Gorilla Logic

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the VP, Software Engineering of Evolve Vacation Rentals

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Evolve operates in the hospitality space with a mission to make vacation rental easy for homeowners, guests and partners.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Gorilla Logic to accomplish?

• Building tools to improve our owner experience and generate value to our owners
• Building tools to improve our guest experience

SOLUTION

How did you find Gorilla Logic?

• Referral
• Other

Why did you select Gorilla Logic over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from Gorilla Logic were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Gorilla Logic provided high-caliber resources that were part of the Owner, Guest, and Foundational work stream. The teams that were part of these work streams were focused on improving Owner and Guest experiences by building out self-serve capabilities and improving our core capabilities on our distribution platform, and helping pave the path to get out of legacy systems.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The owner mobile app was a big part of the deliverable on the owner side. There were a few different parameters that we used to measure success like Adoption rate, reduction in calls to our call centers for tasks/information that were provided within the App experience to name a few and ofcourse direct feedback from our customers.

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

The Gorilla Logic account team was very responsive and always available to help and assist in any way they could. From a project management perspective, the initiatives were driven internally by Evolve, and we managed the resources and work allocation directly.

What was your primary form of communication with Gorilla Logic?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

I'm impressed with the caliber of the resources from a technical and cultural standpoint. They were great additions to the team.

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

Nothing comes to mind at this point. Gorilla Logic have been great partners and I look forward to working with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a VP at Inspirato, a luxury travel and hospitality company. I oversee all technology.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We needed to set up a team quickly and have flexibility in terms of resourcing and cost-effectiveness since we were starting a multi-year effort. We also wanted to be able to leverage the strategy of a nearshore arm.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Gorilla Logic has offered their serves in a couple of different ways, including custom software development and staff augmentation. They’ve engaged with us on our strategic plan for technology transformation. They’ve set up a team and come up to speed on our 10-year-old legacy codebase to try to modernize it. The second engagement point is an expansion of our bandwidth. They’ve plugged into various teams to augment our staff. We also have an in-house engineering team.

It’s been a straightforward onboarding process. Initially, Gorilla Logic set up a discovery team and worked to understand our people, processes, and technology for a couple of months before putting together a proposal, giving us an assessment, and starting to execute.

Our requirements for Gorilla Logic’s teammates are that they have experience and a skillset that enables them to guide us and leverage their experience, especially for our strategic initiative. I don’t want teammates that simply follow orders and execute.

We use .NET and we want to keep the stack that Gorilla Logic uses similar, especially for the modernization effort. For the staff augmentation component, the stack varies and depends on which delivery team Gorilla Logic is working in, but we mostly use .NET and JavaScript.

What is the team composition?

We work with 6–7 Gorilla Logic teammates on the custom software development team. That team is made up of 70% developers, mostly backend developers and one frontend developer. The other 30% of the team are decision-makers.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent $1 million–$9 million with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2022, and our relationship is ongoing.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

Their CEO is a personal friend of mine. When I had a need for a partner, they were one of the first people I picked up the phone to call.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I don’t have quantitative data, but Gorilla Logic’s quality is really high. They’ve set the bar for what a plumbing software engineering team can do, including the number of weekly releases and cycle time.

How did the company perform from a project management standpoint?

Gorilla Logic’s delivery manager and scrum master are amazing. Our team really appreciates the partnership we have with them; Gorilla Logic’s communication is fantastic; they keep the communication really wide open. They even loop me in quarterly for business reviews. Jira is our project management tool of choice. Gorilla Logic’s communications with leadership are all through email.

The whole Gorilla Logic team has done a great job of coming up to speed quickly and understanding our culture. They’ve really become an extension of our team. The Gorilla Logic onboarding at the start of the project could have gone better, but it worked out just fine; we were busy, so it was mostly on us for not being prepared to give them the time and energy they needed.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We see a lot of behaviors from Gorilla Logic that show they care about our account and the work they do. They approach this engagement as a strategic partnership; they don’t just see us as a client. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’d love to see Gorilla Logic take more charge of driving implementation. Generally, contractors walk a fine line because they don’t want to challenge orders, but I would love for Gorilla Logic to grow into a level of comfort that allows them to tell us when they would not implement something in the way we’ve proposed.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Make sure you walk into the partnership knowing exactly what you want. If you want a partner to simply reduce your backlog, that’s fine. If you want a partner to drive certain outcomes, make those expectations very clear. Gorilla Logic will show up the way you want them to, which is a huge value add. 

