N-iX

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing director of a media technology company that provides services to the transportation sector.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We were trying to upscale our technical resources quickly and potentially ensure that we were doing it economically to meet the market expectations for reasonable pricing.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

N-iX provides software program management QA development resources for us. Although it is an outsourced relationship with them, we see them regularly, and they feel like part of our organization. We already had some of the interfaces for the project when we started working with them, and we provided that as documentation to jumpstart the project —we have a collaborative process with them, so we’re both learning along the way.

In terms of functionalities, we requested integrating a real-time transport operator schedule into a cloud-based engine, which would then output through a messages engine that would be pushed down to service on vehicles and direct to devices. They also did some of the architectural design for the platform.

What is the team composition?

We have around eight people working on our project at the moment, including a Scrum master program manager, a QA, and frontend and backend developers.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

They were referred to us by a friend. We met them, assigned a small project, and they delivered well, so we decided to expand the partnership with their team. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $1 million with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in July 2017, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve launched market-leading services on transport operations around the world, and that demonstrates the work that N-iX has been doing for us. We’re now in the European, Australian, Asan, and North American markets. They understand the challenges that we have and help to resolve them — they have the knowledge and experience to do the analysis and come up with solutions for our business.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re timely with their deliverables and do that at a price that enables us to create a business model around. Their understanding of the project and their flexibility to modify our product to launch it successfully are also good. It’s been a good experience for us to work with them on a project basis. Regarding communication, we use Microsoft Teams, biweekly technical meetings, and an internal chat system to keep the team updated.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of their staff is outstanding. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They're understaffed at the moment, but I know that’s because the market in the UK is slow at the moment. Apart from that, I think there’s nothing that they can improve on. 

Any advice for potential customers?

Be clear with what you want before engaging with them. As long as you can define the project you expect, they’ll understand the resources you need.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a project manager at a retail company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with N-iX?

We’re currently working on a very big digital transformation project inside the company and as part of this project, we need to develop different digital products. We then hired N-iX for an initial project where we achieved good results and are about to start a second one.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They basically help us find the development teams for these projects, they find the resources that adapt to our needs and the technologies we will use in our software development projects.

We developed a platform with them to create promotion campaigns for our products and distribute them to our stores. This platform allows users to select the products they’re going to promote, select prices, countries where the promotion will be, and it automates the process of campaign creation and price management.

They also developed another platform that allows us to track the processes of sending products into our stores. This platform connects with other systems inside our company, and it allows us to determine which articles to send into our stores and to plan our distribution processes.

They use our development framework, we have a company framework based on Java and they adapt to it.

What was the team composition?

We worked with 5–10 people. A scrum master, a technical lead, front- and backend developers, and developers in charge of quality

How did you come to work with N-iX?

We work with external companies that provide advice for us, and when we were looking for service providers, they recommended N-iX so we contacted them. We did the first project, and after having very good results, we continued to expand our collaboration.

How much have you invested in them?

In this last project, we’ve invested about €800,000 EUR (approximately $950,100 USD), and about €500,000 EUR (approximately $590,000 USD) on the initial project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started collaborating with them about a year and a half ago and it’s an ongoing collaboration.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have our own internal process to evaluate the success of our projects that includes metrics regarding the quality of the software, the team's performance, and the user’s evaluation, among others. At the moment, we have about 50 projects that we evaluate with the same metrics, and the first project we had with them is ranked first out of the 50 projects. 

We consider that as our best project not only in terms of quality, but also in terms of methodology and user evaluation. The other project we had with them is ranked 15th so that gives you an idea about the quality of their work.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re great. They have a delivery manager that reviews the quality of the deliveries, the quality of the final product, and the deadlines. That has been one of the things that we’ve liked most about working with them — they are also very good at taking care of the development team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with the value for money they provide.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We would like to have a lot more projects with them, but the size of their team and scalability aren’t very big.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would recommend them for the value for money they offer and for the technical and human quality of their teams.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am CTO of a IT company that offers an online cloud based service for design, production, distribution and storage of businsess documents. Focus is on digitalize transactional documents, like invoices, for larger organizations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire N-iX, and what were your goals?

We are using N-iX as our complete development organisation for developing our main application. This means that N-iX is strategic choice for us.

