Edvantis

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

If I can compare them to my own team, they are way more proactive. They also consider the quality of the software and scalability and performance a lot more. For us, Edvantis is a pair of hands and I am very happy with them.

They just do what we tell them to do. There are initiatives to refactor or seriously improve the legacy codes, and it is basically what we tell them to do. Sometimes when they raise an issue, if they come across a piece of code that is awful, they will suggest refactoring that, but it is very limited.

How did Edvantis perform from a project management standpoint?

Productivity is one metric that is pretty tangible. We have an agile development process where we follow the scrum methodology. At the start of every sprint, a plan is made for that sprint, and story points are calculated. Based on the story points, we can measure velocity so we can keep track of the overall productivity of the team.

The project is basically managed via the development workflow as we now work in two weeks sprints. We manage the project, but they have a project lead who takes care of the financial parts. If they want to discuss increasing the fees, we will have a conversation with him. If we discuss extending the team, he was the go-to person.

It isn’t expressed in a metric, but we also internally discuss the quality of the communication which is very important especially when we need to talk in a language that isn't our native language, English. It has gone very well. With outsource teams, there is a lot of difference in the quality of the communication, and we have experienced that with Edvantis as well. KPIs are productivity and the money that we spend. We keep track of all their hours and also the way that we collaborate

What did you find most impressive about them?

They do what we tell them to do, they never complain, and we can always reach them. They never refuse anything, which is very comfortable for us. They are really nice guys, although I am not the one who works with them on a daily basis. There is a product owner and two other people from our side that work with them on a daily basis and I think we are doing quite well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s not really their problem, but rather ours. By making the strategic decision to fully outsource, we became completely dependent on the quality of this team, and we had no second opinion. They started working and the work that they delivered was approved by us and also by our customers. The quality of the software, if you look at it from the outside, we and also our customers, are happy with the quality, but as we parted from our own team and we have no developers to check the quality of the code, it has become a black box for us. It works, but I don’t know if it is very stable or shaky so that is a risk. It would have been pretty difficult to prevent that. We don’t have the resources within our company to really review what they are doing.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It depends on what you want. If you want an extra pair of hands, they are very good to go. If you want to seriously collaborate in a big project where they need to take a lot of initiative, it becomes a little more difficult, although I must say that these two developers that we work with are okay.

They comply with everything that we want, but if a company wants to do a completely new build of an application, I wouldn’t recommend to fully outsource it to any company. I would choose to have some of your own people as a senior developer, or an architect on-premise to constantly be able to judge the quality of the software base.

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

They were subject to the KPIs we use to measure our internal team performance. They have a strong work ethic, they were committed to the deliverables, and they took it very seriously. If we didn’t acquire an internal team, we’d still be working with them. I’m always happy to recommend them and would like to work with them again.

How did Edvantis perform from a project management standpoint?

One of our directors managed them and treated them like members of our team. So they were very engaged and integrated with our team. They’re very proud of their work. The bigger the project, the more engaged they were. Unlike some other teams I’ve worked with, they want to be challenged.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They want their leaders to be entrenched in our business. They never hesitated to send their team to our offices to make sure the integration project went smoothly. They were very proactive on that front. Even post-integration, they were very engaged. They also didn’t have much turnover, so they were very reliable.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I was pleased with their work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don’t be afraid to engage with your team. Treat them as one of your own dev teams, and they’ll respond really well.