Fcode Labs

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Founder of MAIA, a platform for connecting mental health practitioners and patients headquartered in New Zealand.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We wanted to develop a mobile application for mental health practitioners and patients to stay connected using their phones. We wanted to make getting help for mental health problems more accessible and less stressful for people. The goal was to create a user-friendly, easy, pleasant, and robust platform with a lots of analytics for future usage.

SOLUTION

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

I knew one of the founders because of their excellent academic background during university. We decided to go with them after evaluating their initial proposal, the overall system architecture, the skills, the technical know-how, and the cost estimates.

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

We first made an MVP application which took about one month. This included developing iOS and Android mobile applications using native languages, Android and Swift. The admin portal and web front were done with React framework. NodeJs and serverless were used for the backend. With this, we published the apps to AppStore and PlayStore. In the long run, we moved to Flutter for cross-platform app development. With the feedback of beta testers and our user research, the developers added the next set of features. The development was done in 2-week sprints and once every month there was a project demo done by the development team. They configures CI/CD pipeline on AWS and it resulted in smooth delivery of the work.

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

A project manager was the main point of contact. There was a technical lead who was leading the overall project in the technical aspect. In addition to that, there were 2 mobile developers, and 3 full-stack developers working on the backend and frontend. There was another Quality Assurance engineer who took care of the testing and quality of the whole delivery.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Within one month an MVP app was developed and published in the AppStore and play store. The user reviews and feedback were very good about the app. The app won the Best Design Award from the Designers Institute of New Zealand in 2021. Once every month there was a project demo and internal release for us to test the new features. This helped a lot in testing out features fast and getting those to actual users.

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

The project manager and Technical lead together create a very detailed project plan, delivery plan, System requirement document, QA Plan and risk analysis to start off the project. Then they use JIRA for project management and GitHub for code repository management. They develop in 2-week sprints after every sprint they deploy the features to the testing environment. Once every month they have an online demo with the client team. The feedback for the work was given mostly using emails or verbally in demo meetings. They record all that to JIRA and take it from there. The delivery was mostly on time and in case of any risks they made sure to give warning to us with ample time.

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

Their professionalism and communication were on point. They made sure to communicate every important point very early with ample time for us to take necessary actions. Also, their excellent technical and engineering skills really added so much value to our team.

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

They added the full-time Quality Assurance Engineer in the middle of the project and from that point onwards our lives were much easier. That could have been done from the beginning of the project.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Deputy Director of MOHT

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Healthcare and digital solution.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Fcode Labs to accomplish?

• Digital solution development for healthcare use cases

SOLUTION

How did you find Fcode Labs?

Referral, Other

Why did you select Fcode Labs over others?

Great culture fit, Good value for cost, Other

What was the size of Fcode Labs’s team?

50-100

What was your primary form of communication with Fcode Labs?

Virtual Meeting

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Developing and delivering a web based digital solution for healthcare use case with the deployment and hosting in AWS commercial cloud. Main scope of work includes application development for both frontend and backend, cloud infrastructure planning, deployment and operation, content management system integration and intelligent components, e.g. search function and recommendation service.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Completeness of the requirements
• Timeliness of the delivery
• Flexibility of the team

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

FCODE team provides timely and high-quality delivery during our engagement. The team works hard and can adopt very flexible work arrangement as needed. The team members are with good knowledge and experience and can undertake both dev and tech exploration work during the collaboration. It's a good experience to work with them.

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

The team works efficiently and with agility.

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

So far so good.