Offshorly

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founding CTO of a SaaS tool that allows for senior management of organizations to review their project portfolio and make better decisions when making investments.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Once our idea had been vetted through interviews, we selected Offshorly to build our SaaS tool from the ground up. We interviewed ~10 other service providers from around the world before selecting Offshorly. Our goals were to find a partner who would help to engineer technical requirements from the functional user stories we had formulated, and also help me select the best tech-stack and environment setup to do this. Our primary goal was to build the tool quickly and get out for Alpha and Beta testing.

SOLUTION

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

Offshorly stood apart from the others shortlisted from day 1. A key factor for me was how proactively Offshortly took up the role of a partner. Alex demonstrated a deep knowledge in everything tech and was very eager to share his thoughts and views very openly when requested. When I explained my reservations in tech-stack, Offshorly tech team came back to me with recommendations listing pros and cons, along with further reading. I am happy to report that I went with all of their recommendations after doing my own research, and I am very happy with the decisions we made together.

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

Our tool was built on nextjs and hosted on vercel, with a backend on java, hosted on Heroku. Offshorly was hired to perform analyze and engineer technical requirements from the business requirements we had prepared. Following this, Offshorly and I discussed at length the best tech-stack to go with. Once technical requirements were engineered and tech stack identified, the engineering team from Offshortly started to build the tool.

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

Along with Alex playing role of Delivery Lead, we had a Project Manager dedicated for our project. The core engineering team consisted of 3-7 engineers and testers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our tool is complete and ready for Beta testing. While I cannot speak for the market success of our tool, all our testing has come back very positively. The Offshorly team has been very helpful in tweaking changes for us and getting the tool ready for Beta testing.

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

I had a dedicated PM who was knowledgeable in the technology but very good at getting the answers I needed from the team. While responses might have been slightly delayed at times, I would always get a detailed response with a little nudging. I must also stress that Alex was present in most meetings which was very assuring.

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

They were able to win my trust as advisors and partners very quickly. 

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

We had some hiccups in communication tools and had to revert to email. Some short delays in getting some details out for me, but nothing that isn't normal for any engineering company.