GLOBALDEV

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a photography organization that has produced an app and website that are virtual extensions of what we’ve being doing locally for several years. The app and website allow photographers and photography enthusiasts to have their work assessed and curated by photography experts. Photographers can also display their work publicly and participate in a series of photographic competitions we’re running. We’ve been doing this through physical shows in San Diego for quite a long time, but now we’re building the app and website to expand this into a virtual realm. It provides many more shows and opportunities for exposure and cash rewards for a much larger number of photo enthusiasts.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SteelKiwi?

We hired SteelKiwi to build an app for our organization.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

When we went to SteelKiwi, we didn't have a functional version of the app, but we did have a visual document and some requirements that we kind of knew we needed. At first, they built a simple version of the app for us, which is in the App Store right now. Our main goal is to have a more involved version that will allow the users to interact with their own profiles, display their work, and participate in the competitions we’ll be running. We’re in the process of building a more complex version of the app now. We’re starting with iOS versions, but we hope to expand and build an Android version soon. SteelKiwi covers all those bases.

How did you come to work with SteelKiwi?

I was originally referred to SteelKiwi by someone who had a positive experience working with them. When looking for a company to work with, I originally met with a couple of local companies in San Diego that are focused on building apps, and I briefly looked online at other non-local companies, either outside of San Diego or outside of the country. I think the local companies could have done the job, but they were much more expensive. When you're running a startup or building a new company from scratch with limited capital, it’s helpful to work with companies that are going to be more affordable. That was definitely the case with SteelKiwi. They gave us an affordable and reasonable quote.

What is the status of this engagement?

We got started working together last summer on the more complex version of the app, and I think half of it has been built. We’ve had delays on our side in getting enough capital to continue and finish the product. We expect that to happen in the next couple of months. SteelKiwi’s pace and speed is good, productive, and satisfactory.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

My experience working with SteelKiwi has been good. Our original project with them was smooth, well-produced and came out exactly how we wanted. Even this bigger product has gone well and as expected. They’re a good team of talented, knowledgeable, current, cutting-edge technology experts in the field of creating apps and websites.

How did SteelKiwi perform from a project management standpoint?

I've had access to everybody at SteelKiwi. It’s a good working relationship, and I feel supported by the full team there. I feel like I can talk to anybody, including the owners, about any sort of issues. We work with around five or six people at SteelKiwi on an ongoing basis. I deal with a direct representative almost daily. I've had contact with their main customer support person, and even one of the founders of the company.

The production process has seemed logical and understandable. I provided them a detailed scope document, complete mockups of every screen, etc. They came back to me with a comprehensive, multi-sheet Excel document that listed all of the different production components and time, in terms of hours, that they projected would be required to complete everything. They then translated that into the actual pricing for each of those different components to provide a bottom line total. I also asked for timelines to kind of map out how we would progress through the process, and they provided those exactly as I requested. Everything has gone exactly as they projected it would.

We use Atlassian, Skype, and email to keep in touch. (They introduced us to Atlassian.) SteelKiwi is on the other side of the world, but by using Skype, everything has worked out really well. We use it on a weekly basis, if not more frequently.

Are there any areas SteelKiwi could improve?

There’s nothing I would criticize SteelKiwi for. Everything has been smooth.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with SteelKiwi?

For customers working a standard 9 to 5 shift, the different time zones could be a little bit of an issue. For instance, if I want to talk to SteelKiwi directly, it means I have to call them at about 8:30 a.m. or 11:30 p.m., and I have to set aside a block of time to chat with them. It works fine for me because as an entrepreneur, I’m kind of used to having a non-traditional work schedule.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an early stage startup developing a B2C concept for connecting service providers with clients looking for those services. This is a very broad stroke of our online business idea. I’m a co-founder of the startup, along with my business partner. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Steelkiwi?

We were at the stage of searching for an agency to help us create a prototype that could be tested on the market with customers. We needed a wireframe and design, and we wanted someone to put them together into a functional product. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Steelkiwi produced an iOS prototype for us, handling wireframing, design and development. We had them implement separate interfaces for supplier accounts as opposed to basic customer ones.

