence on maintaining a routine. We have calls on specific days at specific times and use Trello and Slack for designated purposes. I also like that they’re self-critical. During weekly meetings, they give each other feedback on their work, which keeps everyone accountable and yields effective change.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t have anything to add.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Follow their lead and trust them because they have a brilliant way of working.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO and founder of Pixel Dreams. We are a branding agency that specializes in communications, design, and strategy.

What challenge were you trying to address with datarockets?

We worked with datarockets to develop a human analytics platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The type of development work that we do is limited to marketing websites. This was our first attempt at a technology build of this magnitude. Our internal team managed the design while datarockets coordinated the development. In choosing datarockets, we selected a company based on its skill set, but we also relied on their team to consult us as we traversed this project.

They used React Redux to build the platform, which serves as a tool to collect individual and team performance data. For example, we’re able to track the quality of sleep and how it changes for each person based on a number of factors—including caffeine intake and whether or not somebody has napped or meditated. It allows us to examine and maximize team performance.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Pavel (CEO, datarockets) and the rest of his team.

How did you come to work with datarockets?

Another business owner referred them to me. We had collaborative introductory conversations. I felt confident that they could sufficiently guide us through the project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent in the range of $50,000–$200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have the project on hold as we evaluate growth opportunities and our business model. Our engagement began in January 2017, and our last sprint was in July 2018. As our team grows and we develop a more refined budget, we will resume working with datarockets.

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

We are not yet prepared to release this platform to the public as we had planned. It’s not complete, but that is because of our decisions, not because of datarockets’ effort. Even though we have no external users, we use it at our company every day. Regarding that goal, it’s been successful.

How did datarockets perform from a project management standpoint?

I’m a process-driven person, and I run my company similarly. Project management and account management details are essential to me. While working with datarockets, I noticed how well organized they are. We coordinated the project through Trello and Asana. They have an open and transparent communication approach with their team. In fact, we have adopted many of their practices at my business, so now we have much more collaborative conversations to explore all ideas. We had a great feeling of partnership and camaraderie with them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve been impressed with their collaboration and superior technical ability. Their work was amazing, and the way they managed the job was equally impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I cannot pinpoint an area that requires improvement.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s important to be involved in the process.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the owner of a company that allows people to learn from experts in their field.

For what projects/services did your company hire datarockets?

I needed to develop a web application.

What were your goals for this project?

I wanted to reduce the friction involved in trying to learn from other professionals in one’s field.

How did you select this vendor?

They came highly recommended by other businesses that have used their services in the past.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

They helped flesh out my idea and collect requirements. They then developed the platform, which allows professionals to offer/sell their time and expertise to people who are interested in learning from them.

What was the team composition?

We worked with a team lead and two developers.

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

My platform is live and functional.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

They managed the project through Trello, and we scheduled daily meetings to discuss progress and tackle new obstacles. We also communicated via Slack. They worked as quickly as possible, which often depended on me answering questions promptly. They delivered within my timeframe and fulfilled my quality requirements.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Aside from their quality of work, datarockets excels at and cares about teaching. They’re willing to adopt a partner’s mindset and coach them along using their own extensive experience.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

They’re great as they are, so I’m sure they’ll find ways to continuously improve.