Jellyfish.tech

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am one of two co-founders of Level35 and the designer and developer of OneViewPPM. Level35 is the company behind the OneViewPPM Cloud Application. We manage all the design, development and support. We are also professional project, program and portfolio managers providing consulting services.

For what projects/services did your company hire Jellyfish?

We hired Jellyfish to assist in the development effort of OneViewPPM. The OneViewPPM application has grown too large and complex for a single developer. With growing demands for functionality and reliability, Level35 needed a solid, reliable, and knowledgeable development partner.

What were your goals for this project?

OneViewPPM is an Enterprise Project and Portfolio Management platform that uses the latest technology and standards to facilitate data entry and production of standardized project reporting. Jellyfish supplies additional programming capacity, experience and expert advice. The platform is being continually developed and matured.

How did you select this vendor?

We found them through Upwork. We had been giving out small discrete contracts for some time to deal with various parts of the system. After 12 months of small contracts, we found reliability, expertise, integrity, and professionalism in a Jellyfish employee. We then began using the Jellyfish team on a full-time, multiple resource basis.

Describe the project in detail.

Over the years managers of most enterprises have worked with a host of inefficient, cumbersome, costly, and restrictive PPM tools. When combined with poor practice and a lack of governance, many organizations find themselves facing repeated project failures, poor results, and cost/time overruns. Level35 aims to provide a solution for these problems by providing experienced Program and Project Managers.

We still have hundreds of enhancement ideas for OneViewPPM. OneViewPPM helps to drive projects and programs, reduce PM/PMO administration and enhance the visibility of change activities across the enterprise. The focus on data re-use and quality assists with the development of best practice organizational change, efficient project reporting, and governance. We helped to design OneViewPPM to be a product the user can quickly trial with minimal configuration, risk, and cost. OneView PPM saves the project community time, reduces administration effort and allows them to manage, not react.

What was the team composition?

The project team from Jellyfish consists of three full-time developers, a part-time tester and quality assurance resource, a technical writer and a part-time project manager that is our single point of contact for questions, work allocation and general coordination of the Jellyfish team.

What outcomes or results can you share that demonstrate progress and/or success?

The Jellyfish team was a great find, they have been brilliant in turning our concepts into reality. We visually design the concepts in wireframes and the team is always able to turn that into code and deliver. This has helped to broaden our thinking and designs to areas we didn’t think possible. We consider Jellyfish to be part of our virtual team, and enjoy working with the Jellyfish assigned PM who is diligent and pragmatic. We look forward to a long and productive relationship with them.

Some of the 'not so sexy work' has been a major refactoring of code and system architecture that allows OneViewPPM to scale from 100s of projects and users to 1000s. This has been successfully undertaken and not impacted existing system users in part due to Jellyfish's work.

How effective was the project management?

The project management has been exceptional. It's diligent and responsive. They're great with follow up and management of activities. They are also not scared of sharing ideas or challenging my ideas and concepts on occasion, which is something I appreciate because it gives me cause to rethink my strategy and generally results in better outcomes.

The management is also oriented towards reducing the language barrier, and this works extremely well. On the flip side, I need to be clear and concise with objectives and work detail to reduce the risks of misunderstandings. This, in turn, has helped me to work through problems and make better system improvements as I work through how I clearly articulate particular complex problems.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Integrity is a major thing for us, leading up to finding Jellyfish we found that integrity in our outsourced contracts was a real problem. We don't have any of those problems with Jellyfish, they are upfront and honest with us about what hours are worked, when resources are on leave, and so forth. We have a respectful and professional relationship with them. In our 18 month relationship, we've never had to difficult conversations about their performance. If I think an area can be improved, I mention it to the manager and improvements happen. The relationship is working very well and we intend to continue using Jellyfish for years to come.

What tips or recommendations do you have?

We are very happy with the Jellyfish relationship overall, being able to articulate ideas and concepts over the internet can be challenging. I recommend that people spend the extra time to make visual representations with markup, and write use cases to give the developers the best information possible. Make use of video capture software to show where bugs exist and how to recreate them. Bugs are often the result of several steps or different work practices and providing a direct view or instruction will speed up the resolution turnaround time. A major component of our success has been having a senior programmer and project manager in-house. Development branch merging, final testing, overall application architecture, UAT,  and production releases happen on the Level35 side. This keeps accountability, quality, and control as our responsibility.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a PPC firm. I do SEO [search engine optimization], SEM [search engine marketing], website design, and analytics. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Jellyfish?

We were making a custom web-based application. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We let them know what we needed and provided them with wireframes, details, and a storyboard for the tool. They reviewed the wireframe and details and gave us feedback. Once everything was decided, they started working on the tool. The communication has been awesome. They’re responsive and really seem to know what they’re doing.