We mainly interacted with Steelkiwi's project manager and UX designer. There were also three resources with whom we didn't talk; they were in charge of designs, our logo, and the coding itself. In the very beginning, we were also in touch with Steelkiwi's principal when signing the contract.

How did you come to work with Steelkiwi?

I am originally from Ukraine, so this was one of the markets I researched. Based on references and cost, we chose Steelkiwi.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Steelkiwi at the end of September 2016. The prototype was delivered at the end of January 2017. After we've tested it, we will begin looking for a technical team to take it further. Steelkiwi will be one of the agencies on our list. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or impact of the engagement?

Because the product is a prototype and not a fully functional app, we have only used it for checking the validity of our idea. In terms of the functionality of what was delivered, the feedback was clear that our user-flow needs to be simplified. The design itself was perceived positively.

How did Steelkiwi perform from a project management standpoint?

We appreciated Steelkiwi's responsiveness. The feedback and requests we shared with them were responded to quickly. Whenever we needed to have an additional call, Steelkiwi was proactive in connecting with us.

Are there any areas Steelkiwi could improve?

Overall, we really enjoyed the level of collaboration.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Kimetrica is a consultancy firm that provides decision support services to companies or organizations largely working in the social sector like NGOs [Non Governmental Organizations] and bilateral aid agencies. I’m the Chief Information Officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SteelKiwi?

We do software development in-house. We use Django, which is a web development framework. Sometimes we have a client that we don’t have quite the right skill set for, so we have resource constraints. At other times we don’t have programmers available to work on things at a particular time, and we use SteelKiwi in both of those situations. When we don’t have resources available, we contract it out to SteelKiwi.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

My internal team is 10 to 15 programmers plus 5 other IT staff. We use SteelKiwi by and large for Django development and sometimes for AngularJS development. We have worked with the same people on multiple projects. We talk to their sales manager. When we start a new project or a new piece of work, she gives us a project manager to start with. Sometimes that’s somebody we have worked with before. It depends on the availability on their end. Then once we start a conversation with the project manager about what our requirements are, they then put together a team on their end that has the skills to meet those needs.

How did you come to work with SteelKiwi?

We originally found them on an outsourcing website called Elance. The original requirement was for a Django software development, to do a Django content management system implementation. We looked for people on Elance that had that specific experience on Django CMS and had good reviews. Then we interviewed three or four of them, and we picked SteelKiwi.

How much have you invested with SteelKiwi?

We have invested between $20,000 and $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them one to two years ago. We are still working with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

They’ve done many things for us. The first thing they did was implement our website using Django CMS. That was the initial piece of work we asked them to do. We’d had a design done by an external branding consultant. They were the technology implementer, and we wanted somebody with Django CMS to translate that design into a working website. They did that very successfully. The communication was generally very good. Our communications team internally talks directly to their project management team in terms of deciding what requests and alterations need to get done. They’re very good at talking to the business team and understanding what is required. That was the first thing we did. That was very successful. We still give them pieces of work where we need to make a change to the website, and we have no familiarity with the back-end technology. 

How did SteelKiwi perform from a project management standpoint?

I think internally they use JIRA to do their project management and their timekeeping. We use a tool called Redmine for our internal software development, and one of the things that has been a very big win for us is that SteelKiwi has been very willing to and very successful at adopting our project management procedure. They were happy to accept work and requirement documentation and those sorts of things allocated to them through our project management software, Redmine. That means that I can split work easily across SteelKiwi and our internal software development team where we have work going on and a mix of skills.

For example, at the moment we are building a single-page JavaScript application which acts as a visualization for a data warehouse. The APIs [application programming interface] that are being used to access that data will all be written by my internal team, and SteelKiwi is doing the AngularJS front-end for us. We have tasks being assigned within that project, some of them to SteelKiwi and some of them to my internal software developers, and both sides are using the same project management tools to review the work and track who’s doing what. Beyond Redmine, there’s the version control system. We use a software control system called GitLab, and once again they are committing directly to our GitLab and integrate it into our software review process. That’s been very successful with them in a way that it hasn’t always been with other subcontractors that we’ve worked with. They’ve tended to want to do it on their platform or not at all. SteelKiwi has been very successful at adopting our processes and our programming service.