SOLUTION

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

I have in previous positions been working with outsourced software development where we have tried several teams in different countries. N-iX was one of the companies we worked with and was by far the best of those we tested. So when we started this new project, N-iX was the natural choice. The initial contact with N-iX was taken after a reference from a college that had experience working with them

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

The team at N-iX is our development team. They are responsible for developing and testing our service according to the requirements specified by the Addoro product management team (located in Sweden). This means that this is a long term commitment from us where the team members acts as they were employees of Addoro. I am managing the team from remote where I am responsible for the product and architecture roadmap. The team is working with the Scrum development process where the Scrum master and development team is provided from N-iX.

I am acting product owner in the Scrum process. The product is a modern cloud based java application with a advanced user interface developed in Angular. The software developed by the team must be capable of converting millions of XML into PDFs, where each PDF is uniquely designed for the receiver, There is also a lot of integration with other online services that provides complementary functionality. The service runs on AWS. So the team has strong knowledge in developing high volume/high performance Java server applications

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

There are 5 software developers and 2 QA (testing) resources.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We are very pleased with productivity and quality.

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

The team is working with the Scrum development process where the Scrum master and development team is provided from N-iX. I am acting product owner in the Scrum process. They are working with 2 week sprints where a release is created at the end of each spring that is tested by the QA team and then deployed in the production environment. Communication with team is mainly done through Slack, Jira, Confluence and Google Meet

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

I am impressed by the quality of the developers and also that they are so easy to work with. I do not see problems with cultural differences that I have seen when working with teams in other countries.

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

Our long term commitment with Ni-X means that they are acting as employees and are part of defining our process. This makes it hard to pin point explicit things that can be improved, but one challenge is that the team is far away from our customers and it can be hard to understand what the customers need

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of MoneyVeo, a lending company in Ukraine and Vietnam.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We needed development support, but we also needed a flexible team that could scale up or down as needed. N-iX provides us with a team to support web and back-office software development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’re using .NET to implement the back-office solution and Bootstrap to develop the website. At the beginning of the project, we gave them documentation, but not every component of the solution was properly documented. In order to get the project off the ground, they had to familiarize themselves with the information. Since then, they’ve taken part in change request implementations and strategic projects.

What is the team composition?

We had two points of contact, but we worked with 3–9 people, including developers and QA engineers. At the peak of our partnership, we had six developers and three QA engineers working on the project.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

Our staffing provider gave us several company names. We learned that N-iX was strong on big sites and they won the competition. Additionally, they work in the same building as we do.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $200,000–$500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2019 and our partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality of their work is perfect. I’m completely satisfied with them as our outsourcing provider. They manage their duties well and are very loyal. I highly recommend others to work with them.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

Our team lead is completely satisfied with them. They took part in the strategic planning and we worked together well. They’ve completed projects on time without sacrificing quality. Typically, we assign tasks in Jira and include the requirements, designs, and drafts they need to complete their work. We usually communicate with them through their company messaging system.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have strong hard- and soft skills. Because their team is flexible, we can increase and decrease team members with affecting the quality of our output.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re a great team with great recruiting abilities. If they could decrease the price without impacting the quality of their work, that’d be great. However, I don’t know if that’s possible.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’m completely satisfied with their work. I’d highly recommend them to any company to work with them for out staffing.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a data science manager for Gogo, an inflight internet provider.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We were planning to migrate our solution to the cloud, leading to a massive, company-wide transformation. My department was developing a warehousing solution and we needed a partner to outsource some of our work.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We formed multiple sub-teams and outsource development work to N-iX. They helped us format the road map and plan the groundwork. This included developing data pipelines, learning our infrastructure, establishing our infrastructure on the cloud, then doing analytics and UI work. Pretty much anything that we needed to build our data warehousing solution, N-iX did for us.

What is the team composition?

I worked with 15–20 different people. We worked with 3–4 engineers and data scientists at all times. I also interacted with their scrum master and project manager because we had to coordinate between teams.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

Our VP at the time looked at several companies in central and eastern European countries. They did some online research and then created a shortlist of companies. They evaluated a few options before choosing N-iX.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $1 million per year  (approximately $4 million total).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2016 and we still work together.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality of work is very high because the team is very experienced. We had good luck finding talented individuals who were able to learn cutting-edge technology. We quickly gained expertise in cloud management while working with N-iX. They’re very nimble and that helps quite a bit.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

We use all sorts of channels to communicate; we talk online, use Slack, and send emails. We’ve also visited them and they’ve come to our headquarters periodically.

