Program-Ace

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the COO of Whow Games GmbH. We are a social casino that offers entertaining and money-making games.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Program-Ace?

We have found it challenging to scale our team locally, so we engaged Program-Ace to provide outsourced development support.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Program-Ace helps us with our core product—a social casino. At first, we primarily relied on them for maintenance. As we’ve grown in our partnership, we’ve expanded their role to include development.

They work alongside our in-house team to create vital features of our product—processes that sometimes take several months. Our casino has versions for Android, iOS, and a web application—which all use the same backend of PHP and Node.js. Their work also involves MySQL and MongoDB databases, along with Redis and Memcached for caching layouts. We also rely on Program-Ace to further develop our frontend features related to displaying content, animations, fonts, and so on. In doing so, we use Angular, HMTL5, and CSS. Additionally, we’ve decided to outsource our customer care. We tasked Program-Ace with coding that admin panel, which bundles multiple services and functionalities.

What is the team composition?

We have four full-stack developers and one test engineer at the moment. We’re in the process of adding two more people to their team.

How did you come to work with Program-Ace?

I met Program-Ace’s team at a conference, and I was confident enough from that interaction to select them for this work.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about €100,000 (approximately $112,200 USD) so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our collaboration began in October 2018 and remains ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Program-Ace has simultaneously helped us cut down on our backlog of tasks while improving the quality of our product. Their involvement has allowed us to dedicate more time to expanding our product’s features.

How did Program-Ace perform from a project management standpoint?

We recently invited them to Hamburg for a kickoff on a set of tasks—a meeting that was productive for our teams. They have integrated well with our in-house staff.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We experienced various problems working with freelancers prior to finding Program-Ace. They’ve set themselves apart by learning our system and proving that they can handle our complexity. That’s impressive in itself.

 Are there any areas they could improve?

Each team went through a growing process as we learned to work with each other. They are our first external team, so we’ve had to do our homework in terms of documentation and onboarding, but we’re now to the point where we’re happy with our processes and workflows. The quality of communication can always improve on both sides, but overall, Program-Ace is doing a great job.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

It’s important to let the provider know what to expect in terms of speed and quality and how each element can be affected by the other.

We have found it valuable to meet in person when we can. Those meetings have made it seem like we’re no longer working with strangers. We can put faces to the names, and we’re working more as a team.

Additionally, I would advise future clients to invest in high-quality communication technologies. We made the mistake in the first week together of using tools with poor connectivity, which became frustrating for both sides.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Bigpoint is a gaming company based in Hamburg, Germany, and we mostly do browser games. I’m the frontend lead developer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Program-Ace?

We were short on developers and needed our game to be transferred from Flash to Unity.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We already had a live working game that we gave to them as a blueprint for how it should look. They developed it in Unity, which is a technology and game engine. We also had them write C# code, then take our existing ActionScript code and rewrite it in Unity.

They're now helping out with new features for the game.

What is the team composition?

We had one senior developer and two associate developers working on the core features. Once the core features were completed, we scaled it down to two developers. There’s also a project manager.

How did you come to work with Program-Ace?

Our CTO knew them and gave their contact to me. We looked at other companies, but they seemed like a serious business. We interviewed some of their programmers to make sure they knew what they were doing and found them to be competent. Their prices are industry average and they deliver good quality.

How much have you invested with them?

110,000 euros [$136,000 USD].

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2017 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I’m satisfied with them and the quality. Everything works well.

How did Program-Ace perform from a project management standpoint?

Having a developer of theirs onsite for two weeks to train really helped establish a good working relationship. We have direct contact with the developers and if there are any problems, they have a project manager who is very helpful and responds very quickly. We use Kanban to manage the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They adopted the game’s features so they better fit the Unity technology. That was great because it gives better performance.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Everything is okay.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

For us, it was really helpful to have someone on site to get the product started. Once they were trained, they could instruct the other programmers.