New Line Technologies

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO of Integrated Technology Laboratory LLC. We're a development company based in Canada and the U.S. We mainly develop AI technologies. 

What challenge were you trying to address with New Line Technologies?

We needed help with mobile development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We've worked on multiple projects. One was a large application for tractors and heavy machinery. The application will be developed for both iOS and Android. We're currently enhancing features and testing it for the App Store. We will add blockchain and AI, but New Line Technologies developed everything else. 

What is the team composition?

Their team was flexible. We worked with a wide range of architects, developers, and testers with experience in mobile technology, web technology, databases, and integration. They added developers as needed. On any day, three people can give me an estimate on any type of architecture or technology. 

How did you come to work with New Line Technologies?

They are one of the best teams. I met them at a conference where they won a mobile development award.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked on this project from April to September 2017.

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

The fact that we've launched the product already is a success. I requested completion within four to five months, which they delivered. That was a big surprise. It was a tight timeline, even for a development company.

How did New Line Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management was their biggest advantage. I liked their project managers better than mine. When I worked with other teams, I had to manage them and worry about requirements. I didn't have that headache with New Line Technologies. Everything was provided or accessible. 

All their reporting was open and current, so it was easy to produce invoices and check their work. They occasionally spoke with my customers, developers, or architects, and most of their employees spoke excellent English.

What did you find most impressive about them?

New Line Technology has talented developers who can implement any type of technology. They're organized, they deliver on time, and they make every project comfortable.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Sometimes a customer requests a certain type of application. It would be helpful to know upfront if they could deliver. I'd like to know their whole range of capability, knowledge, and expertise within each industry.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Ukrainian developers perform better when challenged.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the director of technology product development at Evan-Moor Educational Publishers. We create and publish supplemental and educational classroom materials for Pre-K through 8th grade.

What challenge were you trying to address with New Line Technologies?

We’re from Monterey, California and the number of developers that we have in the area is very limited. We were looking for a group of developers that had the technology and could make suggestions for solutions that had a rapid development timeline. We’ve been in business since 1979 and we have a huge library of intellectual property that we have been trying to re-imagine in the interactive space. We have a lot of content and a lot of work to do.

What was the scope of their involvement?

In the very beginning, we were doing teaching tools that a teacher would use during instruction on a projection system. These were all developed in Flex, and we had them delivered as an individual teaching tool. These were all individual installations. We developed an LMS [Learning Management System] later on that loaded the tools inside. There was a single install with a login, and all of the different tools would load inside of this system. That was primarily on Windows and macOS desktop. Then we moved into the app store and Amazon Marketplace, and we started to develop cloud apps.

Every time we have a challenge, we work together as a team and come up with solutions. We continue to go on lots of different devices and spaces. I give them the challenge we’re having and they come back with different approaches. Right now, we’re working with React and getting all of our intellectual property separated out and made more flexible so that it can fit into other systems, play nice with the other systems, and have interoperability. They have been steer heading that with our product line.

We use a combination of technologies. Outside of Flash, we’ve used HTML5, JavaScript, Xcode, and Flex. Right now, we’re really into React. They developed our websites and handled our entire corporate website from scratch. Evan-Moor.com is a shopping cart where we sell our products. Our other website is TeacherFileBox.com, where you subscribe and have access to educational materials in the classroom. There’s a projection annotation tool they developed and is available through a subscription on the site. There are also online tools that interface with the material. Essentially, they created two different kinds of websites for us. One is your traditional shopping cart, and the other is a subscription service.

We do all the frontend design, including user interface [UI] and user experience [UX]. They design the code, workflow on the backend, and decide on the best approach for technology. They do all of their work very autonomously. Currently, we have a couple of big projects that are in the works. We just released a whole new update to our website. We’re about to go into redesigning TeacherFileBox.com so that it has a more customized UX. These are all pretty big projects. We have a lot of projects on the table that they’re working on with us, but nothing from scratch.

How did you come to work with New Line Technologies?

