FOSTER_IT

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Im the CEO in a consulting company in the field of robotic process automation and data integration. We deliver IT solutions for enterprise companies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

FOSTER_IT was hired to take care of all our Frontend needs for an web based platfom to automate and manage processes in enterprise comapnies.

SOLUTION

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

FOSTER_IT was referred to me by my business partner. He had worked with the owners on other projects. They had an extensive knowledge about building CRM and CMS applications and were able to get a team set up for us within 2 weeks of our initial meeting.

They also could provide an experienced Project Manager with over 15 years of experience who could integrate all our subcontractors with the IT team.

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

FOSTER_IT took care of all our frontend needs and coordinated all the standups between our backend team and their frontend team. Moreover, they set up the whole workflow, including the deployment process.

For the development, they used the React framework. The complex part was a new way for integration with SAP Fiori and oData, where they used browser events and websocket.

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

We had 3 Frontend developers, a project manager and a technical lead.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project was delivered on time and on budget. and we've extended our contract for the next stage of development.

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

FOSTER_IT has regular standups with us over skype. They release updates every week after the first month of initial coding.

Their project manager along with our product owner decided monthly targets. Their biggest asset is constant communication.

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

Attention to detail and constant communication.

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

None

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a sports betting affiliate. We specialize in generating leads for online sport betting platforms. I'm currently the CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We wanted to build our services from scratch and base it on solid foundations which would be easy to scale-up in the future. We found that we couldn’t use wordpress or other stock CMS as they didn’t offer all the functions we would need to create content that ranked well.

The challenge was time, price, and quality, because as a start-up we had a limited budget, and the investors wanted to see some progress quickly. FOSTER_IT was hired to create a CMS and a responsive website within 6-9 months.

SOLUTION

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

I worked with FOSTER_IT on another project (a medical platform) so they were a natural choice for this new startup. However the investor requested other offers. However after the Investor evaluated their financial and technical offer they decided to pick FOSTER_IT.

The deciding factors were the years of experience provided by the lead project manager and technical manager and the fact that they created similar applications in the past.

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

As part of our cooperation with FOSTER_IT, we've built a custom CMS solution, based on best practices in Domain-Driven Design (DDD).

Primarily focused on building a CMS for editors with various levels of access to quickly create new content on the website, manage large amount of comments and publish betting odds for multiple events.

This CMS is scalable and reusable for various projects that require a unique content management approach. The second part was the idea to build a new portal, easily integrated through a REST API with various CMS solutions.

We built the whole engine and site from the ground up, based on an OpenAPI standard (Swagger).

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

We had 2 Frontend developers, 2 Backend developers, a project manager and a technical lead.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project was delivered on time and on budget. and we've extended our contract to support both web applications: website and CMS.

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

FOSTER_IT uses an Agile methodology. All changes requested are done within 3 to 14 days depending on priority. They have regular standups with us over skype. They release updates every 2 weeks. Their biggest asset is constant communication. Usually got back to us within minutes.

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

Their integrity, quality of work, and adaptation to change of requirements impressed us the most. Furthermore as stated above they were VERY quick to respond. At all times we knew what was going on with our project.

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

None.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a remote full-stack developer at Imagho. We’re based in Warsaw, Poland and I’ve been working at the company since 2016.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with FOSTER_IT?

We were working on a couple of projects, but we had very few resources to handle the more advanced tasks. We received one of the biggest client projects we’d ever had and it required us to hire more people. 

We had to provide the client with an easier way of managing their e-commerce listings from their CMS. The CMS needed to connect to their website, but the existing solutions for this were missing many custom features. We basically needed to develop a custom solution with the help of FOSTER_IT. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

FOSTER_IT created a custom solution that allowed us to fetch data from Prestashop and post listings to multiple e-commerce marketplaces. They built it to enable the client to keep track of sales, prices, and stocks, and to manage auctions in an extended way.

For the development, they used Docker Compose and the general Docker technology. They also used PHP and MySQL for the Prestashop aspect, Node.js for handling API calls to the e-commerce platform, pure JavaScript for the frontend, and the Symfony framework, as well.

What is the team composition?

On our side, we had one project lead and three programmers, and FOSTER_IT delegated three teammates to the project, consisting of one project lead and two senior developers.

How did you come to work with FOSTER_IT?

They weren’t new to us when we started the collaboration because FOSTER_IT was recommended to us a while ago. My company had worked with them on a couple of projects before I became so closely involved with the company. We were aware of their skills so that made FOSTER_IT our first pick.

What is the status of this engagement?

I worked closely with them between April–June 2020, which is when I got to know them the most.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I was surprised by the speed of their work and the standard of code they were able to maintain at their quick pace. 

Often, when we work with clients, we find that it’s very hard to switch from one task to the next, but FOSTER_IT was really supportive in that area. They were able to switch their attention quickly and help us out, which freed us from having to fix some solutions and allowed us to focus on different clients at the same time.

How did FOSTER_IT perform from a project management standpoint?

Since FOSTER_IT had its own project lead, it was easy to coordinate with them. They were very communicative, especially since we had contact over Skype, as well. We could message each other quickly, and we got immediate responses.

We used Trello for communication and to keep records of completed and ongoing tasks, and we generally used Skype to communicate directly to have the quickest response times.

FOSTER_IT was quick to respond after every meeting, and it felt like they’d done everything multiple times before, regardless of the task. Whenever it came to bug reports and bug fixing, they were quick to fix whatever was broken and help out with tasks that required immediate attention.  

They were just generally easygoing and nice people — it felt like we were working with our good friends. Sometimes, it was easier to just ask the developers to look at something for us, whereas some people prefer having organized Trello or Jira pages instead.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The best part for us was feeling like we were working with someone that genuinely cared about our performance and how tasks were going.

Their PHP coding skills were impressive — they were quick and the standard of code was really high. Also, they had a really good pipeline for deploying applications. It was very easy to manage multiple applications running synchronously from different servers, and it was easy to configure and fix bugs.

Code can feel rushed sometimes, but with FOSTER_IT, everything was really well done and completed quickly — those two things don’t go together very often. Additionally, their communication skills were impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Since I only worked with them from April through June, I didn’t have too much time to notice negative aspects. Honestly, there’s nothing I could say that they should improve because I didn't notice anything like that. 

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I’d give the same advice to any customer — it’s important to state your needs very clearly to bring the dream to life without any unnecessary tweaks or modifications in the future.

The future customer should realize they’re talking to people who are a bit more easygoing. We felt like we were talking to actual humans, so we weren’t afraid to be more informal and didn’t need to use bureaucratic language.