I can’t discuss the specific features of the tool. It’s custom-built from scratch, and it’s not on any platform, but I’m not sure what code Jellyfish used. I’ve been dealing Roman [CTO, Jellyfish], and he’s pretty quick and responsive. I don’t know how many resources they’ve assigned to this project.

How did you come to work with Jellyfish?

We found them on Upwork, where they had a lot of good reviews. I usually just try an agency, and if they don’t work out, I look for someone else. I didn’t look at many other companies. I guess I was just lucky to find Jellyfish first.

How much have you invested with Jellyfish?

We’ve invested over $10,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in November of 2016, and the work is ongoing. I don’t think it’s going to stop since we build a lot of tools. 

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

Jellyfish is still working on a bunch of stuff, so the work is not completed yet. There’s no client who reviews the work done by Jellyfish; we make web-based applications that add value to different types of service providers, products, and platforms. The solution that they developed is based on our specs, so it is very reliable. They deliver things on time and within budget.

How did Jellyfish perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re pretty organized. We put a lot of tasks together for them, and they organize those tasks and give us a timeline estimating how long each will take. If the timeline is not met, they always let us know. Everything is transparent, so the collaboration is pretty good. We communicate mainly by Skype and email, and sometimes we use Trello.

What did you find most impressive about Jellyfish?

They’re honest and straightforward, and they usually hit the timeline. I just like their honesty; if something is not going to work out or they have a better solution, they always let us know ahead of time.

Are there any areas Jellyfish could improve?

I can’t think of anything. 

 Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior business analyst in a company that develops equipment for the telecom industry. I’m like an internal consultant for projects.

What challenge were you trying to address with Jellyfish?

We had issues with our old system, so we wanted help in building a web application that would help us to make a better configuration system for our products. We didn’t have the time or the resources to do it internally.

What was the scope of their involvement?

It’s a Django web server app that provides the possibility to add and configure reference data for mobile networks. It’s like configuring your router at home, but for a system. They provided all the help. We used a Scrum board for the work. For the payment, we had another system. For the code, we had GitHub. They helped me set this all up because I’m new to this. I was working only with one person.

How did you come to work with Jellyfish?

I was looking for an offshore company, but I had no previous experience in offshore development. I found them on Upwork. I searched for full-stack web developers who had competence with Python.

How much have you invested with Jellyfish?

It’s been less than $1,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

It was September or October 2016 that we started working with them. They completed everything a month ago.

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

I can give you my own feedback, and it’s that they did a good job. The app is good and runs smoothly. It was not a complicated web GUI, but the logic behind it was very complex. I appreciated the effort that they gave in that sense. If we were to do the app on our own, it would be a lot of dollars. It was a lot cheaper with Jellyfish than doing it here.

How did Jellyfish perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed very well. We used a Scrum board; for me, that was new in the beginning, but they taught me. I paid along as I got functionality. We had weekly drops of software, and then I tested and paid. It was a good setup. They were good with communication. We mostly had Skype chats for conversations. They were good in delivering things on time and within the budget, so there’s nothing to complain about.

What did you find most impressive about Jellyfish?

I appreciated the fact that they conveyed constructive criticisms and ideas on how to solve problems in another way than I anticipated.

Are there any areas Jellyfish could improve?

No. I had a really small project. It could be better with the timeline, but I didn’t pay so much.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We do IT development for mobile and web applications, and I’m the co-founder of the company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Jellyfish?

We had a couple projects on which we needed help. We didn’t have enough staff back then, and the guys from Jellyfish helped us with the projects.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They worked on two projects. They worked with PHP and Angular, and some server-related tasks for Amazon Web Service. They created web applications. We worked with two guys from Jellyfish. At times, they were working with our existing development team, and other times they were on their own on the project.

On one of the websites, they worked directly with my client. I wasn’t involved in that project very much. The other one is a social media app for sports. It has an awesome feature that records the last seven seconds of an action, something that happens on the field. It was pretty complex, and they managed to help with the backend part.

How did you come to work with Jellyfish?

My partner found them, but I don’t know how. I think it was online. In the past few years, we’ve looked at a lot of outsourcing companies, and Jellyfish seemed quite all right. They were very reliable and on-the-spot. The price is not the lowest, but it’s a very good price.

How much have you invested with Jellyfish?

We’ve invested $50,000-100,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We first started working with them in 2013, but I don’t remember the month. We still have them in our database for future projects, but we don’t need their help at the moment. The most recent project was completed in September or October of last year (2016).