Also, you have to invest time and energy into these kinds of partnerships; they’re not turn-key engagements. It took effort on both sides to onboard Gorilla Logic at the start of our engagement. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the cloud platforms supervisor for a motor vehicle manufacturing company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We were looking to immediately hire talented individuals to supplement our large projects.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Gorilla Logic provides ongoing staff augmentation services to deliver highly-qualified professionals remotely.

What is the team composition?

We’re currently working with three cloud engineers.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership started in June 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve asked them to achieve specific goals for us regarding deployment and development and so far, they’ve consistently met and achieved them. It’s been a pleasure working with them, and we look forward to continuing this partnership further.

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

They perform well from a project management perspective. We typically communicate through WebEx, where we hold daily meetings to follow up on important aspects of the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with the quality of their resources and timely delivery.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have any constructive feedback.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to just give them the opportunity to help you.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the technical lead for a digital recruitment company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We wanted to transition to an in-house team because we had huge communication challenges with our offshore team at the time. Additionally, the quality and the cadence of their code and releases weren’t great. Moving to Gorilla, we hoped to alleviate or solve those problems.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We built a team of about 23 folks from Gorilla for software development. They supplied a full-scale software engineering team that worked in a typical Scrum, two-week sprint cycle. Every two weeks, their team supplied releases.

We split their team in two: one mobile and one web. They worked on our two websites that were built using Angular and our mobile app that was built using Xamarin—a C# technology. On the backend, their team used .NET and a SQL server database.

Gorilla redesigned our mobile app, updating the UI/UX to make it easier for users to reach their destinations. Their team also made sure the app remained compliant. Every now and then, the government changed forms that users fill out on the app. Their team adapted and released them to remain complaint multiple times.

On the website side, they rebuilt our client registration flow. The goal was to have not only a more up-to-date look and feel but also a better conversion rate.

What is the team composition?

We initially worked with 23 people from Gorilla Logic. Over time, we realized that we didn’t need quite as many members on the team and downsized to about 12. Their team included a mobile lead, a web lead, and then multiple developers. We had an architect and a DevOps engineer too.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

I was not responsible for the search. However, I believe that we found them on Clutch.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $3.5 million with Gorilla Logic.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them around September 2019, and we’re wrapping up in February 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We solved all of our previous problems with Gorilla. Gorilla allowed us to finalize our in-house team by serving as a solid bridge. 

Their 12-member team's average velocity in story points completed was 40 points of work. Their average completion rate was about 80% of work for a given sprint, which I considered good. Their engineers were hard and competent workers. By updating the app, they made it more modern. Their team made it easier and faster for the user to reach the intended place.

I appreciated that Gorilla allowed me to personally interview all of their engineers and conduct a technical evaluation of my own. This ensured that our teams could effectively communicate. I also passed about 90% of the engineers they initially submitted for interview. I only rejected 2–3 candidates whereas when I interview American engineers for the same positions, I have to interview around eight candidates.

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Azure DevOps as our project management tool. It was a well-documented and transparent process. We communicated via Slack, and their team communicated well.

Anytime an engineer had a question, they reached out to our product team. We didn’t have to funnel everything through one point of contact, meaning it was a collaborative environment. I’m opinionated about project management, and their project manager did such a great job setting up the team that we felt we could offboard her when we downsized the team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re a startup, so priorities change on a weekly basis. It can be hard for engineers to switch contexts so quickly. Gorilla was willing to adapt and change with us. Their team was able to support our frequent changes, unlike other software engineering teams that were more rigid.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s not necessarily normal for people to trust a contracted company’s interview process. We wanted to interview their engineers too. Gorilla asked if there was a way for us to trust their vetting process. I told them that we would need to know more about their process.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

This is advice that I would give anyone. Honesty and transparency are the best ways to ensure that there are neither ugly surprises nor disappointments later on.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We make SaaS products in the energy industry. I’m the VP of software engineering. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We were trying to ramp up our development capacity. We’re converting our products from an older version of delivery — flash player-based — to a web-based delivery using a browser model.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Gorilla Logic provided additional capacity to help us rewrite an application. We ported it from older technologies that were written about a decade ago and migrated it to the web. We gave them general information about our company, infrastructure, and products.

What is the team composition?