What did you find most impressive about SteelKiwi?

I think their client communication is really good. For every piece of work, there’s always repeating in the chain. There’s the initial contact with the sales manager, and then for every project, we are assigned a project manager. Their project manager basically makes sure that the work is going on and satisfied properly, deals with any holdup, and acts as the client’s point of contact to make sure that the client is happy.  However, many technical resources are required to implement whatever it is that we’re asking. The communication from those project managers in terms of keeping everybody on the same page and up to date is really good.

Are there any areas SteelKiwi could improve?

No, to be honest, I am delighted with their work.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We're a global engineering consultancy working on a wide variety of projects. We’ve built railways, designed buildings, and conducted ecological surveys on animal habitats. I am a part of the UK consulting team that provides digital solutions to clients.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SteelKiwi?

One of our clients was looking for a platform to manage the training of their delegates on internal standards. We've done work previously in the renewable industry and were asked to help out. We enlisted SteelKiwi to assist with the development of the platform itself, primarily because they do a good job of custom coding. Also, it wasn't our core business so it was necessary to partner with someone who could successfully build the solution. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SteelKiwi developed a solution that allows delegates to register, obtain a profile on the site, and view a history of their training. Employers can search for delegates on the site, verify that their training is up-to-date, and that they're compliant. Training providers can issue paperless accreditation to delegates throughout the world. We provided requirements for the functional and static aspects of the system. These included wireframe sketches of the user interface along with what elements were needed on specific pages. SteelKiwi designed visual collateral on top of this as well as the actual implementation of the system itself.

SteelKiwi worked on another project in the UK. They assisted with an internal application for managing traffic surveys. People were out on the road counting vehicles, classifying them, and collating the results. The information was used over time to form trends and determine where certain roads needed to be built. The work was done for another client. It was intended to replace a heavily manual process that involved an amalgam of spreadsheets. Our solutions were based on the Django Python framework, using MySQL as the database back-end, integrations into Amazon Web Services S3 for file storage, and SES for email delivery. The technologies were based on our requirements.

SteelKiwi provided between 8–10 resources for our project. We worked with a project manager, QA people, 2–3 developers, and a designer. We've worked with SteelKiwi on similar projects using similar teams. We didn't choose our team specifically, but it was successful in the past.

How did you come to work with SteelKiwi

We posted a request on Upwork. After advertising our high-level requirements, we vetted the replies and found SteelKiwi to be one of the most qualified firms. SteelKiwi proved to be a good fit for the job. We initially transacted through that website but have come to have a direct relationship subsequently. Upwork is not the best website to use.

How much have you invested with SteelKiwi?

The total cost of their services has been between $25,000 and $30,000. [20,000 to 25,000 GBP]

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with SteelKiwi at the middle of 2015. We have some ongoing projects with SteelKiwi as well as others which are in the pipeline. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement? 

SteelKiwi has provided a professional service from top to bottom. They are excellent in terms of quality, software engineering, and following requirements through to delivery. The team has been responsive, helpful, and quick to resolve any issues that we encountered. They have been able to adapt to all the new technologies and environments which we’ve requested thus far.

How did SteelKiwi perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management has been straightforward. We communicate with one contact on SteelKiwi's end. Every week or fortnight, we have a show-and-tell-style review of the content being worked on. Jira is SteelKiwi's primary tool for tracking tasks and everything else. They use it extensively on an internal basis, but we haven't used it as much. Everything we needed was provided by email and other communications. During the project development life cycle, SteelKiwi has remained on time and kept us up-to-date with what was happening. The only lack in responsiveness came after the project was completed, in the bug fixing phase. This is to be expected.

What did you find most impressive about SteelKiwi?

It's neat to find a team that can adapt so well to a variety of business requirements and have the level of consistent quality offered by SteelKiwi. Plus, they deliver results within budget and on time. We've looked for this elsewhere in the market. Usually, developers are able to deliver within the right price, quality, or time. It's rare to find all 3 at once.

