Ralabs

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Head of Sales and Strategy at ODSC. We host large scale Data Science conferences globally. I lead the corporate sales team.

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

With the pandemic hitting, in-person events disappeared from the map and many organizations were hosting virtual events with platforms that were "ok" but not to our standards.

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

We searched for a company that could help us build the next virtual conference platform and when we found Ralabs and their vast experience in a wide variety of projects we decided to go with them.

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

We had a kick-off meeting when we presented our project and what were our goals. After that, we presented a project plan with the requirements for the first MVP. Then we worked in bi-weekly sprints to make sure all priority requirements were in track.

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

A project manager was our primary POC. We also had 2 full-stack engineers, one front end engineer, a designer and a QA.

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

Clients and conference attendees have praised the user experience when using our platform. The look and feel of it has been also a point many people have enhanced.

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

We had a sprint planning call at the beginning of every week. Daily standups and one platform every other week. Timelines were always set realistically and if any delay would happen the Ralabs team would explain the situation and work thoroughly to deliver on time or the less delay possible.

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

It's very easy to work with an organization and team. They were very flexible and always willing to help. They really adapt to last-minute changes.

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

A few minor bugs appeared during the conference but they were promptly fixed.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a front-end lead developer at a startup. We are developing a highly innovative product in the facial recognition industry.

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

• Support with React Development. We hired a couple of developers to help us boost our software development process. The main goal was to launch the MVP fast and the team helped us with it.
• Also we were cooperating with the Project Manager to ensure smooth communication and great task management.

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

• A friend of mine recommended reaching out to Ralabs since they have proven to be a reliable and professional team.

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

• We have been working with React developers that were helping out with fronted tasks. Mostly we were working on the dashboard, login page and incorporating designs that UI/UX agency has provided us.
• The project manager Olha was taking care of the communication, task management and tracking the progress.

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

• 3 people have been involved. 2 Senior/Middle React Devs and a Project Manager.

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

Thanks to Ralabs team we were managed to release a great MVP in a short period of time. Our investors were pleased to see the outcomes so did the first users. Now were are getting ready to proceed with more complex functionality and we will ask Ralabs team to help us with it.

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

We had regular daily meetings, always on time. The team always were within the deadline. We used slack for written communication and hangouts for online meetings. All the tasks were tracked in Jira and supervised by the PM.

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

Being a human being. They were always trying to find the best approach, or a win-win solution to benefit us in the first place. Also, they are very professional to work with while also very friendly and easy to talk to.

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

all was good!

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the digital marketing director at a financial tech firm called InvestiNet. We simplify the debt collection process by automating it through software.

What challenge were you trying to address with Ralabs?

We needed someone to provide us with React software development and UI/UX design.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Ralabs uses a lean methodology to develop our web app through WordPress. They work in two-week sprints that start with UI/UX, which will eventually move into breaking down different items into time buckets and prioritization. From there, several aspects are implemented and further developed.

It’s fundamentally a payment portal, but we also incorporate different payment types and connect it to APIs and various systems — we also send information to Google products like Analytics through JavaScript.

What is the team composition?

Over the past year, we’ve worked with several front- and backend developers, DevOps engineers, UI/UX designers, and senior designers.

How did you come to work with Ralabs?

Our company was already engaged with Ralabs prior to me accepting this position. We’re continuing to work with them because we’re pleasantly surprised by the results they give us.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve invested somewhere close to $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The ongoing partnership with Ralabs started in January 2018.

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

The quality of their work is superb and as a result, we haven’t experienced any bugs or technical issues on our web app.

How did Ralabs perform from a project management standpoint?

We had some turnover where Ralabs had to bring in a new product manager, but the handoff was excellent, and the team continues to deliver and stay on top of our projects.

They manage the project through JIRA and we typically communicate through Slack and Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with how they manage the project because they don’t let anything slip. We also like how their UX designer is able to translate our weird and complex challenges into a great experience consistently.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have any constructive criticism at the moment.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would say hire them sooner rather than later.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a product manager at Utopic Software located in Tampa, Florida. We provide products to all forms of business, government, hospitals, schools, etc to keep their devices always up and running and have minimal downtime.

For what projects/services did your company hire Ralabs?

We hired Ralabs for Web Design (UI/UX) for our management console. Our current management console is very dated and we wanted to completely redesign it to make us more functional and easy to use for our customers.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to make sure that the user would have a better experience and ease of navigation on the new UI. We wanted to minimize the number of clicks and more visual information. Also, we wanted to add support for the UI/UX for phones and tablets so that customers can easily do the same functions on it.

How did you select this vendor?

We searched online and looked at the vendors that had used them in the past and felt that Ralabs was perfect for this project.

Describe the project in detail.

Once we started the project with Ralabs, we went over the current web management console. We went through the areas that we knew about where we needed to add improvements. Ralabs also performed interviews with some of our customers to get their feedback on what areas that they felt needed improvements.

Once we had all the feedback, Ralabs proposed few design options based on our and customer inputs. They provided pros and cons of all designs and we selected the design that we felt was best for our customers and our product.

What was the team composition?

We were assigned one project manager and two UI/UX engineers.

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

The project was completed successfully within the time frame. We are extremely happy with the new management console and the improvements that it will provide to our current and future customers. It will take some time for us to release this new management console to our customers but customers are really excited about this new management console.

The feedback from UI/UX engineers and giving their inputs based on their experience was very helpful to make this a very modern and easy to use web management console.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The communication was very clear and had weekly calls with the Ralabs team to go over completed functionality and the next steps. They brought up issues and possible solutions right away to make sure the project would not be delayed. Ralabs performed demo and completed functionality and provided their inputs as the project move forward.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We were extremely happy with the Ralabs team and their knowledge. They were extremely professional yet fun to work with. The communication was great and we were always looking forward to our weekly calls with the Ralabs team. We are very happy with how the project was handled and completed successfully.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We are fully satisfied with Ralabs work on this project and looking forward to working with them in future.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I oversee the software development of one of the products of our company.