I posted a job project on Elance and received a lot of different quotes on how much the production costs would be. What really impressed me about New Line Technologies’ approach to quoting and the project itself, was that they came back with a fully fleshed out prototype that showed an understanding of UI. They had a lot of suggestions in the prototype that were really great. They were also very honest about the timelines and costs involved. They didn’t upsell themselves and made sure I understood. If there were any issues with my approaches, they were very honest in telling me they wouldn’t work. They were dedicated to getting a product to market. I ended up awarding them the project.

I had actually previously contracted another developer. I was working with New Line Technologies as well as a local developer out of San Francisco. They were working on projects simultaneously. I was unable to maintain contact and to keep lines of communication open with the local developer. I ended up giving that project to Andrews' [CEO, New Line Technologies] team.

How much have you invested with them?

I prefer to keep it confidential.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2009, and the work is ongoing.

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

No matter what the challenge is, they are able to come through. They’re also very dedicated to Evan-Moor’s vision. When the product comes back and it’s not working as expected, they’re very creative in problem-solving. It would be difficult for me to measure their success monetarily. I would say it’s more product value and talent. At the end of the day, that’s how I would measure.

How did New Line Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

New Line Technologies is really responsive, focused and dedicated to really clean code and quick turnaround. Their quality is incredible. We communicate through Skype, Slack, YouTrack, Redmine, and Basecamp. We talk and do status updates on a daily basis. Once a week, we have a department meeting where we split project management, set priorities, and release dates. I have an in-house QA team here. They have that at New Line as well. We split that work. That’s how we communicate and set up deadlines. I also visit them twice a year.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their work is always top quality. The code is clean. If we have problems, we have really quick turnaround because they do it right at the beginning. That’s why we’ve been working together for so long.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There are a lot of people on the team that speak English, but there are times we do have a breakdown in communication. I can see how if it’s a new client, how that might be kind of a challenge. They’ve pretty much been able to overcome that. They do have English lessons once or twice a week. Every time they feel like they need to improve, they’re on it. If there’s a challenge, they come up with a way of improving the process. They work and try very hard.

Do you have advice for any of New Line Technologies' potential customers?

Always make sure to have regular meetings. My internal developers, QA testers, and system administrators get together with New Line once a week. We communicate and see each other on a regular basis, so are not just faceless names to each other. I have direct contact with all of the developers so if they have a question or need something from me, they get an immediate response and vice versa. If you want to develop a good relationship across such a distance, it's important you make sure everybody is available and feels like they can ask questions and receive answers.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My company is Axiom Medical Consulting in Texas. We provide occupational help and medical care for Axiom clients. Some of our clients require occupational care for recurring medical testing. For instance, we manage testing and scheduling for drivers for required certification for the DOT. One of the other product lines involves when client employees are injured. Axiom works with the client, the client employee, and the doctors involved in the individual’s medical case to make sure that the client employee gets back to health and back to work in the most effective and efficient way possible.

What challenge were you trying to address with New Line Technologies?

One of the challenges we faced was too much variation with our occupational health management process. We’re trying to streamline internal workflows for managing client appointments to remove variation, remove the ability for too many decisions to be introduced, and have more management control. We put all of our best practices within a streamlined automated workflow and we chose to use New Line Technologies to help us.

What was the scope of their involvement?

By using the Azure cloud platform, New Line provides us with just about everything that we needed for the application development. One of the important functionalities, and probably the most difficult, is the way Axiom built their client services into groups. From an accounting perspective, they have service groups, and from the program manager’s perspective, they have test groups. The ways these groups are broken down can be pretty complex, especially considering the recurrence and the regulatory kind of constraints that go into scheduling.

From the very beginning, New Line was very instrumental in the way they approached the project.

What is the team dynamic?

I’m the project manager. I did the database architecture and validated our internal workflows. I communicate with the New Line team daily. I have a counterpart at New Line who is also a project manager. I also have database experts, a database administrator, graphic designers and both stack app developers from New Line.

How did you come to work with New Line Technologies?

Before I began with Axiom, the president of Axiom and a long time friend of his who is in the business of delivering software projects discussed New Line as the number one recommendation. They were on our short list of teams that we chose to vet and they came out on top. The main reasons were their expertise, rapid app development, and cost.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together December 2016 and the work is ongoing.