They provided agile teams that had developers, testers, and project managers. At our height, we worked with seven people, including six on an agile team and then an independent developer.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

Our CEO knew another company that had used them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent roughly $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our work together began in August 2019, and we’re still working with them. The original contract is completing at the end of this month, August 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They have certainly accomplished quite a lot of work. In general, the engineers that they provided were pretty high-quality, and they did great work. Overall, we’re not terribly satisfied with the engagement. I don’t know that it’s their fault; I think this was probably a bad model for a company of our size. We did a good job of making the best of it, and we don’t hold this against any of the individuals, as they were all high-quality resources.

They were pretty responsive to our issues, but we’re a small company. It was really hard to train six developers and then oversee them in a product that is core to our business. If you have something tangential to your business and can separate it as a distinct thing, that’s a good target for outsourcing. We don’t have anything like that, and if we do, we've already outsourced it.

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

We had some issues with the project management. Their scrum master wasn’t a very assertive or communicative individual. They didn’t speak up or push to defend the process when there were process issues. Had we continued in that model, we probably would have tried to address it by replacing the project manager.

They had something called a sprint zero in the beginning. One of their people came on site and looked at our servers. I believe they allocated about a week’s worth of time. We didn’t find that terribly effective or helpful, as it’s not possible to give somebody enough information to work on our products.

The engineers themselves were engaged in an agile team. At some points, we had our own engineers on the team with them, so they had daily standups via Slack video conferencing call or the equivalent. Slack was the primary means of engagement with them. We also used our ticketing system, Jira. I’m sure we used email as well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were able to ramp a team relatively quickly. I’m not sure it was quite as fast as advertised, which was that they had a deep bench of people in Costa Rica. We initially got the notion that there were lots of people training at Gorilla Labs, and we could get a big team relatively quickly. It turned out that almost all of the people in Costa Rica were staffed on projects, and they were trying to grow a Colombian presence. I believe that every single engineer we worked with was a new hire for Gorilla Logic in Colombia. That took longer than advertised, but it was certainly faster than we could’ve done.

They did a really good job vetting the people that they brought us. We got a team of qualified engineers relatively rapidly, without a lot of work on our part. Getting those qualified engineers quickly was probably the biggest standout in terms of the service that they provided. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think they need to vet customers a bit more. They should’ve questioned whether or not we were a good fit for them. I know they want to sell services, but the underlying mismatch was that we just weren’t a great fit for them in terms of the work that we wanted to do with them. At that point, we didn’t have enough experience with this model to know that. It would’ve been nice if somebody like them would know that; however, I do think that Gorilla Logic tends to work with much larger companies, so they might not have had that experience, either. 

Any advice for potential customers?

They should try and find something that’s pretty separable from their core business, such as an independent, stand-alone project. I think they’ll function the best if you can just hand it off to them and hold them accountable for delivery.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a product manager at Gaia, an SVOD (subscription video on demand) service featuring niche content in consciousness, yoga, and meditation verticals. I run the day-to-day and some of the future work planning of the teams that work on all of the app platforms that Gaia produces, which includes iOS, Android, Roku, and Fire TV.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

If you don’t live in one of the major metropolitan areas — and even if you do — it can be really competitive to get mobile developers to join your team. It’s hard to find developers that are talented enough to maintain your product and create it at a high-level.

We went to Gorilla Logic because we needed to pull in talented mobile developers. We also hired them for cost and reliability factors. We had previously been working with a couple of different groups to produce the apps, and we wanted to consolidate that under one organization. We were looking to add people to our team to support our product for the foreseeable future.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We brought Gorilla Logic on to be a long-term development partner. We turned over a set of existing products to them and have worked with them to expand feature-by-feature. We’ve also allowed them to refactor and structure code where necessary. They continue to provide app development services for one core product that we’ve distributed across different platforms. 

We built a team of thirteen with them, and we treat them like full-time employees. They write app code in their native languages.

What is the team composition?

Our team of thirteen Gorilla Logic team members includes three iOS developers, two Android developers, one Roku developer, one smart TV developer, three QA people, and a scrum master.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

The app developers we’d been working with were in Belarus, New York, and Nigeria. Maintaining these relationships came with significant logistical challenges, so we wanted to consolidate. I did a bunch of research and read a lot of review sites. We were hoping to find somebody locally based; nearshore is a big thing compared to a more generic offshore approach, and that was a criterion of ours.

We also had requirements around company capsize and employee hire base. We know there are a lot of really large development organizations out there, and we're not the largest client in the world, so we didn’t want to go with somebody that was so big that it didn't matter if they kept or lost us. 