Are there any areas SteelKiwi could improve?

Nothing springs to mind at the moment. We've had the usual bug fix cycle, but this is normal.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

The company that I collaborated with developed a social networking site aimed at filmmakers. It had numerous features like payment gateways. I was the project manager in charge of hiring an outsourced developer. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SteelKiwi?

We wanted to improve the site by adding Skype, PayPal, and email integrations. It wasn't possible for us to do it alone since we don't have those technical skills. Thus it became necessary to partner with another company. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SteelKiwi played a part in every aspect of the project, but their main contribution was in the back-end development. I was partly in charge of the front-end design, but SteelKiwi made a lot of tweaks in order to make the site mobile-responsive. The site had been built using Python and Django so it was necessary to have a working understanding of the language, its strengths, and limitations. 

How much have you invested with SteelKiwi ?

The total cost of SteelKiwi's development services was around $17,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with SteelKiwi in the spring of 2016. The project duration was more than 2 months.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement? 

Before using SteelKiwi, I had worked with many outsourced teams in various countries. In comparison, SteelKiwi was very pleasant to work with. Everything was very smooth and they communicated well.

How did SteelKiwi perform from a project management standpoint?

I know that there were more than two developers assigned to the project, but I only kept in touch with SteelKiwi's project manager. Everything was delivered on time and all the major milestones were reached. SteelKiwi communicated clearly whenever we encountered any issues. We used GitHub for our collaboration and SteelKiwi also had an internal project management system. I also received updates on the number of hours spent on each task, which I appreciated.

What did you find most impressive about SteelKiwi?

I was impressed by our collaboration. SteelKiwi did everything that they were supposed to do. It seems that this should be true for everyone, but it isn't. With groups from Ukraine and India, there will always be complications. SteelKiwi was my favorite team to work with in a remote capacity.

Are there any areas SteelKiwi could improve?

Not that I can recall. I had a pleasant time working with SteelKiwi. There was no language barrier, and SteelKiwi was always straight with me when I had unrealistic expectations.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with SteelKiwi?

Any clients should allow some time for understanding how SteelKiwi's system works. If they try to implement their own processes from the start, things may start to get muddy. When we first started working together, I imposed my own way of keeping things together. SteelKiwi was fine with this. After finding that SteelKiwi was already very organized, I was eventually able to scale it back a lot over time. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We're an international IT company focusing on pharmaceutical, healthcare, and lifestyle areas. I work in the marketing department.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SteelKiwi?

We were approached by a relatively small healthcare center in the Netherlands. They needed a development partner who could help them build a website as well as mobile applications.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SteelKiwi built our software using Django Python as a backend. The front-end was built using HTML, CSS, and either Backbone.js or Knockout.js. The client didn't have particular requirements in this regard. We've worked with 1 project manager from SteelKiwi as well as one designer, a front-end developer, and 2 back-end developers. SteelKiwi also provided QA services.

How did you come to work with SteelKiwi?

I browsed the top companies on clutch.co. The main ones were based in the US and Canada and were priced accordingly. Our client discarded those options due to budget constraints. I also looked at an Indian company with some Drupal experience whose prices were mid-range compared to other companies. I chose to look at Eastern European developers, not because Indian ones are less qualified, but because of the language barrier. SteelKiwi approached us about becoming our development partner. I talked to their sales manager. We drafted a proposal, signed a contract, and got the budget details out of the way.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our work has been completed. I may use SteelKiwi for future projects.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

SteelKiwi has done a great job with our site. As always, we identified a few bugs, but SteelKiwi resolved them. 

How did SteelKiwi perform from a project management standpoint?

Even though there is a time difference between our locations, SteelKiwi has been online whenever we needed them for status updates. We used Slack for communication, where we had channels for developers and project management. Jira was used for task management, for both front-end and back-end progress. SteelKiwi attached designs to the platform so that I could see and approve them.

What did you find most impressive about SteelKiwi?

SteelKiwi's project management team has a good command of English, which I appreciated as an international client. SteelKiwi also had good pricing, but this isn't something unique to them. I appreciated the quality of code provided by SteelKiwi. I was also impressed by how smooth the process of working with SteelKiwi's project manager and sales team was.