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

They met all of our requirements and took it even further than we had expected. Since New Line delivered this product, Axiom had subsequent changes to our workflows and New Line is able to not only implement them but also advise us and show us the impacts of what we’re proposing. They’ve really taken ownership of this workflow. Ideas float out of various departments to change the workflow or enable new capabilities within the app, and New Line is always willing and able to show us a better way to do it or steer us away from certain changes to the app. They understand what we’re trying to do at its core.

We’re looking to roll out this OHP [Occupational Health Program] project to the Axiom users this month. The OHP is our second biggest product that we market to our clients. What we’re hoping to see with this app, as a result of New Line’s efforts, is a much more streamlined and automated set of workflows for a traditionally complicated process that removes the variation from client to client and allows Axiom to deliver better services. With the app, we’ll have the ability to show the metrics. In general, this will contribute fabulously just by removing the variation in our processes.

How did New Line Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re really flexible. They’re very conducive to setting up the project controls how I want them. Being a project manager here, I was able to take the lead on some things, and they were also outspoken about their best practices. We came to a nice arrangement.

This is an Agile Scrum project for the most part. There have been elements where some of the subprocesses have been treated like the traditional waterfall project. Over the course of the project, some key stakeholders and subject matter experts have left the company. We’ve had to change our approach to developing certain portions in the app while Axiom worked with a new subject matter expert in one area or the other. We were able to rely on New Line to be flexible where we could work with a set of requirements for a longer period than most development teams would be comfortable with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In any project, you work with the team fairly intimately despite the distance. They’ve been very responsive to any issues that we’ve encountered. They have a good read on what we need. New Line is a proponent of open and honest dialogue and that has kept us on track with regard to missed expectations. Normally if something has gone unaddressed or has been inadequately addressed, we discover it and get it straightened out fairly quickly in the delivery cycle. None of our issues are noteworthy.

Introduce your business and what you do there. 

I’m the CEO of a mobile app publisher. We have a series of products on the App Store that include utilities, games, and audio and video apps. 

What challenge were you trying to address with New Line Technologies?

We were looking for a development partner with advanced skills in iOS and Android. We also needed a firm that had a formal software development process and knew how to run a project. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped us create a video maker app. It’s evolved from a video product to 4 that span iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac OS development. We built a series of video apps that integrate with mobile phones and cameras and communicate between traditional desktop-based video systems for automating live and recorded video production. We’ve had various releases since we started 2 years ago.

They are currently working on our product roadmap. One project is designed to transfer videos between the cloud and various desktop software solutions, and another project is integrating all kinds of Wi-Fi and smart cameras into the system.

How many resources have been assigned to your project?

I interact with an executive contact on a semi-regular basis. I also have a product manager who works with the technical project manager. They handle the daily running of the project. I’m involved in weekly meetings, but the New Line technical project manager manages the engineering and QA team on their side in Ukraine. Our product manager interfaces with them on a daily basis.

How did you come to work with New Line Technologies?

We looked at companies that were familiar with cross-platform mobile development. New Line had those skill sets and great experience with working on both platforms natively as well as using other cross-platform tools like Xamarin.

How much have you invested with New Line Technologies?

We have spent between $500,000 and $1,000,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started this project at the end of 2015, and the work is ongoing. 

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

They’ve built confidence with me over the years. I didn’t anticipate growing my team with them as much as I have. It made a lot of sense, and they deliver. I’ve centralized all of my engineering with New Line. They are the best engineers I’ve ever worked with, and I’ve worked with teams all over the world. Their skills and organization make all the difference. Of course, we’ve had challenges, but the New Line team handles everything professionally.

How did New Line Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

When I had concerns, they were very responsive. The process has been smooth. We manage our project with an Agile platform called YouTrack. We have all of our projects, Agile boards, issue cards, bug reporting and management, roadmaps, and features descriptions in that platform, and it’s fairly interactive. Other than that, we have project plans that we manage on our side.

What did you find most impressive about New Line Technologies?

They were able to build great solutions and support us with an end-to-end team. They provided management, development resources, and QA resources.