We needed mobile specialty above anything. We had a cost range, but finding the right relationship was really important for us. I ended up reaching out to 5–6 different organizations. One of the early things that made Gorilla stand out was the tone that they take and the way that they approach wanting to be a partner as opposed to just completing a project and moving on. Within five minutes of us submitting a contact form, their office manager called and was very friendly and excited. A lot of the other companies we talked to weren’t as enthusiastic, so we appreciated the personality and enthusiasm that Gorilla brought to the early selection process.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent somewhere in the range of $120,000–$150,000 per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our work together began in November 2018. We’re still working with them and looking to expand our business.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Over the time that we’ve worked with them, we’ve maintained a 4.9-star rating in the App Store. We’ve earned, not recruited, a somewhat permanent feature slot in the App Store’s Wellness category. Over the last two years, we’ve also grown our iOS monthly member base from around 130,000 to 200,000.

We’ve been steadily growing a lot. I can also say that we’ve maintained a crash-free rate above 98.5%. 

How did Gorilla Logic perform from they were a project management standpoint?

They’ve been pretty great. I’m super involved; we operate as if they were on-site, full-time engineers, scrum masters, and QA. We all participate in daily standups and sprint rituals. I basically just Slack them instead of walking over to their desks. 

We have a super tight integration. From a project management standpoint, it’s almost more on me. We use a Jira board, which I manage. We do have a scrum master from their end who does a lot to keep the two-week sprint cycles moving efficiently and help us to improve velocity and reliability. One of their scrum masters left, and both of the people we’ve worked with have been pretty great. Other than that, we’ve had very little turnover on their team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their personality and enthusiasm distinguish them from other providers. Based on the quality of developers they’ve brought to us, they are big fish in a small pond in Costa Rica. They are the place that all of the developers and talent in Costa Rica want to be and work, so they have a really large talent pool to draw from. They’re getting the cream of the crop in that location.

Additionally, their attitude of partnership as opposed to project is really what we were looking for as a smaller business with a long-term product. A lot of companies don’t see a project as much more than an investment in time to get a paycheck and potentially a good resume piece, so the client relationship doesn’t matter much to them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think it’s really good for remote teams to spend some time together on an annual basis. Our group at Gaia that works directly with Gorilla has been down to Costa Rica once or twice, although COVID-19 has changed things. 

Gorilla also used to have a program where they’d send their developers up to experience our office and environment once a year, and they stopped doing that prior to COVID. As a company that’s investing in being a partner, it’s nice to put a little bit of extra attention in so that you can really feel like a tight-knit team. However, other than that, we’ve really gotten what we were looking to out of this relationship. 

Any advice for potential customers?

Approach them as if you’re bringing on a partner and looking to build an integrated team that you work with day-to-day. If you’re looking for some waterfall development shop that you can hand over a huge set of requirements to, I’m not even sure they’re interested in that as a client. Go into it understanding that you want a partnership and daily involvement. Your work will be better for having a team that functions that way.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of quality engineering for Mersive Technologies, Inc. We build hardware and software for collaboration for meetings. Most of our customers are larger corporations or university classrooms. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We had a hard time staffing QA engineers, so we needed some staff augmentation. We also needed a development team. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The QA team provides staff augmentation, specifically QA engineers, for all of our different Scrum teams. They do regression testing, testing stories for verification, and more. They use Java, Python, and C++.
The development team builds automation frameworks, and writes code to automate test cases. They also write production codes, and have developed some components in the area of analytics to go into our product.

What is the team composition?

There are five people on my QA team that I regularly interact with. On the development team, there are 3-4 people. 

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

One of our executives recommended them, as he had worked with them in the past. We liked the individuals we interviewed, and entered into a short contract to test their work. We were happy with what we saw, and extended the contract.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in August 2019, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They are integrated into our teams, so it’s hard to separate their metrics. Both teams, automation engineers and manual testers, are top-notch. Everyone has been extremely happy with what they’ve produced.

