FreezePro Software

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We produce software within the HR [human resources] business, so it's about time keeping. Our targeted customers are mainly small restaurants and coffee shops who need to schedule and manage the time of their employees. Certain work periods would typically give them higher salaries than other work periods; certain tasks would also influence this. Also, everything needs to be regulated according to the Scandinavian rules of employment. That pertains to how many hours you are allowed to work, how much holiday time you accrue, and so on.

We make the software, and we market it to restaurants and coffee shops. What we're trying to do is to establish a platform for HR software, much like a platform for service. That would be our ultimate goal, but we're just getting one inch into the market at this time.

What is your position?

I am the chief executive officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with FreezePro Software?

The basic challenge was to design and implement our software architecture. We wanted a software architecture that would be Agile enough to allow us to branch into the different markets that we are targeting while, at the same time, not being so general that it required a lot of investment. We had a short timeframe to market as a goal while not sacrificing the technological and architectural agility to make necessary changes later.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

What we asked FreezePro to do was to come up with a suggestion for the architecture and a proposal for implementing that in different phases. We wanted to utilize the architecture step-by-step, but still give us something that we could go to market with at each of those phases. It was not a long journey, but rather a series of intense, small journeys that would result in value at each step.

I'm not too deep into the technology part, but I believe Silverlight was used, .NET was used and probably some Java stuff was also used in the back-end. FreezePro also made the mobile versions for the iPhone. I don't know what technologies they used for the mobile versions, but it works in Android and also in iOS. I don't know the details, but it does work.

We have recently expanded the scope of their involvement. We have contracted several new modules that we will have them implement, which will utilize the basic infrastructure that has been established. Still, we are not looking to do this big bang sort of thing – we're doing it step-by-step. From our perspective, what we are most concerned with is the market, obviously. Their work has grown in terms of our targeted markets.

Right now, we have a team of five developers from FreezePro, including the project manager and the architect. They are not all full-time resources, but play five distinct roles. I think the project manager is something like 30 percent and the architect is more like 50 percent with us, and the three others are full-time developers.

They are doing the whole circle, including quality assurance and testing. We adopted a development strategy that focuses a lot on testing in progress. We start out by defining the acceptance tests, and they code until the software passes those benchmark tests, at which point it is, by definition, quality assured.

How did you come to work with FreezePro Software?

I've worked quite a lot with offshore development companies in the past. I used to be the Nordic director of a very large company – actually the largest company in the Nordics for HR and payroll. I had been working a lot with Indian, Malaysian, and Ukrainian developers. I came across FreezePro while I was in that earlier position.

I chose them because their initial offer included spending some time actually working out the architecture and not just start from day one with coding. They were willing to spend time discussing the overall goal of the project, what it could become in five years, and so on, in order to ensure that the architecture actually does work. That is why I'm so pleased with these guys. They made this suggestion themselves, and this sets them apart from other companies that I had worked with in the past.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

I would say we have spent somewhere in the vicinity of $60,000 working with FreezePro.

What is the status of this engagement?

The engagement will be continuous. As long as we're in business it will just grow, and we will continue to expand our relationship with FreezePro.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics, metrics, or other feedback from this engagement?

We've considered different possible KPIs [key performance indicators], but what we have landed on is actually just exposing FreezePro to what we need in order to succeed in the market. We have been pretty involved in the process, but we have kept the project management onshore. Our project manager has been very involved and is steering the development as they go along.

We have had some private customers trying out the software, and they have made suggestions for changes, which have been implemented. Overall, the quality of work that they've delivered has always been exceptional. Test-driven development has been a huge success.

How did FreezePro Software perform from a project management standpoint?

We use JIRA as a project management tool. Our in-house project manager is participating in the sprints and in the sprint-planning process. Then, they work on their own, and then they produce something on the other end, with some features not implemented and some implemented, and they adjust accordingly. It hasn't been textbook Agile, but it has been a flexible process that does work. It does produce results, and it does get things to the market.

What distinguishes FreezePro Software from other providers?

What FreezePro Software is really good at is delivering on what they say, because they're pretty small – they are only about 50 people or so. They actually do deliver on their estimations. For smaller businesses like ours, FreezePro Software is an ideal size in terms of actually getting the job done.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve, or things you might do differently?

It all boils down to what is always an issue in offshore situations. They need to spend even more time understanding our business. But, this is actually not really an offshore issue; it's more like a general software development issue. Developers typically tend not to be too familiar with the domains they are working in. They would benefit from giving even more energy to the domain knowledge of the market that I am in, as a customer.

Based on my experiences from other companies, they have been very good. Indian companies don't work at all in this respect, although some Ukrainian and Russian companies that I've worked with have managed to pull this off, but FreezePro has been the best so far. Still there is room for improvement – definitely.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a software and design house in the U.K. We've got our own developers in Kiev, Ukraine, where we have an office. We've got another software and support team in Romania, and most of the personnel are there. Then, we have eight or nine guys here in the U.K., including myself.