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

I don’t have any data, as the clients are startups and they’re still looking for funding to properly launch their projects. The feedback was very good. The communication was good. The work they did was as expected, so everything was nice and sweet. There were times when some bugs were missed, but most of the time it was pretty good. We’re all human, so it’s okay. I’m satisfied with what they offered when we worked together.

How did Jellyfish perform from a project management standpoint?

That’s one of the key features they have. Their lead is very easy to contact, and he’s always available when you have a problem. The work was delivered on time and within budget most of the time. We used Skype to communicate previously, and we recently started using Slack. For project management, we mostly use Asana and JIRA.

What did you find most impressive about Jellyfish?

I think it’s the communication and the technical background.

Are there any areas Jellyfish could improve?

Maybe some improvement around testing. They’re doing quite a good job, but there are some glitches here and there. There’s always room for improvement.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Technology Advisor supporting a nonprofit build a robust community and networking platform.

For what projects/services did your company hire Jellyfish.tech, and what were your goals?

Jellyfish was hired to support our Django based platform due to their extensive expertise in Python apps.

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

They came highly recommended as a team that can build and scale Python based apps in a timely and reliable manner.

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

The team provided support with wireframing, UI/UX design, fixed bugs inherited from another team, completely refactored the backend to improve scalability and performance, optimized our servers for speed, and built a mobile responsive version of the web app.

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

We had a Program Manager, Business Manager to support with new and updated contracts, and UI/UX specialist are the 3 people we speak most with in their team.

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

Traffic increased steadily since we launched a version of the platform with the team's many design updates and improvements.

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

The team uses Slack and Trello to streamline tasks and all communications. They are highly responsiveness and make themselves available at all hours especially in urgent situations such as downtime issues or major bugs affecting accessibility.

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

They truly integrate themselves so that they are genuine partners. It's as if we are all working on the very same team. They are highly committed and extremely ambitious in constantly improving their skills.

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

When we provided our feedback for improvement, they implemented each of these steps, proving their high commitment to having a satisfactory relationship with all clients.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Co-Founder & CTO

For what projects/services did your company hire Jellyfish.tech?

We wanted an intuitive and easy to use PWA for inspections that could connect to a cloud-database for storage. In addition we wanted a dashboard app where the client could get an overview of all inspection data.

What were your goals for this project?

An intuitive UX/UI for the end-user as well as a maintainable backend and code base in general.

How did you select this vendor?

We vetted 35 candidates from all over the world. We had a broad spectre of criteria of which Jellyfish met the majority.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Jellyfish have built our entire system, which consists of: * A mobile PWA to retrieve inspections and file reports using JSON Schema under the hood * A cloud-based SQL database server * An Angular dashboard app to administer thousands of clients, objects, inspections, and reports

What was the team composition?

We were given a contact person which all communications went through. This person would then take all matters to their respective experts on each field/technology.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Every potential client we have shown this software to so far has been impressed. We are in negotiations with one of them at this moment.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We have used a contract system for the communications, Gitlab/Git for version control, Google Apps for project management.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They have been invaluable to us as they have: * suggested maintainable technologies that have saved us considerable investments * spoken out when I have been wrong * made thoughtful considerations throughout the project development phase * generally cared deeply for our project

Are there any areas for improvement?

If they improve more, they could be considered super-human. We are grateful to have found this wonderful group of people, and we continue to use them as we grow our business.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a CEO and founder of a reservations services company

For what projects/services did your company hire Jellyfish.tech, and what were your goals?

We wanted to develop an mvp for our reservations mobile app

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

We search online, shortlisted several companies and after face-to-face communication decided to choose Jellyfish.tech, as they seemed interested in the project, provided their feedback that seemed in line with our expectations

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

We provided the team with technical exercise and design , discussed used technologies

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

A project manager, front and backend developers, QA.

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

We got to test our mvp app on our test audience , get valuable feedback to define further development

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

The project manager was responsive, due to distance we were communicating online, but he was very helpful and always there in case of questions or issues, .

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

They walked us through the process of app creation and were helpful in defining core features for the MVP

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

Defining roadmap together to make sure everyone understood correctly the end result

Please describe your company and your position there.

CEO of Webdevcom

For what projects/services did your company hire Jellyfish.tech, and what were your goals?

Jellyfish was hired for backend python development

How did you select Jellyfish.tech and what were the deciding factors?

Cost and quality of professionals were deciding factors.

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

Developer from Jellyfish was working with our team of developers on various tasks in an ongoing project.

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

One person, middle python developer.

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

Jellyfish's developer showed knowledge and expertise in python and helped us with the development of the new modules and a lot of refactoring of the legacy code.

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

Trello, Slack.

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

They have knowledgeable staff.

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

All worked out.