Labcodes Software Studio

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a Direct-to-Consumer fresh food company based in Brooklyn, NY. We have 11 employees. I'm the Director of Technology there.

For what projects/services did your company hire Labcodes Software Studio?

We hired LabCodes to take over maintenance and development of our core e-commerce platform, which was written by another software dev agency. Its a Django application running on Heroku, with a react frontend; LabCodes had to quickly come in, learn the codebase and system, and being shipping features.

What were your goals for this project?

Our e-commerce system is the heart of our business; the first goal for LabCodes was to learn the system quickly to make sure that we could continue to operate the system smoothly.

The second goal was to begin the process of transforming our platform into a much more flexible system. The application was extremely tightly coupled to our existing business model. The primary goal of ongoing development is to give our merchandizers the flexibility to offer our products in new formats.

How did you select this vendor?

LabCodes was recommended to us by our outgoing software development house. Their impressive history of talks at the top Python conferences in the world made it an easy decision to go with them.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Our LabCodes team serves as the company's core engineering team. They provide:

• A 7-day-a-week support rotation to ensure site stability and to investigate errors.
• Project scoping and specification: they propose implementation strategies for projects
• Python and React development
• Platform management: Improving our application platform via tools like auto-scaling, CI/CD - QA testing

What was the team composition?

We've had between 2 and 4 developers on the team, as well as a project manager and a customer relationship manager.

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

With LabCodes behind the wheel of our software platform, we increased our customer base by about 50%, launched 2 totally new product categories and are well on our way to building a much more flexible e-commerce platform that will only increase our release velocity going forward. In terms of site reliability and support quality, our MTTR has fallen from days to hours.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We organize our work through JIRA, daily standup meetings, and weekly specification review meetings. Our project manager is fantastic, but what's most impressive is how much we trust every member of our team to tightly define projects, commit to deadlines, and clearly communicate about open questions and progress. Project management is decentralized and agile.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

First, every engineer on our team at LabCodes is a tremendous Python developer. I trust that every feature implementation will be delivered with impeccable code quality and a highly maintainable design. But more importantly, every engineer has taken the time to deeply understand our business and is customer-focused.

Everyone advocates for building features in a way that is best for our customers, and is utterly committed to fixing problems and pinpoints for our customers. Its almost unbelievable that we've found this level of empathy and commitment to our customer in a consulting shop.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None come to mind.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a startup helping women who suffer from domestic violence, with an app that connects them with volunteers looking to help.

What challenge were you trying to address with Labcodes?

We’ve worked with Labcodes to develop an app similar to our main one. It’s aimed at helping female employees from large companies report any kind of violence.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We worked with Labcodes to develop the app. My team took care of the layout and design, then we passed those to Labcodes, who developed the entire platform.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Renato (Co-Founder and Software Engineer, Labcodes) and Thulio (Frontend Engineer, Labcodes). I think that someone else from their team helped at the end of the process.

How did you come to work with Labcodes?

We have a large IT ecosystem in Recife, Brazil, and the city is small, so everybody knows everybody. One of their designers knew one of our members, and we started a conversation about what we wanted from our app, discovering they were a good fit for us.

How much have you invested with them?

The total was almost $5,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them between March–June 2019.

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

Labcodes was prepared to solve our problem and suggest good, modern technologies. They took our security and UX into consideration at all times, and they had a good approach. In terms of qualitative metrics, everything ran well and simply. We both have professional teams, and I believe we created a good partnership between our two companies.

This collaboration was our first time working with an external team and it was a really good experience; I’d repeat it if I had to. People have asked me for referrals, and I haven’t had a problem pointing them to Recife.

How did Labcodes perform from a project management standpoint?

We use platforms like Slack inside our company, so the process with Recife was easy. We had a meeting every Thursday morning to talk about the project, what everyone had done, and what the next steps would be. We used WhatsApp at times, as well as Asana.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We needed a platform that would be 100% secure, and they constantly thought about how to make every piece of data inside of it secured for us and our users. They did research on the security of different platforms, showing us good ways to do things.

Are there any areas they could improve?

This was our first time working with an outside company, and we liked the experience and learned a lot from it. They have more experience than us, so we’ve learned how to work in sprints and organize a project. I don’t have anything negative to say.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

No.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the co-founder and CTO of a cash flow performance platform. We help mid- and large-sized companies with various aspects of cash flow management.

What challenge were you trying to address with Labcodes Software Studio?

We were still a small company at that time, so we wanted to augment our software engineering team.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They help us with various development projects, using mostly Python Django on the backend and React–on the frontend. We give them a general direction, and then they work independently, which allows us to accelerate the development process.

What is the team composition?

At first, we had two developers, but then we scaled down to one.

How did you come to work with Labcodes Software Studio?

They were recommended to us by someone we trust.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in June 2018.

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

We're able to complete projects much faster because of their collaboration.

How did Labcodes Software Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Slack and Google Hangouts for communication, and we also use Write for project management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were very thoughtful, which is rare for contractors. They don't just execute what we tell them, but they question it and think critically. They sometimes pushed back and came up with solutions that were better than what we had originally thought.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can't think of anything.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the technology director for Work & Co., a digital products company.

For what projects/services did your company hire Labcodes Software Studio?

We needed developers who could code in Python and create RESTful APIs and a MongoDB database.

What were your goals for this project?

We were creating a digital platform for Givewith, a financial services startup supporting nonprofit funding.

How did you select this vendor?

I personally knew one of the founders of LabCodes Software Studio and was familiar with the quality of their work.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They developed two RESTful APIs in Python and created a recommendation engine embedded in one of the APIs and using MongoDB Atlas. They also deployed services to AWS cloud storage.

What was the team composition?

They provided two Python developers, who worked as part of our team.

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

They delivered high-quality Python code. They quickly grasped our project needs and their remote interaction with our internal team members was seamless.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We handled project management internally.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They integrated with our team easily despite the time zone difference, and they were punctual and precise.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No, we’re completely satisfied.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We're a startup; I'm the founder.

For what projects/services did your company hire Labcodes Software Studio, and what were your goals?

We hired labcodes to fix bugs, add features, and move us from one JS platform to another.

How did you select Labcodes Software Studio and what were the deciding factors?

I've worked with Labcodes before on a previous project. I was impressed by their communication and wide technical skill.

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

After a few initial conversations, Labcodes worked autonomously with occasional checkins. It was about a 4 month project overall.

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

Two developers.

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

The project was a success. We fixed the bugs and completed a big migration to Next.js.

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

Great communication all around. Responsive in less than a day, often much faster.

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

They provided great communication and had a variety of skills.

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

Great overall.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the co-founder of a SaaS platform.

For what projects/services did your company hire Labcodes Software Studio?

We needed an external vendor to supplement our existing software team.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to deploy software in an agile environment.

How did you select this vendor?

The had previously worked with an individual on our engineering team.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They’ve worked on APIs, services, and frontend development.

What was the team composition?

We work with two core resources.

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

They do good work and feel like part of our team.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

They work in agile and use Scrum methodology.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their competence level is high for their core team.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Their hours and holidays do not always align with our own. They’ve also experienced turnover; training takes time away from development.