Pentalog

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior department manager for a data center company, and I’ve worked with them for almost eight years. In my role, I oversee product development and engineering for our customer-facing applications.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Pentalog?

We needed a QA automation engineer, so we decided to reach out to offshore companies to see who we could find because it would be more cost-effective for us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Pentalog has helped us find QA engineers who have been working with us since July 2022. Among our main requirements for these resources, we wanted that their culture fit with ours so that they could integrate well into our core team.

These resources have been helping us test the software we develop to improve functionality and find bugs. In many cases, they’ve created and developed automated tests for us to use, and they’ve helped us with regression testing, smokescreens, and more. As for the technology stack, we’ve mainly used Azure and JavaScript DOM. Currently, we’re looking at integrating more resources from Pentalog into the project, so we’re interviewing more candidates.

What is the team composition?

We’ve mainly worked with Pentalog’s sales director and a recruiter who has found the QA resources.

How did you come to work with Pentalog?

I have a friend in Moldova who I contacted when looking for offshore QA resources. He mentioned that Pentalog had very good resources, so I started looking into them. Pentalog found a QA resource very quickly, after which we signed a statement of work and started working together. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around July 2022, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We measure our success by looking at how much coverage we have over the codebase with automated tests. Since Pentalog came on board, we’ve managed to cover around 70% of our APIs with automated integration tests, which is huge.

Thus far, we’re very happy with the service provided by the QA engineers from Pentalog, and their integration into our core team has been seamless. These resources seem to mesh well with our overall team, even though they work in different time zones and come from different cultural backgrounds.

How did Pentalog perform from a project management standpoint?

Pentalog’s resources have performed well. They give me very good estimates, which I use for our budgeting. We’ve never had any issues with being over budget, and our time tracking is also spot-on. We use Azure DevOps for project management, as well as Microsoft Teams and email for communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Pentalog is very flexible and responsive in their customer service. For example, I started looking for a resource that could help us augment our team so that we could move faster. Pentalog was able to quickly isolate potential candidates and give me estimates on the potential rates. Shortly after that, we started the interview process, and we recently signed the contract with the new resource.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of something Pentalog could improve on. Although we’ve had some rough patches, we’ve solved them very quickly. Specifically, we had some challenges when communicating with their sales director. However, this person is no longer involved in the project, so I don’t foresee that issue happening again.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open to the idea of meeting with candidates and having daily standing meetings very early in the morning because that’s how they’ll be able to collaborate with other resources in the US time zones. I’ve found the most successful way to collaborate with Pentalog’s resources is by having them join our calls early in the morning so that they can be on the same call as our internal resources. This has allowed us to keep both teams happy and have a well-connected team overall.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the VP of Engineering for a software company providing a B2B SaaS solution to monitor and optimise energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Pentalog?

We needed to transform the IT department from a "start-up" organization (a few component-oriented, technology-focused teams) to a "scale-up" organization with many agile teams specialized by business domain.

SOLUTION

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

We did not have the time to recruit the right profiles, nor to increase the Agile skills of the current team. We decided to complete the current team by external developers able to bring us the missing knowledge. We contacted several potential partners, Pentalog was the only one to bring us, in addition to human resources, a methodological framework structuring the relationship.

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

To test we started with a mixed team: the PO and the Scrum master from Pentalog helped us to acculturate the team to good agile practices. After a few weeks a second team switched to Agile mode on the same model (internal PO and Pentalog scrum master). The other teams switched in the following months.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

For each profile (PO, SM, front-end developer, back-end developer, QA engineer) we defined a profile and an experience level. Pentalog quickly proposed several candidates for each type of position and we selected the people who best matched us

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The time required to create or complete a team has been reduced from several months to 2 or 3 weeks maximum. The arrival of people already trained has allowed us to accelerate the production of features by the teams and to standardize our practices.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

For our team, the change of working method was a revolution on three aspects

• agile mode
• working with remote teams
• working in English on a daily basis the positive results were visible after only a few weeks of acclimatisation

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

We were able to quickly integrate efficient developers at a reasonable cost. In addition, Pentalog's team monitoring includes our developers as well as theirs: skills assessment, team mood, rotation strategy, ... These are important parts of the job, but they take time.

In the Pentalog package there is also the Maturity Model, a tool to evaluate the maturity of the teams and the project in the broadest sense, it allows to identify the improvement areas of the organization. It allowed us to take a step back and address the fundamental issues. We used it as a basis for our SOC2 certification process. It deserves to be a Pentalog service in its own right.

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

Because there is a permanent search for feedback from Pentalog and thanks to the implementation of means to give us alerts (weekly debriefing, steering committees, satisfaction surveys...) the incomprehensions or risks related to the projects are treated on the flow. There are currently few means to improve the relationship. We are working together for more than 2 years now.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

My Company was a Software editor in Finance and HR

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We decided do work with Pentalog because I already worked with them in an other context and in other company. My goal was to unblock project started month ago by internal developper but going nowhere. My goal was also to grow up new developper becasue the main leader would be focus on other projects.

It was an opportunity for me to unrisk the development and continue the business development while doing big technical projects. The goal was also to show different mindset and the Agile culture: this had a great impact on the current internal team: showing them a way to do things differently.

SOLUTION

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

We first, started with a small team to build a new API to facilitate the integration and migration of customers coming from other solutions. The team has been so successful that very quickly we have asked the team to work on multiple other areas of the software and bug fixing.

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

The different scopes: API for HR and finance, New Talent review for HR Multiple new Features for Finance Multiple new Integration for HR system

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

Multiple teams Maximum was 20 people: PO, Java dev, React Dev, QA...

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

All the projects have been delivered in time. Team has always been force of proposition. Projects have been merge and integrated in production serving multiple customers.

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

Regular feedback are done with project director on a monthly basis. we have feedbacks on the mood of the teams, and we have also regular updates on projects. Feedback are very open and constructive. always with good mindset and coming with alternative in case of issues with somes resources or projects.

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

They were very flexible with changes, and they always tried to find the best solutions for our needs. They are always willing to find the most convenient option, and adapt. For example, they have been very supportive during Covid period where we have found a real partner in front of us.

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

It's not a big issue but having more french speaking devs would be great in some cases. (Many does but more on QA or PO side)

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Critical communication platform - Production Director

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Increase the quality of the product by addressing existing bugs and performance issues.

SOLUTION

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

The vendor was recommended by partners and quickly provided knowledgeable resources, in line with the technologies required by the platform.

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

Bug fixing for a web interface, covering JS, jQuery and React.

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

3-8 / UI Developers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Decreased number of existing bugs.

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

Scrum, Jira, 2 weeks sprints.

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

Their speed in communication and resource delivery is impressive.

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

Making their services portfolio more visible.