Monosoft

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I was brought onto a new team to improve the automated testing of an internal MacOS tool used company-wide by 10's of 1000's of users. There was an existing test suite but it was performing very poorly. I was also tasked with developing an automated test suite for the iOS version of this tool, which had zero automated testing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Engenious?

We hired Engenious to help us re-architect our existing automated testing and to leverage as much as possible the same tools and approaches for both MacOS and iOS validation.

SOLUTION

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

We couldn't find the adequate level of expertise amongst our existing vendors to help me pull of the work of re-architecting a new testing framework and suites of tests while maintaining the existing suites, which provided some benefit in spite of being extremely slow and brittle. I managed to find someone in another part of our organization in Europe who had worked with Engenious in the past and I reached out to Engenious directly.

They gave use a presentation of the solutions they had already put in place at other companies and we were very impressed. They had already implemented what I knew I would have to implement myself and they had some custom tooling to help with parallelizing MacOS test execution. Seeing the architecture of their existing solutions and tools was enough to convince us to give them a try.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

We started a brand-new testing framework engineered using all the best practices of the Swift language and a very well-thought out framework and code organization structure and approach. The new framework's performance was lighting fast compared to the old testing framework (UI Tests are not performant by nature, but badly written tests can be horrifically slow) We set some execution time expectations and our Engenious architect was able to turn them into reality. Using the framework and screen model they developed, it was easy to bring on other resources to help churn out the tests, which Engenious also helped us with.

We accomplished an amazing amount of work with a very small team of contractors provided by Engenious. It would have taken me so much longer without their help and I didn't have the proven experience of their approach that they brought to the table. Eventually we had enough tests to confidently turn off the old automation. We got the results in a fraction of the time and the tests have been much more stable. As our needs evolved, they provided more improved solutions. Since our tests focus on UI behavior we looked into stubbing the network responses to improve test stability and performance. Our Engenious architect made this happen.

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

We started with one architect and eventually grew the team to 3 additional test engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our tests are much more robust, stable, and reliable, not to mention vastly outperform the existing tests we had in place.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Engenious delivered on all our expectations - some of our asks were fluid and changed over time but they came thru for us in a reasonable amount of time in spite of this. The team was onsite and very responsive to our requests and feedback and very committed to delivering on our expectations.

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

We have been unable to find talent with the same engineering skill level that they have brought to us. I know there are strong test engineers out there but they are very hard to find. Engenious's solutions and engineers are top-notch.

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

We have been very happy with their results.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Director of Operations of Flight Guru - online flight search engine that lets visitors search, browse and book cheap business and first class airfare instantly.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Engenious?

We have an engineering team in-house but since our company was quickly growing we needed much bigger engineering power. We needed a vendor who could handle out non-trivial ticket-search tasks. Engenious did the great job.

SOLUTION

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

We were looking for a vendor who can build the big chunk of complicated engineering work without a day to day management from our side. Engenious is a company with a great managed delivery services so we have chosen them.

Describe the project in detail and walk through their service package.

Engenious build us our customized dedicated team from scratch. Our CTO personally interviewed every member of the team and made sure all of them are experts. We decided to move on with a JS stack. Project Manager was amazing. He did a very detailed sprint plannings and presented me a personal demo regularly.

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

Project manager was the main point of contact. However, the team contained:

• 4 back-end specialists
• 2 front-end specialists
• iOS & Android Developers (they developed us the app for internal use)
• designer
• 2 QAs

QAs were very proficient as well and found a lot of good edge-cases.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

https://flightguru.com is the main outcome. The system is extremely popular. We have a lot of internal metrics of how fast different search inquiries go through and they indicate work was done very well.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Project Manager is almost native English speaker which was a great bonus. We had a sync with PM, lead developer and designer 2 times per week. In addition, we had a planning and demo show once in 2 weeks.

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

They have a very strong engineering team. The programmers at Engenious know their job for sure. Our CTO gave me a 5 star review on their work quality.

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

Overall, we were very satisfied with their services. It took a little longer than expected to assemble the initial team but the quality was worth it

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m COO for Ugears USA, official distributor in the US, selling 3D puzzles online, wholesale and thru distribution channels.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Engenious, and what were your goals?

We were looking for better performance of our website as well as integration with CRM and all our media platforms, user Experience flow to make for a more convenient and intuitive shopping experience. Add Google Analytics for better tracking. Move site to AWS and optimize its performance for better user experience.

SOLUTION

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

This was a referral from another Engenious direct customer. We were looking for the company with a good track of record and fast performance and delivery.

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

Engenious team helped us to completely redesign change UX of our site for more convenient and more easy navigation during shopping experience. Added google analytics for tracking user behavior and collecting sales metrics. They also moved our site from GoDaddy hosting to AWS and optimized site performance.

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

We worked with:

• 1 UX/UI designer
• 1 front-end developer
• 1 backend developer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our site retention rate has grew by 30% since we have started working with ENGENIOUS team due to improved UX and site performance

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

Although we did not hire project manager from Engenious side, the entire team was accustomed to iterative development cycles. I have adopted an agile approach and the whole team was attending scrum rituals such as daily standups, sprint planning, retrospectives call mom and showcases

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

I am very impressed with the team and how diligent they are about the details. From the day one we have started working with Engenious team, I felt they are a part of our company.

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

Nothing I could of think at the moment

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I act as a Project Manager at software development company . On the project where we interefered with Engenious I have acted as a Product Manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Engenious, and what were your goals?

At a certain development phase, I have realized that we are in need of extending the Team and I have considered the option to hire an external Team that will take all development related issues on their end. That is how we started to work with Engenious - they took over the control on the product development.

SOLUTION

How did you select Engenious and what were the deciding factors?

After the research of the potential partners on the web, we have shortlisted few companies and conducted the interviews. Engenious fitted all our needs.

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

After the kick-off meeting, we have started the knowledge sharing process. They took over the control over the development quite fast. As our needs are dynamically changing, we have decided to use SCRUM methodology and so, Engenious Team delivers us the functionality on a two weeks Sprints.

The product should be up to do date with the market requests and frequent updates developed on time and integrated into the existing codebase was critical to us.

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

They have offered us a Team of four senior employees: two backend and two frontend developers and that had completely covered our needs. QA engineer and designer services were offered on the ad-hoc basis as well. The core Team consisted of four employees with the option to extend to six.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

As we are constantly developing the product together with Engenious Team for almost a year, they have delivered valuable features for us like Stripe payment, informative dashboards, and so on. That helps us in getting new Clients onboard - that is the key metric of success.

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

It all started with the daily sync up calls and now we have weekly sync up. The Engenious Team appeared to be reliable enough to manage the development process on their own. Their Team clearly understands what is set behind a certain feature, they know how to evaluate the risks in advance by clarifying the information on the weekly calls.

Such an understanding of the product gives me the opportunity to concentrate on handling the product up to date, adding new features and leave the development issues on their end.

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

By the time we have selected them we already knew some information about Engenious that was proved in our final interview. They have absolutely met our expectations from working with the external team - accurate in estimates, attentive to the details and needs, always think several steps ahead, etc.

Are there any areas for improvement?

All seems to be good for us - within almost a year of cooperation, I can't remember the moment where I thought of changing the partner.