DBB Software

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO & Co-founder of a social marketplace for books based in Oslo, Norway

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

We started working with DBB Software in July 2017. This review is for Vlad U., whom we hired in January 2019. The goal of the collaboration was to build a cross-functional product development team and develop the marketplace iteratively - starting from scratch. Vlad U. was hired to work on our iOS application, and later successfully transitioned to being our React Native developer.

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

After a thorough screening process, we interviewed several possible candidates for this startup collaboration. Vlad and the rest of the team at DBB Software excelled as the best option because of:

• relevant experience and talent
• higher education
• fluent English
• time zone compatibility
• culture-fit

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

The scope of the work was to create a finished product and continuous discovery and delivery to improve the product after market entry. We developed the marketplace as a web application, iOS- and Android applications, and a custom backend/APIs.

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

Vlad U. worked as a software engineer (iOS) at the start of the contract and later transitioned to work as a React Native developer.

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

Bookis is live in two markets: Norway and Sweden, with 450k+ users and a yearly GMV turnover of ~$6MM. This outcome results from the cross-functional collaboration between product, design, and tech, and DBB software & Vlad U. has been key to this success.

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

We manage our product development process as most product teams, using scrum and relevant task management tools. Communication is never a problem with DBB.

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

The growth mindset of the people working at DBB Software is next to none. They are hard-working and dedicated people, with strong ownership of the work they are delivering. They are open to learning on the go and willing to experiment with both product and process.

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

DBB Software needs to improve the English language skills of some developers. However, most developers are fluent.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO & Co-founder of Plaace and our platform is where tenants can find the perfect space and the property owners find the perfect tenant for their space. Tenants will showcase their business and property owners showcase their property, by creating profiles with images, presentations, etc. People can collaborate on maintaining these profiles in the platform. The matching part is done with data driven decision support. We give a lot of insight in the areas and the tenants based on data from card transactions, revenue data, movement data etc. In this way it will be the best match for tenant and property owners, tenants that will most likely succeed in their new space, and not close or abandon the location.

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

We hired DBB Software to help us build everything from setting up our environment servers, creating the platform, both frontend and backend.

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

We talked with several companies and people that could help us. The deciding factors was the quality of engineers we got for the price they could offer us compared to others.

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

DBB Software has helped us from the start making our platform we sell to our customers. They have worked with frontend, backend and devops. They have done everything from setting up the architecture and the environments in AWS to implementing advanced functionality in the backend doing complex localisation queries and analysis all the way up to making a modern frontend design that is flexible and reusable. We have everything hosted in AWS, where we are using Aurora postgres as a DB with the PostGis functionality, node.js on the backend with typescript as a language, and then next.js and React on the frontend.

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

6 people in total: 1 Devop 1 QA 2 backend developers 2 Frontend developers

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

We have created a platform that we pilot launched in 2020 within half a year, the year after we had a lot more features that we could launch officially, and by this year we have a great product platform that we do sell to a lot of customers. It has been highly valuable to have DBB Software help us in the process all the way from the start.

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

We use Slack and Notion for everyday talking and tools in addition to following the Scrum process, with standup meeting everyday, sprint planning retrospective etc.

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

Impressive what they have managed to make in such a small time, also suggesting new ways to implement, or new technologies we should be aware of.

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

They are great, but if there is something minor it would be that sometimes they get a bit into the solutions itself and how to solve it rather than to push back on business if there is another way to solve it for the customer.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a CTO leading product and engineering teams

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

We had challenges scaling our engineering team for marketing projects (new website), R&D projects where we needed multiple PoCs to derisk some technological investments, and building integrations for our platform. Hiring in 2021 was tough and we needed to ramp up fast with a team of full stack experience.

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

Prior expertise was key - we needed experiences engineers in React and who did practical work with AWS beyond the basics. Ease of starting up the small project and flexibility was key. We felt immediately we will get a lot from the team.

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

We are working on multiple projects, so the approach varies. The website development work runs in 2 week sprints, with the team embedded into ours - so we collaborate well. From our side, we provide Product Owner, a Project Manager and an Engineering Manager into the team. DBB provides developers and QA engineers (automation and manual). The R&D projects are lead by 1-2 engineers typically and are more autonomous. We set objectives, and have the team figure out the how. Third team runs the custom integrations projects. We set the roadmap, priorities and collaborate on the underlying framework. The team does end to end engineering, QA, E2E automation demos the work to internal stakeholders.

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

We started small, with two engineers, and grew into 7 people gradually. Current team is: 1 senior QA automation engineer, 1 manual QA, 1 senior full stack engineer / team lead and 4 senior front-end engineers.