We largely do design and support work. We've got seven software systems that we own ourselves. We're very much geared around the e-commerce industry, so we do a lot of work with eBay and Amazon.

Amongst all that, we do a lot of mobile applications, which is part of the reason why we started our relationship with FreezePro. We could do it ourselves, but often our developers are very busy doing our own work.

What is your position?

I am the director.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with FreezePro Software?

Ten years ago, we came out with our flagship product. It handles marketing, so a seller can see who's bought what, when, how many, and so on. Doing that project was how we got to know Oleh [Mykhaylovych], the owner of FreezePro, and how our relationship started. At the time, I called upon his services initially to help us build the functional application.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

That first project was a system that we started together on. Once it went live, it was my nature to get my own team of developers to build other things, and that's where we broke ranks. Back then, it was a Windows product, but now we've built it in C#.

Right now, we are building an application that can identify certain individuals and give users their GPS coordinates, where exactly on the map they are. That app was built in Xamarin and C#, with iOS and Android. We completed it about a month and a half ago [2015]. They were so efficient that we actually met all the deadlines that we had originally set. Everyone was very happy. I'm looking to use them again shortly on another project because I know they've got the skills.

At peak capacity, we were using about three to five developers from FreezePro. On the recent project, we used two to three resources from them. They did a lot of the screenshots and the coordinates for the GPRS [general packet radio service].

How did you come to work with FreezePro Software?

I don't actually remember how it all started. We had about one developer at the time, working for us from Kiev. He had a friend that had worked for Oleh. That must have been how we came to work with them.

What I like about Oleh and FreezePro is that the team of guys there are very professional. It's a proper outfit, proper software house, and they've all got competent project managers. I just feel safe with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our most recent project wrapped up about a month and a half ago. I have another project coming up that I plan to use them on.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Their response time is great. Sometimes, we get ridiculous time schedules where the client wants to see software that isn't even live yet, and you have an hour to do it. FreezePro delivers – you call them on the phone or on Skype and it's been barely five minutes that they give you a response, which I think is just incredible.

How did FreezePro perform from a project management standpoint?

We've worked with a lot of different external IT [information technology] developers from India and China, and I would never go back there again because of the Ukrainians at FreezePro. Even though they're a bit more expensive, they always get the job done. And culturally, it's just a great fit. 

What distinguishes FreezePro from other providers?

The guys we used in India and China always worried me because communication was poor and we didn't ever know what was getting done. But, with Oleh, I can speak to him on the phone or over Skype. There's very little that he doesn't understand. When anybody comes to me to build an application, I will refer them to FreezePro. I would be responsible for the communication, because that's what I like to do. I would test it and make sure it all works, but that's all that I need to do. They will do the hard work.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

The name of the company is You Are a CEO Inc., and the founder is Michael E Parker. He was a young gentleman that started learning lean manufacturing from Toyota. Long story short, he went to Japan, learned the lean methodology, created his own spinoff – there are a lot of American spinoffs of lean. You hear about "agile development," especially in the tech industry. What he created was more of a pure, first-generation version of lean, but he applied it to the software industry.

You Are a CEO is a company that is based on building products that help people manage their life as well as their career. So, it's more of a personal development brand. We work with a lot of youth, but mainly those who are 18 to 25, those who have kind of entered into the workforce. We teach them to be the inner CEO of themselves before they can be the CEO of a company and developing the necessary skills.

We create all sorts of technologies to help them on the educational end, but mainly we focus on two or three areas. One is dealing with the financial management side. We call that application To-Do Life, and that application is the project that FreezePro took the lead on. Our project was a collaborative project, with probably about 20 different developers. Some are here locally in the Bay Area, and we outsource certain parts to different vendors. The primary vendor that rose to the top was FreezePro, and I'll explain why if you have any further questions. That's in a nutshell who we are, and the type of project that they worked on for us.

What is your position and responsibilities?

I am technically a solutions engineer. I work with a lot of those team members who work at the server level and make sure everything is set up for the developers. That is specifically on the To-Do Life end. We have another software, and we are coming out with another application soon, and there I am not just dev ops but I'm focused on product management.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with FreezePro Software?

It is software that can connect to any type of bank account or financial institution. We were partnered with a company called Yodlee, and there are a lot of personal financial management applications that connect with Yodlee. It's pretty intricate because the technology in the financial industry as a whole is a little outdated, so we did have to work closely with Yodlee on more of a SOAP API [application programming interface] versus the REST API. There was a lot of API work, and a lot processing and daily batch work that they have to do.

Our main problem is we needed a core team to focus on that account integration or aggregation piece. That's where we had the team members at FreezePro come in and focus on that area. That was the primary or preliminary problem that they helped us solve. It was focused more on the backend, taking all the accounts – we call them content services – each night, and making sure that they are saved locally on our server. Then, whenever the user is searching for that bank account, the information comes up a lot quicker.