Are there any areas SteelKiwi could improve?

SteelKiwi's team was a bit too persistent in asking qualifying questions, which weren't even necessary at times. Gathering specifications took more time than we would have wanted. SteelKiwi nitpicked too much, and I didn't have that much time to dedicate to them. In the future, SteelKiwi should ask the client how they want to approach the project. This is my only negative comment about SteelKiwi.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I have worked on a method for rating and ranking airlines, based on the physical metrics of the airline cabin.

I am the founder of the platform. I work full time as a management consultant and focus on this project in my personal time.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SteelKiwi?

My work with SteelKiwi started off as a personal project. I wanted to have some sort of online representation of the analysis being done through my software. I figured out that I could be combined with customer feedback, so it became a variant of Trip Advisor, but for airlines.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, I wanted to have pure ratings on my platform. People could see numeric representations of the quality of an airline. This quickly evolved into route-specific searches, as well as a kind of sky-scanner API. The Google Flight API has been hooked into my platform recently. From what was supposed to be a simplistic, web-based representation of hard-coded data, it has become a search engine, which also offers airline ratings.

There have been 2 key parts of this project. It has a database through which SteelKiwi has replicated the logic that I've built using an Excel document. Django is used for interfacing with the database. The other major component was integrating my database with Google's API and combining the 2 of them so that a search result can be retrieved when a customer queries the database.

SteelKiwi has used mockup software for sending quick wireframes to me, as well as creating prototypes of my platform.

SteelKiwi provided 2 account managers and 2 frontend developers with whom I interacted. There may have been more resources behind-the-scenes.

How did you come to work with SteelKiwi?

I found SteelKiwi through Upwork.com. I was looking for a more long-term engagement than the typical projects on that platform. I saw that they had experience in Python, which is a powerful way of running an analytics-based app, like mine. I contacted SteelKiwi with a clear idea of what I wanted and probably ended up being one of their more difficult clients. I changed my mind at least a couple of dozen times throughout my engagement with them.

How much have you invested with SteelKiwi?

The total cost of SteelKiwi's services has been around $6,500 [5,000 GBP]. We've been working on a shoestring budget, given that I don't have backers at this point.

What is the status of this engagement?

The platform is currently ready to go, but I haven't done much in terms of promoting it. I am figuring out what the best way of going to market would be. My work with SteelKiwi is paused at the moment because I need to get people aware of it. I want to stop spending my own money on it, and start attracting investors.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I'm happy with where the platform is at the moment. It's useful enough to be engaged by users, but it's up to me to start raising awareness for it. I'm still trying to figure out my strategy for going to market, and I also need to start approaching people with deeper pockets than mine. When this does eventually happen, I plan on going back to SteelKiwi for the next phase.

I've seen it at every stage, so I'm not a very objective source, but people who have tested the platform have said that it looks very professional. The platform's functionality has been more to do with my input, given that we've worked on a shoestring budget. I made calls about cutting corners, so any fall-downs have been because I needed to draw a line. It wasn't a reflection of SteelKiwi's work. If I needed something done, SteelKiwi could certainly have handled it.

For example, I wanted a popup feature after a review was posted on my website, asking users to also post on Facebook. It is a great way of making the website viral. I wanted this and it was something that SteelKiwi could do, but I couldn't pay for it at the time.

How did SteelKiwi perform from a project management standpoint?

By and large, I'm happy with SteelKiwi's performance. There were times when getting development resources could have been faster, but because I had a low-cost project, I didn't have enough hours at hand to make my work a major priority. Otherwise, SteelKiwi was incredibly professional and efficient when it came to offering quotes. They knew exactly what was required of them, based on the requests that I put in. This was great because I don't have this knowledge.

We have used the Atlassian suite of project management software, including Jira.

What did you find most impressive about SteelKiwi? 

I have no point of comparison, but SteelKiwi was spot-on when it came to getting tasks done. Whenever something took longer than their estimations, I wasn't charged extra. I have seen time sheets with hours that far-exceeded the hours estimated. For me, as a buyer, this was quite good.

