DevMagic

Please describe your company and your position there.

We have been in the market since 2009, ensuring control and visibility of the operation at all stages, whether in the transhipment of the origin or in the port, acting as the eyes of the client at each point of the operation. I am Product Manager at the company.

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

Identify bottlenecks, reduce costs in the transport chain and eliminate noise between players are your main objectives. We have robust operational infrastructure and needed its own technological solutions to leverage productivity, performing full control of its operation.

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

After bad experiences with other companies, we found Dev Magic through an appointment with people close to us.

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

REAL TIME information generation: day and time of arrival of trucks and wagons; schedules and hists of unloaded vehicles; list of wagons; operational situation of the unloading sites; photos of vehicles with irregularities for immediate verification, management reports and productivity indicators. They are delivering great mobile and web experiences with Javascript technologies, like Angular, Ionic, NodeJS. The systems are hosted in AWS, they take care of this too.

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

Usually, there are 8 people, including Software engineer, UX/UI and software developers, but depending on the project the team can increase.

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

With the app developed exclusively for us, our customers have full control of their operations. We have great predictability in our projects with this.

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

They are a team with knowledge in software development and design of products. They help us create our entire set of applications, from the discovery to the delivery of systems. They are very experienced in project management with Kanban.

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

They are definitely an alternative to have our own team.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the lead developer at Skoresheet. We stream live baseball and basketball games, and we also provide live stats recordings.

What challenge were you trying to address with DevMagic?

For almost eight years, we’ve been developing a scoring application that records live stats from baseball and basketball games. We worked with several vendors, but none were able to finish the project. We decided to start from scratch, and we needed someone to develop the app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

DevMagic is providing custom development for our MVP using the specifications and roadmap that I drafted. Our owners’ initial project deadline had been unreasonable, and DevMagic assisted us in creating a better timeline. They also help us determine how many resources we need, and they allocate those resources for the project. 

DevMagic created UX mockups in Adobe XD, which we presented to our management for approval. We are releasing the app in a staging environment, where we could conduct validation.

What is the team composition?

We started with one UX designer, one backend developer, and two frontend developers. Later, we had up to five resources working on the project. DevMagic rotates responsibilities among their team, and they always have someone available for a task.  

How did you come to work with DevMagic?

I had a couple of friends who worked with DevMagic in the past.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ll reach $80,000 by the end of the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with DevMagic in late-August 2020, and we’re expecting to finish in April 2021, way ahead of schedule. Once the app is completed, we’ll continue working with DevMagic for minor updates and changes.

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

The app received good feedback from our owners and investors. DevMagic delivers more than we expected. The fact that we’re finishing in April is very impressive, since we initially thought that the project would be completed by May or June 2021. The app is high-quality, and everybody is happy with the product.

How did DevMagic perform from a project management standpoint?

DevMagic uses Jira, and internally we have our own Jira — it was difficult to find a software that can sycnhronize both of our Jira accounts. As such, there were problems synchronizing and getting transparency on what DevMagic was doing. I struggled to understand what they were working on. DevMagic got my feedback and found a way to solve the problem. We reached a process for efficiently managing the tasks.

We spoke with our main contact from Dev Magic once or twice a week to line up priorities and our next move. We agreed that payment is twice monthly; every time DevMagic sent us an invoice, they included Jira reports about the work done. 

We had experience outsourcing to other offshore companies, and one of our initial concerns was the speed and quality of the code. DevMagic’s price is almost double of some vendors, but the quality and speed of their code is markedly better. 

Since other vendors were not proficient in English, we encountered difficulties in making them understand our project requirements.DevMagic’s team is Brazilian, like me — we don’t have a baseball culture in Brazil, but speaking in the same language has been very helpful in making them understand why I needed something done in a particular way.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their open communication is impressive. DevMagic is a genuine partner. Even though we encounter problems outside of their scope of work, they are always friendly and helpful. 

In business, money is important; however, DevMagic makes it seem like delivering a good product is more important.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had problems with one of their developers doing something he wasn’t supposed to, but it wasn’t a big issue.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

My advice is to hire DevMagic. We’ve had terrible experiences with other companies, but none with DevMagic.