We then expanded their project and the scope of their involvement. We always focused on having internal developers, so we always start with an enterprise team, and then I break it down to a core, and only outsource the pieces that are definitely needed. Since we were hashing out the technology, we did pull in some other developers. We got rid of every team except for FreezePro. They were able to do a little bit more and even take the application to more of a cloud-based infrastructure, which is very important to me.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

To-Do Life is primarily a Windows app and it's written in C#. We had to focus on how to make it cloud-based. We used Redis and SQ. Also, we have a back-end server that is strictly for our database server. So, we have a back-end and a front-end that we are using.

We focused on scaling it and, for day-to-day continuous integration and delivery, we use software, such as JIRA. We used Jenkins for a while but we migrated it all to the Atlassian Suite, which helps move everything automatically. We used Bamboo, which is a part of JIRA Suite. For testing, we used something called SmartBear; their application is called TestComplete. That's the technology that the applications sits on, and that's what we used to do the day-to-day work.

How did you come to work with FreezePro Software?

We found them through online research.

What is the status of this engagement?

We had to build an API so that we can have the Web services to support our mobile apps. Probably the last three or four months of work was focused more on the mobile component. I'm working currently on three different applications. I focus more on the Linux side, but on the Windows side supporting them, there were only three developers who we used from FreezePro. I think we used maybe two or three other gentlemen to do front-end work when we expanded and let them make our site more responsive. Primarily those three gentlemen – the speed that they worked in – was pretty awesome.

One gentleman focused on the Web app, one on the iOS, and one on Android. They focused mostly on building the Web services on the Web end, and then building the front-end functionality for the mobile part. That's where we are with the project. I've been focused a lot more on You Are a CEO, and they've been taking care of and doing what they can for the mobile app. Outside of that, we're trying to pick up the project and speed things up. I have a couple of team members that will be available internally to keep it moving.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

On the consumer end, I would probably have to have permission to give someone that data. From the development end, their productivity rates are pretty high when I look at some of their reports. Their burn rate was pretty low. There was a project that we estimated from a different vendor in our internal team. It was going to be a four- to five-week project, and they got it done in three.

When we have internal testing, the failure rate never went past 27 percent, out of an average 78 tickets a week. We have what we call value added and non-value added bug lists. A value-added bug list is if they find it in the core cycle of development before it gets into a customer's hand, and then a non-value added is if it was pushed to live. Their non-value added, the one that we basically do not like, has stayed at less than 27 percent. Of course, value added is whenever they're developing the first time, and that was at 38 percent.

They average 210 hours a week for us. This is for an average sprint. Their burn rate was really good. They kept it within 210 hours a week.

Testing is something that they do well – building unit tests to automate it. They're good at understanding the infrastructure. They do not have really any updated Web design team, which would be great. Even though they did front-end work, we had to do the cutwork and send it to them. Even though they have that, it is not efficient. Back-end work – yes. A lot of the front-end design work – you may want to outsource that to someone else.

How did FreezePro Software perform from a project management standpoint?

They're good at making sure all the requirements are there before they start on any work. By the time you did get them all the information, they can crank it out pretty quick, but if you do not have any requirements or anything that is super detailed, that could be a problem. That was probably the only thing. A lot of that could be on our end, too. I had to get on our design team to make sure they have everything that they need. But, that's probably the only bit of information I'll say that is definitely needed whenever you outsource.

What distinguishes FreezePro Software from other providers?

I'm here in Silicon Valley, so I work with a lot of developers, and we debate about this a lot. There are times that you need more of the creative team to hash out ideas, go through the technology, and learn it. One thing I have to say when it comes to outsourcing – it's something that I do not like to do. If I always have a choice, I would rather just hire a developer. One thing I have to give solid credit for, especially with Ukrainian developers who I've worked with, is their ability to definitely learn things very fast and implement them. It seems like they have an endless number of hours.

Here in America, I have to keep the developers engaged a lot more. There are a lot of things that happen outside of the office, and you have to make sure they have things prepared inside so that they don't have to run everywhere. I would say that they are very organized when it comes down to being at the meetings on time, even though there is a time difference. Whenever it was time for me to meet with them or work with them, they were already there, and they are very consistent.

Not only that, I introduced a lot of operational things to them. Development operations is to me one of our bread-and-butter activities. We do consulting for different development companies that are out here. If they can't learn how to do any type of continuous integration, or even adapt and use different tools, I feel that it's at a loss. Their CEO is heavily intrigued with the CI world, so he is very educated in knowing all the tools, and he pushes the team to learn that. I think overall that will probably be one of the differentiators that I would look at first. We can find a coder anywhere, or a programmer, or someone that is just creative. But, at the end of the day, you just need someone to crank it out on a consistent basis

One thing about FreezePro Software is that they have a consistent and reliable team. There were teams I've seen in the past with turnover rate issues, but they're pretty solid.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve, or things you might do differently?

I have to project manage a lot with FreezePro, and that's probably one of their improvement opportunities. Even though they do have project management among them, there's been times that I would ask to have a project manager work in for about two or three months, and I haven't found a decent project manager on their end. What I mean by that is a person that doesn't get too deep into any type of coding or anything; I need someone to stand back and do the daily scrums and the daily reports that we have. I wasn't able to find that from them.