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

The QA testers operate within our Scrum teams, so they don’t do the project management. The development team has their own Scrum Master, and they’ve done well with managing their projects. We use Jira and Confluence for project management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are able to integrate very well with our teams and work the same hours because they’re in the same time zone. That is the biggest advantage I have with them in contrast to other offshore vendors I’ve worked with. I consider them to be part of our team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It isn’t their fault, but our biggest issue is getting equipment to them due to shipping restrictions. Under normal circumstances, they make frequent trips here, but COVID has put a damper on that.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Fully integrate them into your development process.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of engineering for Weedmaps. We are a listing service for online advertising marijuana brands and dispensaries, as well as a wholesale and delivery services branch of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We have worked with them to address several tech projects that we didn’t have the internal resources to handle.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The first project that we contracted the Gorilla Logic team to handle was a Ruby on Rails backend and frontend of a point of sale system that had been left by the wayside but still had a lot of customers utilizing that needed to be updated.

The system itself was used by around 5,000 dispensaries around the country for tracking sales, employees, and inventory, but the versions of Ruby and Rails it was using were about three full updates behind. They were able to upgrade the entire system without any down time in the overall function of the application.

The process was a lot more complicated than it seemed because of the amount of changes involved, as well as the need to shift to a completely new ORM that was active record.

What was the team composition?

There were three Ruby engineers, a QA guy who was absolutely phenomenal, and a TPM, manager, and an account manager. In total, our meetings would be the first five and then I communicated with the account manager a good amount outside of those.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

We went to a bunch of different rails shops and they were all quoting us fairly expensive rates for the work. I knew of Gorilla Logic from a previous relationship, so I decided to reach out to them and they came back to us at about half of what the competition was asking, so we moved forward with them from there.

What is the status of this engagement?

We first started working with them in December 2019, and once that was done we were able to bring in a few of their developers to work with us full-time on a variety of projects, and those are still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I don’t have any specific metrics produced as a result of the work that they did, but our main metric of success for them is that they function at the same velocity as our in-house engineers. We have a pretty high standard, so the fact that we’ve never had to change out any of the developers provided by Gorilla Logic is really impressive.

Not only is the quality of their individual work incredibly high, but they integrate into our team very smoothly and work within our format so that we can track bugs and downtime with all of our engineers in the same way. It really has been an absolutely seamless process from end-to-end.

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project manager for us as really good and played a key role in maintaining all of our internal processes. We just used JIRA to communicate with each engineer and would work with his team to give us accurate estimates of how long each element that they were developing would take.

On top of all of that, the project manager was actually able to work directly with me to determine each module that needed to be upgraded and actually write the specific requirements so that we could define when we were done and all of the steps necessary to get there along the way. I was able to completely rely on them to make sure that we were always on track toward our goals.

What did you find most impressive about them?

From my experience with other outsourced companies, the developers and other team members from Gorilla Logic have been more dependable and more a part of our team than any I have had experience with before. Not only are they really solid engineers, but they make an effort to fit in and become part of your team as much as the in-house developers, which makes them incredibly easy to work with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only hiccup we’ve really had with them was that in our first project, it took us a longer time than we were expecting to get Ruby developers because of the leave notice requirement that Colombia has.

 It took us 4-5 weeks to get the team fully staffed, which wasn’t even that long, but that was the one thing that I wish could have been a little different. Otherwise, everything has been definitely worthwhile throughout the whole partnership.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Just make them regular parts of the team rather than treating them as a contractor. If you don’t have your own in-house team, just make sure that you have a solid project manager who knows what you want and can work closely with them to make sure they can hit the ground running.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of technology for AST Private Company Solutions. We have a product called Astrella in the marketplace. It’s a SaaS platform for private companies to manage their ownership such as shares, and options.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We had to build the product quickly. We wanted to outsource for the ability to ramp up quickly.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Gorilla used a Microsoft stack to build our platform, which is hosted in Microsoft Azure and deployed by a SQL server. Their team first developed the web app. Then, they built our mobile app, which talks to the web app. To make the functionalities work, their team integrated the platforms with other vendors and partners. A specific team focuses on those integrations because they’re so important.  

We made the technology and platform choices. But there were tools in support of those platforms that Gorilla recommended.

At this point, Gorilla makes up almost the entirety of our development team and manages our code. Their team uses Azure DevOps and the operational tools that come with it.

What is the team composition?

We started this project with 5 people from Gorilla and now we’re up to 21. Their team includes a product owner and a scrum master. We split the core team in two because it got too big. We recently added an integration team because our product relies on other vendors and partners.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

I found them by accident. I was told that there was a quality development operation in Costa Rica. I googled Costa Rica offshore development and Gorilla Logic came up. They offered us not only a quick ramp-up but also a process-oriented culture, which we needed. Their team had expertise in the Agile product development methodology. Only later did I find out that they weren't the agency I was initially recommended. 