Are there any areas SteelKiwi could improve?

The only point of improvement is being able to engage SteelKiwi with a lower threshold of work. If I had business partners with deeper pockets, I wouldn't be in the position of asking for 3-4 hours of work at a time. To be a perfect development team, SteelKiwi would need to engage slightly smaller tasks more efficiently.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I run a small Product shop that designs, creates, and manages several small cap SAAS products. Team size varies but is consistently between 5 and ~12 people. I am the Co-founder, CEO and CTO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire SteelKiwi? 

We decided to create a social media management SAAS targeted towards a very niche slice of the market. Functionality was core to the USP/value proposition, while UI/UX wasn't.

What were your goals for this project?

This is a SAAS that will generate high cash flow and attain a market value in the single-digit millions.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We found SteelKiwi on clutch.co, while specifically looking for python shops, as python is great for the specific tech problems we were addressing. Their price was fair and I was impressed by their honesty and competence when we video skyped. They seemed like straight-shooters.

Describe the project in detail.

This entire project (from spec to MVP) took just 3 weeks. The service provider managed all parts of the project.

What was the team composition?

They had in-house experts who actualyl handled every part of the project and actually cared about finishing rapidly instead of dragging it out to earn more money.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

This is my second experience working with SteelKiwi and I am very pleased. The project came in within a very reasonable margin of the budgeted cost. Most importantly, SteelKiwi handled EVERYTHING without needing me to hold their hands.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Functionality was tested before they showed it to me, instead of me having to find the bugs for them.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

At many points they suggested alternate technical decisions which could save me money or reduce technical debt. In summary, I am very much looking forward to working with them again.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

For context, In my career I have managed a few hundred thousand dollars worth of development budget, spread over many companies, and I rank SteelKiwi very highly.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

BoardNotebook is a board portal service for nonprofit organizations. It does things like meeting management, document retention, and governance aspects for American nonprofits. A web-based app used in nonprofit board meetings is the best way to describe it. The company is comprised of three people. We've been around for about 18 months.

What is your position? 

I am the chief technology officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with SteelKiwi Development?

I had done some Python and Django work on the minimal viable product for this startup, and I'd done about 50 percent of the total codebase at the time. I went to SteelKiwi and showed them what it was and what I needed to add in terms of features. They then handled the development of the additional functionality and configuration.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

We were paying them by the hour but, because they were integrating new things into an existing codebase, and helping me with getting the changes up to my staging and production servers, I ended up using four or five different people at SteelKiwi, including Julia Titova, my main contact and project manager. I'm not sure if I explicitly hired all of them, but we ended up working together throughout the course of the project.

We started the engagement with them at about this time last year [December 2014], and they worked through to April [2015]. All of their work has been custom Python and Django development.

How did you come to work with SteelKiwi Development?

I'd worked with them once before, on a different project, so I knew that the company was good. I didn't participate in finding them. I'd been impressed with their skill and capability in Python and Django development work, so when the current project started, I thought of them first. They had the necessary capacity, and we started right away.

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

It was between $20,000 and $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project was completed in April [2015]. That's when we finished all the small work, with testing, cleaning out little bugs, and so forth. Just recently, I found a bug and asked them to work on it for me. They said no problem. Less than a day later, they came up with a solution.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I have a small core of devout users. They use it a couple of times a month. There will be board members who come in, get their meeting agendas, documents, and everything else they need to run their board. I would say I have happy users. We're now opening it out, taking it out of beta, and doing more marketing for it.

I'm very happy with their work and where the app stands. Like any minimally viable product, as soon as I start generating revenue, I will discover new things I want to add to the platform.

How did SteelKiwi Development perform from a project management standpoint?

We used GitHub extensively and a Python bug tracker that they host. In the early stages, we were using it to address tasks, and make descriptions of everything that needed to be fixed. At some point during the process, we switched in large part to GitHub, where they would do code deliveries via pull request. There's a lot of back and forth through email, but it was well done all around. It works very well.

What distinguishes SteelKiwi Development from other providers?

