Magora

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

Magora is using Bitbucket to upload our code base. We have insight into it and perform quality checks. We plan to start regression testing shortly and will launch the app to 300,000 users. The real tests will happen in a matter of weeks.

How did Magora perform from a project management standpoint?

It’s nice to work with Magora. They have great communication skills, getting in touch with us three times per week. The quality of work is good, and they deliver on time, which is an exception among the freelancers we’ve been using. It’s pleasant to work with a team like Magora’s.

What did you find most impressive about Magora?

So far, we’ve been very satisfied, especially since we had been working with Indian freelancers and companies in the past, for the most part. Our experience with those was that they always failed to deliver on time, and had bad organizational structures. Besides technical qualities, Magora has a very structured approach.

Are there any areas Magora could improve?

As of now, I don’t think so. We need to take the platform live in order to really see if all the technology is working perfectly, but the process of working with Magora has been very nice.

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

They are a serious and dedicated development team, so I would recommend Magora to companies with a bigger budget, and which also require more quality and follow-ups. Someone with a small budget should probably go with smaller, more independent freelancers.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The platform has around 1,200 users across the US and Canada, and it works exclusively as an internal system. We don't have any relevant metrics yet, but I'm sure that it will work better than it did in 2016. An issue we've had with the initial version was that sales people weren't able to log their claims, so they gave up on the process. The new version will be much smoother, everyone will be happy, and we will hopefully boost sales.

These types of projects can look great on paper, but Magora's work was actually good as well. Everything worked and it was what I was looking for, or even better. The platform is functional, fluid, and user-friendly. It was also delivered in a timely manner. I will definitely use Magora again.

How did Magora perform from a project management standpoint?

I appreciated Magora's dependability. We had weekly Skype calls, I was kept up-to-date about our status, and they met deadlines.

What distinguishes Magora from other providers?

Magora is a friendly team, and they all speak English well. They're very professional, too. The reliability was the most important thing for me.

Is there anything Magora could have improved or done differently?

This was a very complicated database, so I should have paid more attention to it in the beginning. There were a couple of things which were misunderstood, which I didn't relay very well. Magora did their best with what I offered, but I made some assumptions about what would be self-explanatory. Magora's team didn't want to deviate too much, though. They made some suggestions, but they didn't go out on their own. In the future, I plan to be more specific up front and make sure that the communication is dead-on from the start.

Do you have any recommendations for others considering working with Magora?

One issue I've had with Magora was financing. Upwork is great because it works almost like a version of PayPal, so I was comfortable in knowing that I wouldn't be giving Magora some money only to have them disappear. However, they did want a big sum up front, 80% of the total over two months. I was a little uncomfortable with that, so I talked them into doing it in thirds as we reached milestones. I was happy with our first delivery halfway through, so I released a new payment, and I've sent Magora the money for our last phase only yesterday. It was a big trust issue for someone I'd never worked with before, so I would suggest working out milestone payments with providers.

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

I was impressed with the quality of the code produced by Magora. We've done some iOS work in the past, but no one in our group considers themselves an expert on the platform. What I saw from Magora was more impressive than what we would have been able to produce in-house, within our timeframe.

We don't plan on releasing our app on the app store; it's meant to be used internally by a potential client who wanted to use our programs through an iPad.

How did Magora perform from a project management standpoint?

We didn't have a hard number in terms of budget estimates, but, based on the number of hours put in by Magora's team; I'm satisfied with the amount of work done. Our project managers were very responsive to my needs, and always asked what they could be doing better. At one point, I mentioned a new tool which we wanted to use, and Magora introduced it into the process. Towards the end of the project, we started using Trello as a task management tool, allowing us to move items around and prioritize them.

What did you find most impressive about Magora Systems?

There isn't anything in particular that stands out. I was overall satisfied with Magora's work. They delivered exactly what we wanted.

Are there any areas Magora Systems could improve?

One of our contracts with Magora was for a QA [quality assurance] engineer. As far as I can tell, Magora performed QA through the developers themselves and handed it to me for approval. I ended up doing the QA as well. We weren't delivering the app to a client, so I didn't mind that very much, but it would have been nice if I hadn't had to do it myself.

We initially had a deadline of July 1st and allowed Magora to add additional developers if they needed to speed the work along. By mid-June, I started to feel that we did need additional developers to hit the deadline, but Magora only added more resources by late-June. I did feel that we had an aggressive schedule, but it would have been possible to hit with multiple people working on it. Unfortunately, it didn't happen, and the project was completed at the beginning of August.

When we started our project, Magora proposed writing a document which would work as a functional spec for how the application was supposed to work and be used as a reference going forward, whenever new contractors would be introduced to the project. Magora started working on it early in the project, and abandoned it after a few weeks. I didn't care too much about it, and it didn't seem completely necessary, but I still hoped that it would be finished.

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

I feel that we would have gotten more work done if I'd told Magora earlier to assign more resources to the project. I advise any clients not to be afraid of asking for more out of the developer.