What is the status of this engagement?

Our first sprint was in June 2019 and our partnership’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Most importantly, the products are of high quality. There are areas where it wasn’t as built out as I had hoped. And there are other areas where it was built our more completely than I hoped. I feel good about the products that we put out there.

Our parent company was absolutely stunned by the speed at which we delivered this product. That’s the best metric. Folks that know development understand and appreciate how much we’ve done in a short period of time. People from our parent company want Gorilla to build a mobile app, but we’re holding them off. I would be surprised if they didn’t get more work from them.

Whereas I’m a ready, fire, aim person, their team often suggests that we step back to make sure a task's completed correctly. I appreciate their ability to be aggressive when necessary but also realistic. Their team keeps an eye on quality.

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

We have efficient ceremonies that are daily standups, sprint groomings, and retrospectives. Our scrum master runs those ceremonies well and keeps an eye on the clock. We also have ad hoc meetings.

We targeted an MVP in nine months, which we didn’t hit. But we knew that was an aggressive timeline. Our internal processes delayed us in the beginning too. Their team would rather slow down a smidge to get the quality right than blast through a project.

From a process perspective, we were able to rely on them heavily. They used a process that led us to complete the project quickly as well as left us with the latitude to move in a slightly different direction if needed.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Gorilla takes a holistic view of our relationship. They also brought in experts in certain areas who allowed our team to gain knowledge. We didn’t pay for that. Their team wants us to succeed.

They feel like a part of our company. We had a release event in California, and they sent two of their team members to attend on their nickel. They were excited and we were thrilled.

When there are problems, their team is organized. They communicate the issue to me and it's solved quickly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Honestly, nothing jumps to mind.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a director at an HR software company that automates background investigations. For example, we fulfill the needs of companies seeking to hire someone but want to do a criminal background check or a drug screening.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Gorilla Logic?

We engaged Gorilla Logic to augment our staff and to help build out several teams as we’re in the process of developing a new software platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Essentially, Gorilla Logic’s helping us build the new core order entry and processing platform. Their team’s developing a backend system on Apache Kafka and the platform’s running on Google Cloud Platform. There are four different mobile-ready web components. They’re leveraging a modern tech stack that includes the workflow automation framework called Camunda and GraphQL.

What is the team composition?

We have two full teams working on the new platform. Those teams include 7–8 individuals including a tech lead, several senior software engineers, a couple of mid-level engineers, and QA engineers. Both teams share a scrum master.

How did you come to work with Gorilla Logic?

We looked at about four other nearshore providers. We knew that Gorilla Logic was more of a premier provider. Ultimately, we weren’t as satisfied with the other folks that we talked to based on the quality of the candidates as well as the companies’ overall reputations. We chose to spend a little more money to get higher quality than to seek deeper cost savings with a second or third-tier provider.

How much have you invested with them?

All in, we spend around $375,000 a month. We have several other Gorilla Logic teams that support our legacy platform.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Gorilla Logic in September 2018 and the work’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

In terms of their impact on the business, we engaged with them to add a variable staffing model to allow us to accelerate the build-out of the new platform. By having two-plus teams from Gorilla Logic, which is essentially half the size of the overall team, we’ve been able to accelerate our timelines in terms of getting our new platform to production. That’s significant. I have a lot of respect for our teams at Gorilla Logic. They’re very sharp individuals. The company can certainly find strong, top talent.

How did Gorilla Logic perform from a project management standpoint?

A handful of staff is embedded in employee-based teams and I’m in touch with them all of the time. We’re using the Atlassian stack, so Confluence and JIRA primarily. We also use a tool called Miro— an online, agile-based tool that allows users to do story mapping, card slicing, and decomposition. That has been a useful platform that they’ve presented to us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Gorilla Logic has a different level of talent. Their team works extremely hard. They have a fantastic corporate culture. I’ve made several trips to San Jose to visit with Gorilla Logic and their facilities are top-notch, which shows that they take care of their employees and invest in them. That was important to us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, it really comes down to communication and I don’t feel like there’s a gap.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If companies don’t communicate early and often, they won’t get the same success we’ve had. Businesses tend to engage with a partner like Gorilla Logic and expect them to be productive right out of the gate. Companies have to invest time upfront to ramp up the team and help them understand the business as well as the platform. What you put into a partnership's what you're going to get out of it.