They have a culture that focuses on delivering on time. If work is well-planned, they don’t have problems meeting deadlines. When they face unfamiliar challenges, it’s harder to plan because we don’t know what to expect. They definitely worked overtime to meet certain launch dates. I was extremely satisfied with their work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were able to find talented people with the capacity for learning. They’re familiar with modern tech stacks and aren’t afraid to plunge into something new.

Are there any areas they could improve?

If they were supporting a large company in a big industry, I think it would be difficult for them to scale to several thousand engineers. However, the people they hire are extremely capable.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you can prepare and organize your work in a way that makes it easy for remote developers to understand and start, you will have great success. Don’t expect them to do everything for you, so you need to do the business analysis, but you can rely on them for the technical implementation.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

AVL is the world's largest independent company for the development, simulation and testing of powertrain systems (hybrid, combustion engine, transmission, electric drive, batteries, fuel cell and control technology) for passenger cars, commercial vehicles, construction, large engines and their integration into the vehicle.

We are an Austrian-based automotive consulting firm, as well as an independent research institute with more than 11.500 employees worldwide. In my current role as an Engineering Manager for Data & Analytics services at AVL, I'm responsible for the realization of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications for new business areas with the latest technologies like cloud computing, big data, and advanced analytics.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire N-iX, and what were your goals?

The company has been hired to realize new cloud-based SaaS offers inclusive the operation with modern methodologies like DevOps. Today it isn't easy to find experienced people on the market in this area with the right skills. For this reason, we have decided to go with an external partner to develop our vision and give us the possibility to focus more on business-related topics.

The Software Development Lifecycle (SDL) process has been changed in the last few years with new methodologies (agile requirements and continuous delivery) and technologies (cloud, big data). The result is a much faster release cycle in a more complex technology environment. Instead of building up the essential skills from the beginning, we at AVL decided to go with an experienced partner.

SOLUTION

How did you select N-iX and what were the deciding factors?

For the selection of the right partner, we did a comprehensive evaluation process with six core steps:

1. Definition (objective) Region and Criteria o Company o Location o References o Experience o Methodology o Scalability o Technology o Commercial o Communication o Intuition
2. Search (long-list) > ~ 50 companies
3. Screening (short-list) > 4 x near-shore and 4 x off-shore
4. Workshop (on-site)
5. Comparison (evaluation catalog)
6. Selection ~ The overall process was aligned with Gartner.com, and for the creation of the long-list, we used a lot of different online sources like Glassdoor, Google, Clutch, Aciety, and Gartner.

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

In general, the project was split up into two phases. The first part was to understand the business requirements, make an architecture proposal, and prove technical capabilities. Furthermore, for general topics like automated testing, CI\CD, and DevOps processes, concept documents where created. The PoC was developed with a bi-weekly agile scrum process.

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

The team composition is about ten people with business and technical skills:

• Business Analyst
• Scrum Master
• UI/UX Designer
• Front- and Backend developer
• Tester
•  Architect
• Team Lead  
• DevOps Engineer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The realization of the PoC was successful, and the feedback of an external security and code quality audit done by Acropolium was good. At the moment, we are in the development of the productive version, which should go online by the end of the year.

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

Communication and alignment meetings are very simple. The availability is excellent, and it's easy to work remotely on a daily base with the team. As a result, we already have two additional projects with the company established since the beginning of the year.

These projects are a little bit different from this project. Other technologies are required for the realization. In general, the company has a lot of resources and is able to scale up very fast. This was also one primary criterion in the evaluation. Overall we have about 25 employees from N-iX working on projects.

Classic project management activities could be improved because we need to force them from time to time to provide information and take action. But in general, they are very organized, and everything is well documented and communicated.

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

The best thing is the fast response and good communication. Team members are very collaborative and easy to manage. Moreover, management is also very open and flexible. Regular meetings with the delivery managers and CEO are established quarterly to track business activities.