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

We launched the first version of our website in record time - 1 month and made it just in time for our big product launch. We would not have been able to do it without this team. The team has now been working on the website improvements for a few months and we expanded the scope to demo site development, starter kit development. The team demonstrated the sense of ownership and pride in their work, which is rare to get from an externally sourced team. So we are beyond thrilled! We are building 2-3 integrations per month (depending on complexity), which gives us the required velocity to expand our platform integration story. Even though we have 1-2 hrs a day overlap due to the time zone diff, the team is proactive, communicates the status and delivers consistently. They also make our underlying platform better by providing input to our platform team. The R&D projects helped us shape the product roadmap, which is critical for an early stage startup like ours.

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

We use Slack for everything, the product owners from our side set the scope and direction, we have regular demo sessions where everybody can join and provide feedback. The PjM is coming from our team, and helps keeping things moving smoothly.

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

The caliber of the professionals, the stability of the team, and flexibility in elasticity. When we need adjustments, the feedback is welcome and is promptly acted on. It was surprisingly easy to integrate the team with our team members.

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

Nothing comes to mind that we haven't addressed. We made some adjustments along the way and got better and better at working together. Building team spirit takes time with an externally sourced team, but I feel like we are well ahead of the curve here.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the co-founder and CEO, our company aims the starting relation partnerships with IT teams and individual developers high level for staffing our clients projects.

For what projects/services did your company hire DBB Software?

We were trying to set up a team augmentation model where DBB would provide back- and front-end developers to be a part of our team.

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

We considered three different companies. Initially, we were looking to do back- and front-end work with DBB, and though that didn’t come to fruition, we got to know them through that process. We looked at portfolio and reviews in web site and interviewed about nine of the top IT Ukrainan companies. When we needed staff augmentation, we decided to lean on DBB because we were more familiar with them than the other firms we’d talked to.

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

We’ve done some code review of their actual work, and it’s been pretty tidy. Moreover, DBB team responds quickly. We haven’t set metrics to measure their performance, but they’ve delivered quickly and with high quality. They've produced a lot of products and microservice for our clients.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

Before we started working with DBB we did some research on companies that could meet our challenges. DBB caught our attention through references from previous clients. After identifying several companies, we approached them to discuss their ideas. The proposals from the DBB appealed to us and we decided to enter into a partnership. Additional motivation was the company's experience in projects similar to ours clients.

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

We have worked already for a long period, but the project process is still going. From our experience, we can say that they always stay in touch, we had weekly project calls with our account manager and our project manager (and any other relevant staff who were required at the time, for example, the designer). This meant we could instantly chat as and when questions came up. Everyone we interacted with at DBB was always very responsive.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication is excellent, and they’ve met deadlines. Overall, they stay true to their word. All communication was personal calls and via email. We haven’t used any specific project management tools, and it has worked fine for us.

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

Their understanding of working with start-up and enterprise companys organizations and how they really took the time to understand our business. Nothing was too much trouble (and I am not sure we were the easiest of clients!)

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

No, there wasn’t anything they needed to improve.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the head of product at Metechi, a fintech startup focused on developing solutions for the CRE market

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

We developed a mobile app for both Android and IOS platforms, to serve CRE professionals that are looking to finance or offer loans. At our base, our technology is an A.I. model that matches lenders to loans, and the mobile implementation focused on a fast and frictionless utility for this model.

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

We were introduced to DBB Software by a colleague that worked with them before, we had very little time to waste and limited knowledge in app development and store compliance. We needed a solid mobile developer to join our team, backend and frontend developers, and data scientists.

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

We started the project with a detailed UI and product breakdown so jumped right into development. Part of the scope of work needed from DBB Software developers was to show our frontend team "the ropes" of React native.

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

We worked with a single developer, Artem, full time, as a frontend mobile developer

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

Two weeks after we started working together a war broke out in Ukraine, I only mention this to state the superb communication with Yuri, the project manager, even in these terms. He was always responsive and quickly matched us with Artem who joined our team. Artem is a great developer, smart, hard-working, and was immediately an organic part of the team, very involved and communicative. We had a number of challenges along the line which Artem's knowledge and dedication helped resolve. We managed to pass review on both stores and continued with QA and bug fixes to release several versions going forward. It was definitely the right choice to work with DBB Software.

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

We work in an agile environment, managing the project in Asana and communicate mainly via Slack

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

I was impressed with their work ethic, positive spirit, communication skills, and their will to deliver a fine product.

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

I would recommend refining and staying up to date with App Store compliance and requirements

Please describe your company and your position there.

Myant Inc, Scrum Master.

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

Mobile Development, Goals: new features development.

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

Cost and remote model.

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

Mobile app new features, React Native.

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

2

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

We achieved the goals within the given timeline.

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

They managed the project well.

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

fast onboarding.

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

None.