Pinely International

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Owner of Stream

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Turn-key digital signage provider.

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Pinely International to accomplish?

• Custom Signage Software
• Integration API Software

How did you find Pinely International?

Online Search

Why did you select Pinely International over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

What was the size of Pinely International’s team?

10+

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Pinely International has created custom software that we use integrating with multiple outside APIs. They have gone through the entire UI/UX mapping to production. They have excellent communication skills and have communicated directly with customers throughout the entire development process. Our customers love them and their work. Can't say enough about their performance.

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Industry-leading digital signage software deliverable
• Software running in multi-location businesses

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Pinely delivered all our projects in a timely manner. Many of our customers would have changes they would require during the progress of the deliverable that would cause normal teams problems. Pinely has been outstanding in accepting changes dealing with new scopes during development processes.

What was your primary form of communication with Pinely International?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Pinely has excellent communication. The team has been able to communicate directly and effectively with customers. Their organization is outstanding and it shows in the output and functionality of their software deliverables.

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

No.

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Software Engineer Lead of a mental health clinic.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Medical clinic that provides mental health services with a focus on holistic well-being.

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Pinely International to accomplish?

• Redesign website with latest technologies
• Improve UI/UX of search and booking process for patients

How did you find Pinely International?

Online Search

Why did you select Pinely International over others?

High ratings, Good value for cost, Company values aligned

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Building a functional website with search, booking, and CMS abilities from the ground up. Focus on speed and usability for users, allowing them to find and book among hundreds of providers in their area. The frontend will be NextJS + Tailwind CSS, and mobile-first + desktop-friendly and responsive is a must. The backend will require building a custom Sanity CMS to power the website, with custom schemas for different page types and document types.

The goal is a customized and easy-to-use CMS for non-developers such as marketing to leverage. We will also have cloud endpoints created to integrate with our EHR and create the booking process for patients. These will be using NextJS API endpoints and other serverless APIs in Google Cloud Platform and AWS.

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Weekly demos
• Weekly code reviews and pull requests in our code repository
• Additional agile ceremonies that I could attend if available every week

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

They began with a thorough set of meetings to dive deeper into what exactly was needed to be built. This was then used to discuss and solidify the technology choices. Then we began with a set of 2 developers and no designer, as I had already outsourced the design to another team. I soon realized my designer wasn't able to deliver what I was looking for, and Pinely quickly found me a designer that was extremely capable and easy to work with.

This designer has made pivotal changes to the project that are extremely appreciated. I had a personal requirement for code quality and extensibility that most clients may not have, as I plan to reuse sections of this project for future dashboards. This meant I was involved in most agile ceremonies, helping to refine tasks, and review pull requests, and was very particular with the code that would be written.

As a software engineer myself, I wanted to ensure it would be code I could revisit and work with for years. This meant extra time was required in the review and refinement process. We soon realized that the speed of the project was too fast, as I was unable to continue to stay on top of the project each week for 2 devs and 1 designer.

The project manager decided we can reduce down to 1 dev. This helped alleviate the majority of time pressure, and was also appreciated on my end. We were able to continue to iterate, even more efficiently than before. Overall, project management has been extremely agile and responsive to me personal needs.

What was your primary form of communication with Pinely International?

Virtual Meeting, Email or Messaging App

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

During the initial interview, they kept pulling in more team members depending on the questions and discussion that was being had. It showed that the agency understood a wide breadth of topics, but also understood that sometimes "I don't know the best solution" and pulling in someone else to help is the correct response. That proved to me that working with them would be a good experience, and they're responsiveness to change as the project changes has proven that initial decision correct.

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

The only thing in hindsight (learning experience for me as well) that I wish could have been discussed or planned was developer experience and hourly rate per developer. I proposed a contract with a suggested hourly rate, and Pinely responded near that hourly rate. There was no suggestion of one rate for one developer, vs another rate for another developer.

The developers I worked with were great, but definitely more junior that I expected. Given the choice, and if available on the Pinely team, I would have preferred to pay a higher hourly rate for a developer with more years of experience. I understand resource allocation across multiple projects can be difficult though, and in the initial discussions for our project I did not make it clear that I was looking for more senior engineers that could collaborate and pair with me frequently.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of Privacy Lock, a privacy compliance company.

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

Pinely was hired to help us build new features and to enhance the UX/UI of our customer dashboard. This required knowledge of multiple development tools and skills, and Pinely has done great job of delivering high quality tech in a timely manner.

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

We found Pinely through an online platform. We were impressed with their knowledge of the Ionic framework, their design skills, and their friendly demeanor and good communication skills.

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

Key deliverables include four new feature builds related to dashboard functionality. These are primarily front end applications, but that integrate with backend automation services. Pinely has helped us to go from design phase to build and implementation to integration. The features use a variety of different technologies, including Ionic, Stencil JS, Node JS, microservices, code snippet generators, Figma, etc.

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

Two members of the Pinely team worked with us primarily, and we also have had strategy sessions with their CEO. One of these members plays a project manager role and the other is the technical lead.

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

Pinely delivered on the feature builds in a timely fashion and to the standards of our CTO and Lead Engineer.

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

Pinely has great communication skills, and has been very available and responsive to us. It has been a pleasure working with them, and we are expanding our collaboration with them.

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

They operate in multiple time zones, communicate very effectively, and produce high-quality technical work. They are good at project management and customer service.

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

No.