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

As already mentioned, the "general" project management activities could be improved to track open topics, show the project state continuously (are we on track, …). Furthermore, the selection of the right people was a problem in another project. Sometimes it happens that they are not listening entirely to the business needs and problems, which leads to discussions and challenges later.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the lead developer at PrettyLittleThing.com, an online retail company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We needed to expand our local team with an offshore-based development team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

N-iX provided individual team members to expand our team capacity, and they do software development. We layout the groundwork with our requirements and they then write the software for us.  They do front- and backend development, and they provide testing capacity as well.

What is the team composition?

We work with 7–8 people, including a project manager from their side. On my team, there are two people from N-iX.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

When I started working with the company, they already had a contract with N-iX. I am involved in recruitment on our side. Whenever there are recruitment needs, we explore the opportunities offered by N-iX.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May 2018, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We can expand resources and manpower more rapidly now than if we didn’t utilize them. Speed is of the essence. They’re really professional, and I highly approve of them.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

We had a few people who weren’t really a great fit for the project but from a management perspective, N-iX handled it very professionally. The solution isn’t always to remove the person.

They move people around, and, when necessary, replace them. From a project management perspective, it’s been very smooth and professional. We use Slack and Jira.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team is highly professional, and their skill set is right on point. They took an extreme amount of time, compared to other companies I’ve worked with, to gather the exact requirements needed to provide the best service and people for that service. 

They have several conversations to gather the exact requirements, and they provide a resource that fits our needs almost exactly the first time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The team is really good in terms of listening to our needs and providing services. The only thing that we sometimes struggle with is that some of the candidates might not have the necessary language skills. We never had any proper technical issues with most of the candidates. 

We usually sort this out quite quickly if we see that the language barrier is going to be a potential issue. This can be improved with training. When you need to resource fast, sometimes it’s better to wait for another person than to train the one you’ve got.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be very honest with your requirements because N-iX will accommodate you properly.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of an interactive media company specializing in e-sports and gaming.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

They’re developing the first video game that we’re launching as a company.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’re doing a full-cycle development for the program. That includes programming, asset creation, art, and more. The game is being built with Unity. We’re handling game design on our end, and our team hired others for the story and music. Our company specializes in the distribution and marketing of games, so we’re designing the scope for their team to execute. The final app will be made available for iOS, Android, and web browser users.  

What is the team composition?

We started off with a team of about 4–5 people, and I would interface with the project manager. However, we truly had all of their resources within our reach. We’ve been ramping the team up and have about eight people at this point. Later this year, we’ll have a team of 20.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

We started with a similar vendor, but I was very dissatisfied with their work. This time, I wanted to make sure I did my due diligence while hiring a new team. I talked to a few CEOs in my area, and they pointed me to Ukrainian and Polish developers. That made sense to me because there are a lot of great game studios in those countries right now. I was born in Ukraine, so I met with several vendors there. N-iX seemed to be the best choice for us. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $1,300,000 on their work. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in November 2018, and it’s still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

At this point, we’re still in the development phase. However, they’re super quick to communicate and complete tasks according to the schedule. There were some hiccups due to communication on our end. Otherwise, they’ve been ahead of schedule since we’ve started working with them. 

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

As long as we communicate very clearly and are descriptive, their project managers can stay on top of delivery dates. We used Trello and Discord for project management. They’re able to build out our features quickly that way.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a very established, reliable company. They have a really good track record for software development. The game development team is relatively small, so they’re very eager to handle full-cycle development and asset creation. They’re hungry for opportunity, and they’ve done a great job with the work. It was a great time to give them a project with a large scope.

Are there any areas they could improve?

At first, I wished they asked us to elaborate more on concepts that they didn’t understand. For instance, if we said something offhand, they’d move to development without necessarily discussing all the details first. That created hiccups early on, but it’s also my fault for not communicating details as clearly as needed.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We’ve been working with them for a while now, and they set a pretty high bar for developers. I’d definitely recommend them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the co-founder, art director, and CEO of Trese Brothers Games. We have been creating games for desktops and mobile phones for almost ten years now.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We are always growing and we want every game to be bigger and better than the last one. Our team needed professionals that could augment our team to provide the visual aspects of the game.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

N-iX helps us with the full lifecycle of the production of video game art. They have become our entire art team. On our end, we start with a vision of what we want the end product to look like. We provide a set of inputs, references, and descriptions of what we’re looking for.

Their team of 2D artists creates concept art sketches and drafts so we can get a feel for how it will look. Then, we work with them to improve that direction and make it a very specific image of a character, environment, or weapon. Once we’ve gone through that concept and process, those deliverables are handed over to the 3D modeling team.