Are there any areas New Line Technologies could improve?

Because they’ve done so well, it’s hard to say anything bad about them. They have English classes for their team once a week, so they really go above and beyond. I’m very impressed with them. They seem down-to-earth and humble and have an incredible work ethic. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

SocialPutts is a golfing social network helping golfers play more often with their friends.

What challenge were you trying to address with New Line Technologies?

We needed to create our technology platform from the ground up.

What was the scope of their involvement?

New Line Technologies has worked on socialputts.com per our specifications, as well as on our iOS and Android apps. These platforms help golfers connect with friends, and, based on individual calendar availabilities, allow them to set up dates. The platform also recommends tee-times at local golf courses.

I made basic layouts, but New Line Technologies built everything else from scratch, from infrastructure to database architecture and user-interface and branding elements.

Everything we’re doing is Windows-based. We’re using the Azure cloud for hosting, and we’re a .NET platform. Besides this, we’re using a tool called PhoneGap for the development of both Apple and Android simultaneously.

They’ve done a great job in terms of layout and database architecture. Some of the challenges we faced were more on the payment processing side. New Line Technologies was great at coming up with various solutions. We ended up choosing Braintree, which is a PayPal-owned company. New Line did a lot of behind-the-scenes work in ensuring that we had a seamless integration, and that payments were lightning-fast. We had both design and technical issues stemming from the fact that I wanted to use PhoneGap instead of making two different native apps. New Line Technologies always rolled up their sleeves and came up with great solutions.

How did you come to work with New Line Technologies?

We started development with another company four or five years ago, when this was more of a hobby to me. Unfortunately, that company went in a different direction, but I maintained a relationship with some of their developers. When they moved to New Line Technologies three years ago, I continued to work with those developers.

How much have you invested with New Line Technologies?

The cost of their work was around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with New Line Technologies in June 2014. We’re wrapping up the current phase of the project. There are a couple of tasks being buttoned up, including updating a couple of landing pages on the site. We’ve just released the current version of the app one week ago. New Line Technologies will be providing ongoing services after we’ve gone into sales and marketing mode. I fully anticipate that, once we gain some traction, we will go back to New Line Technologies for another round of development.

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

We’re in our infancy with the current version of the mobile app. But, based on initial data, the feedback has been that the new version is drastically improved compared to the old one. New Line Technologies has been almost exclusively responsible for the look-and-feel of the app. The first version was my design, but we wanted to make it more modern. They did an excellent job of modernizing the logo and look of the app. People are embracing the app more now.

How did New Line Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

We have a very good cadence, meeting three times a week and having ad-hoc calls if necessary. I have a great relationship with New Line’s project manager, and I feel they’ve taken personal responsibility and ownership for our project, rather than doing as they’re told. They’ve come back with suggestions based on what they saw on other projects, and felt could help.

We’re wrapping up a second landing page, and, even though it was good, their team had another suggestion for making it even better. The team is always thinking about improving things in order to have the best, most up-to-date product on the market.

We’ve been using a Trello board over the last several years. It’s worked exceptionally well for what we’re doing. It will remain active, even though we’ve finished this stage of the project, and I plan to load different items on it which can be prioritized for the next run. We also have Skype conversations and screen shares. It’s a straightforward process.

What did you find most impressive about New Line Technologies?

For an overseas provider, New Line Technologies has done an excellent job from a communication standpoint. It was never an issue, despite small language barriers. They always made sure that things were done right, and the team is solution-oriented, not task-oriented. It’s hard to tell that I’m working with someone overseas.

Are there any areas New Line Technologies could improve?

I haven’t had a lot of time to sit back and think about this. With any issues, New Line’s owner was always open and upfront. We’ve always had a great line of communication. We have a time-and-materials collaboration, but we’ve kept the same developer for the last year and a half. The cadence will change a bit when we go to a support model, but it’s been a great model overall.

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

Have open lines of communication and know what you’re looking to accomplish. I’ve been on both sides of the fence and have a development background. I know that, going into a project without a goal to accomplish, clients need to at least ask the right questions before they start development. I didn’t experience any of these challenges, but I have seen it happen.