They're based in the Ukraine. Russia invaded their country. I don't mean to get political, but one of the cities in which we had developers was occupied and controlled by the Russians. Some of the developers moved to Odessa to get out of the war zone. In spite of all that, they were very responsive and professional through the ordeal.

Another thing revolves around working successfully with English-speaking clients. Their English is very good, and there were really no instances of misunderstandings due to the language barrier. I worked with companies that had that problem. They're able to speak English far better than I can speak Ukrainian.

I'm a developer myself, so the translation between the business goals and technical ideas was something largely done by myself. Technical person to technical person, we had a fine time. I would definitely hire SteelKiwi again without a doubt.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a startup with less than 10 employees. We are in the retail logistics business, and we essentially compete with Square. Everything they do, that's the space we are in.

What is your position?

I am the co-founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with SteelKiwi?

Before we went to investors, we wanted to build a robust prototype and, therefore, we were looking to get a number of skill sets in one place at a price point that was not possible within the U.S. We were looking for an offshore team that could provide us some of these skill sets at an affordable price point. We looked everywhere outside the U.S., so it wasn't limited to Ukraine. The basic challenge was to get a number of skill sets under one roof, at a lower price point. The technical development didn't have to be industry specific. It really was more about the platforms that they had experience using.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

If I ask a company the develop something, I would expect them to do QA [quality assurance] testing, integration testing, some amount of DevOps [development operations]. That's part of the package. Everything other than design, they did from the beginning. Only recently, we hired one of the designers to help out with the design of the UI [user interface]. Initially, we were working with a U.S.-based designer and, just recently, we hired their designer to complement our designer to reduce the turnaround cycles, because their designer is sitting in the same room as the front-end developer and our local designer is not. This helped to get around the communication challenges.

How did you come to work with SteelKiwi?

At the time, we used two of the leading online platforms for finding freelance developers because initially we would find developers with specific skill sets, and manage them in-house. Find the best available developers for A, B, and C, and then they won't necessarily need to know each other because we would manage them. We went on Elance and oDesk, and then from researching the skill sets that were available, we concluded that it would more efficient, if possible, to work with a firm that had more than one skill set under one roof, rather than working with multiple freelance developers directly.

The task was to build a website and then mobile apps that had the same back-end platform. We considered all of the popular platforms every time, from Python to Ruby to PHP and others. We decided on a Python platform for a number of reasons. Once we decided on Python, then you're talking about Django, so then we ended up looking at companies on Elance-oDesk who had expertise using Django; that was the core skill set.

We short-listed about 15 firms from a number of countries, and we looked at whether they had complementary skill sets under the same roof. For example, the database we work with PostgreSQL, so we wanted that expertise, we wanted iOS and Android expertise. It would be a huge plus if they had designers. If we needed designers, we needed people who knew front-end languages like AngularJS, and other Java-based front-end technologies.

SteelKiwi was one of the 15 firms who had all of these things, so then we short-listed them. We sent them invitations to respond to our RFP [request for proposal], and we interviewed about five and went with SteelKiwi. This was last summer [2014].

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

I'd rather not disclose that information.

What is the status of this engagement?

It's an ongoing involvement, and I fully expect it to continue in the near future.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We are a startup, and the service that we provide does not have widespread benchmarking available in the industry yet. Since January [2015], we've gone through a number of iterations, so we've had many, many versions pushed out there. One way to measure the quality of a developer's work is the number of critical bugs in their deliverables. From my experience with this firm, and from my experience with working with other firms previously, I would say that the quality of their development expertise is extremely high. That's half of the story.

The other half is, some bugs are unavoidable. That's just part of the process. Another way to measure the skill measuring how quickly they can diagnose why the bug happened, and how quickly they can fix it. That just comes down to the experience of the person who's actually on your team. Currently, we are working with two developers, one senior and one junior developer. We are working with a front-end guy or designer, a DevOps guy, like a sys-admin, and a project manager. That's the composition of our team from SteelKiwi.