That team recreates the object in 3D and adds texture. Finally, the object goes to the animation team that animates human characters. They ensure everything moves naturally and complete all of the required actions for the video game. 

What is the team composition?

We started with a team of two, but at the height have had up to nine members of the N-iX team working with us. On average, there are about six people working on our project.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

We had worked with a previous vendor but were looking for a team with greater manpower and art quality. Our team interview about 15 studios over the course of three months. We ended up selecting N-iX because they were communicative and willing to work with us. They also had a strong portfolio of work.

How much have you invested with them?

We have invested between $250,000–$500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement with N-iX began in July 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have shared a lot of the art they’ve created within our community to build excitement about the new game. The feedback we’ve gotten on the new art has been incredibly positive. People are extremely excited to see us taking things to the next level. All of our customers recognize the leap in quality we’ve taken by switching to N-iX.

N-iX gives us the ability to ramp things up and down depending on need. With them, we have the flexibility to deliver results faster. Our community is already seeing in advance how working with them has increased the quality of our art.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

We really appreciated that they assigned a project manager on their side. We always had someone there to make sure everything is moving smoothly. Additionally, they have a project lead for each of the different disciplines.

Their communication has been top-notch. N-iX is always on the ball for us. They’re fun to work with. Whenever we have new requirements or delays, they’re flexible and able to keep up.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team at N-iX is full of true creatives, they are inspired by and excited about their projects. Even though it’s our project, they take it on as theirs. They apply a level of engagement and interest to every aspect of the process, which helps them achieve the creative result we’re looking for. Their team pays attention to details and produces things that are at the level of beauty we need. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’re a small team and we do all of our project management in house. Initially, we integrated them into our system of managing projects. In hindsight, their system was better suited for a larger team and we should have switched over earlier than we did. Otherwise, we are very happy with their work and are planning our next project. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Since this is a creative endeavor, it’s important to know exactly what you want. If you don’t have specifics, you might not get what you want.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the director of the software development department for an organization called cleverbridge a.g. We provide global billing for B2C and B2B software customers around the world. The solution takes care of everything that occurs after clicking the checkout button, including compliance, fraud detection, and billing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We were looking to scale up our company. Because of the requests we have, we can’t foresee how much work there will be in a single year. In Germany, it’s difficult to scale up quickly because there is a prolonged recruiting process.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were looking for partners in the software industry that could provide full teams that could work together on a single part of code. N-iX was our nearshore software development team. Critically, they had already worked together, as we wanted to skip the team-building aspect of development.

Eventually, they worked on a part of our software development that wasn’t in the core product. We have a GraphQL that fed information to N-iX. They consumed the information and built new modules around it. Their team works in two-week scrums.

What is the team composition?

The full team is nine people. We have a lead developer, QA tester, two UX designers, a product manager, and three full developers. There is also someone who works as a scrum master and developer.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

We had a recent graduate who had extensively researched nearshoring, so he had a full list of partners in Europe that we contacted. Eventually, we settled on N-iX.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in August 2018 and the project is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our chief metric is based on scrum. They have an agile team that works along two-week iterations. Every two weeks, we are presented with what they did and we review the work they’ve done. We are constantly discovering insights on which direction we go.

They continue to work well in this framework and there are no questions on what they’re going to deliver. We have dedicated programmers that are very transparent on how the next iteration will go. The deliverables depend on what the clients want.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

From a budget perspective, we pay an amount of money that ensures there will be people working and enough skills to achieve goals. If one person stops working, they will automatically fill the gap. I’ve been in constant contact with them. There’s great connectivity between our offices. I go over to Ukraine once a year.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The amount of communication is great. I have a weekly call with their business counterpart, which is outside of the team. The developers are in daily communication with our in-house team and give weekly updates to product owners. Their English is amazing.

I also appreciate that they do a good job of feeling invigorated and integrated into our company. They're part of our staff meetings and are on our communication channels.

Are there any areas they could improve?

When we initially hired them, they didn’t have a standard scrum process or QA system in place. It would be better if they had clear standards from the beginning.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s very important to give them as much transparency and openness regarding communication as possible. If you trust them, they can actually work in an independent way. There’s far more incentive to give 100% if you’re completely open and handle them as if they were part of your company.