The senior developer is as skilled in Python as I've ever seen anywhere. His ability to resolve bugs is just phenomenal, and that would be an important reason why we are working with SteelKiwi. They are able to provide people like that guy, who have that level of expertise. This gets down to not just how well you can design an algorithm, it's also the experience he has in the field, and they have a very talented QA [quality assurance] testing team. If you go by metrics, such as the number of bugs and the critical bug turnaround time, they are very good. As good as what you would expect anywhere in an offshoring situation.

How did SteelKiwi perform from a project management standpoint?

On that front, they are probably best-in-class, although the side of project management that we have seen would focus less on being strategic because we are a young startup and our horizon is not years, it's not even six months – it's every two months. Now, the side of project management that we do see, and we have seen from the beginning, would be one of three reasons why we are with SteelKiwi now.

If you think broadly about the landscape of people who are in the offshoring business, a lot of them are in India. There are also a lot of them in the former Eastern European countries, Ukraine included. There's also Poland, and there's Russia itself. When I was looking, I was surprised to see how many options there were in China. Now, because of the language issues, China was a nonstarter for us. We just couldn't get over that. Because of a number of reasons, we ended up not going with India. Now, in Eastern Europe, you then have the language issue because the developers speak Russian or Polish and we don't.

What becomes critical, as soon as you step out of India, and work in any other country that's non-native English speaking, is that the project manager really has to be the glue. The project manager and the communication have to be at a level where he or she is able to understand what you're asking of them clearly. We are very hands-on, so our involvement is on a daily basis. We participate in some of the end-user testing on a daily basis. It's not like we define our projects, "Hey, build this, and come back in two weeks." We are really hands-on with them.

The project manager has really been a partner to us, in perfect sync with us not just in what we're asking them to do, but also at times in connecting the dots. That works in two ways: one way is at a very basic level, the language issue. I speak to the project manager, not the developers, who were OK with written English, but not so okay with verbal skills.

I, being on the user side, obviously have the best understanding of our vision, and where we are going with all of this. I also have a technical computer science background, so I can get fairly deep at the algorithm level, and can hold a conversation with anybody. What I'm not good at, because that's not what I do, is, what is, for example, the current state-of-art in JavaScript practices? Is AngularJS any better or worse than Backbone.js or Node.js, and what the difference between them? I could speak high level, but I would not know the details.

Then, the project manager's role becomes very critical in translating what I'm asking to what could be changed, or should be changed to build a platform better. This project manager at SteelKiwi has been phenomenal with that as well. Sometimes I'll say, "Build me this," and then she'd talk to the developers. All of them will discuss it as a team, and then come back with, "We could tweak this slightly. It could reduce the timeline by three days." That really is the role that the project manager has played, which has been so critical to the success of this relationship.

We're also kind of following an agile development methodology. Our company is even younger than young. We are a baby company so, sometimes, we react even faster than agile would recommend. We do follow some sort of an agile shell, but it tends to be more chaotic than that, as you can imagine. We change direction frequently, even more frequently than what agile would allow.

What distinguishes SteelKiwi from other providers?

Their talent pool is a huge factor but also their project management approach. I've really appreciated SteelKiwi's ability to think outside of the box and offer us key suggestions around process improvement or bug fixes or feature designs. That's not what I would call typical of offshore developers.

Is there anything SteelKiwi could have improved or done differently?

If I'm not mistaken, they have about 50 people, give or take. For a company of that size, we have been happy with their ability on the things I've mentioned – the outstanding DevOps guy and the outstanding Python guy. We asked for a designer, and they've come with a great design guy. One limitation of their size is the fact that they are in only operating in one time zone. It's a problem not for today, but it's a problem for a different day. Right now, we ourselves have fewer than 10 employees, so we are not that big yet. If we ever got to hundreds of employees or if our platform ever blew up, then we would probably grow beyond them.

If SteelKiwi had a presence in the U.S., that would be a game changer. If SteelKiwi had a presence in other time zones, so that we have a 24/7 team out there, that would be a game changer. It's not really a problem for us, for what we need right now. I have no regrets with going with them. We did a lot of due diligence, we did not take this position lightly. I can see how we might someday go beyond what a company in one time zone can offer, but that's unfair to hold it against them.