For what projects/services did your company hire Ralabs?

We hired people from Ralabs to augment our software development team with frontend and backend developers.

What were your goals for this project?

The goals were to develop a product (web application) being able to use the data processed by our company and provide actionable insights to our customers for maximizing the profits from their business.

How did you select this vendor?

I had to conduct a series of interviews with the company's top management and their software engineers to see if they had the right talent to augment my software development team.

Ralabs' pitch was that they will provide us the top-performing talent and in case we claim anyone not being a good fit - they would provide alternatives with no questions asked and without impacting our project's deadlines. They were very motivated to be engaged in our project.

Describe the project in detail.

Once this vendor was selected for our project we had a series of interviews with the candidates submitted by Ralabs. I needed very strong senior software engineers into my team to develop the front-end and the back-end of the product.

What was the team composition?

We hired 2 front-end and 1 back-end developers from Ralabs with the plans to extend further our relationship.

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

The vendor's employees have blended into my team and quickly became an integral part of the team. They were part of all the scrum ceremonies actively contributing in every stage of the SDLC.

They were technically strong, producing deliverables with high quality and working transparently. There was no need to micromanage them and they quickly earned my trust and built the confidence that they will deliver the committed features on time.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

I had a dedicated delivery manager who was in continuous contact with me helping to make all organizational aspects of our collaboration go smooth. And it worked very well.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

This vendor has access to great talent and their services are reasonably priced. They work very hard to earn and maintain trusted relationships. They ensure a guaranteed quality of service and stick to their promises.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Since our requirements for the candidates were very strong and demanding, it took us some time until we have found the best fit. But it was worth it since the software engineers I got were of top-notch.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Head of Product at hromadske.ua

For what projects/services did your company hire Ralabs?

We hired Ralabs because we needed our website-embedded donation support system to be developed from scratch.

What were your goals for this project?

Hromadske.ua is a fully-independent media platform that takes no financial influxes from the media corporations or businesses. We are working for people and thus we are supported by people. Our goal was to have a user donation support system developed for our website.

How did you select this vendor?

Ralabs have successfully dealt with a complete overhaul of our website, having improved its workload, hosting capabilities, and user’s experience. We were highly satisfied with their work, so the decision to hire them again was not even questioned.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Our donation modules on Hromadske’s website required quite an improvement. The widgets that were used to attract the users’ attention and actually propel them into donating have been outdated and obsolete. So, we wanted to have them improved and polished as well, as having a separate donation hub for Hromadske.ua developed. We also required an enhancement of the visual framework of the donation tools which would make it easier for us to tell our customers about the benefits that a donation made can actually bring them like, for example, a subscription discount.

What was the team composition?

Ralabs have allocated 1 engineer, QA, PM, and UI/UX Designer to our project.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The system delivered by Ralabs helped us to engage hundreds of people to support Hromadske. As Hromadske is a non-profit organization, the development of the donut system for support was critical for us.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Ralabs manage their projects in a continuous manner. They start managing when you accept their proposal and do not stop until the maintenance phase is over.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They are dedicated to what they do and it can be seen. And yes, they take your projects seriously as if it was their own product.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I cannot think of any. Having shown dedication to what we’ve asked them to do, Ralabs did not leave any blank spaces in our confidence that they are a truly reliable partner.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of engineering at a health tech machine learning startup. Our focus is on combining data science with findings in the health domain. Basically, we aim to drive insights from clinical data.

What challenge were you trying to address with Ralabs?

We started creating a product that gave clinicians a dashboard for viewing the insights provided by our machine learning algorithms. As an example, if there was an increase in a certain type of caseload, this dashboard would allow a clinician or, more likely, the head of the department to explore what might be going on.

We came up with a prototype internally, and we needed to add a lot of functionalities that would support the clinicians. We needed Ralabs’ expertise to refactor it into a format that was more easily maintainable.

What was the scope of their involvement?

At first, we engaged Ralabs as an advisor, to consult and explore a few technology options T.hen, we had them rebuild the platform in the new tech stack. Ralabs is particularly fluent in WebAssembly, but also Python and any JavaScript-based languages. We talked about AngularJS and Vue.js versus React.js, and we ended up going with React.js after talking with them.

For the backend machine learning algorithm, we ended up using Python because our data scientists were more familiar with it, and they found out that the models we were running would run less efficiently in WebAssembly. It was worth the extra work to do it that way. We hosted it on Google Cloud Compute. Ralabs also helped us a lot with DevOps, because we weren’t familiar with deploying something at scale. 

The platform is a web application that’s also formatted for mobile use. The more exploratory parts of it function as a web app. Once a clinician figures out what they’re more interested in, it’s pretty easy to pull up the information on their mobile phone in-between rounds or when they have a bit of time to review it.

Ralabs also had a designer look over the solution, and gave us a lot of good suggestions for UI improvements.

What is the team composition?

I worked with Andrew (CEO) and several of their developers. I also worked with one of their product managers, a designer, and a DevOps person for a little bit. One of the nice things about using them is that we could use some of their resources for a limited time on an as-needed basis, and didn’t need to hire full-time employees. That also made vetting easier.

How did you come to work with Ralabs?

I think it was through a referral from a friend.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost was $14,000–$15,000. It was a pretty small project, but we added on a bit of work as we went.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Ralabs in Q1 of 2019, and we wrapped everything up about three months later.

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

They were on time most of the time, more than any other set of developers I’ve used before, and even more than our internal team. That was really nice, and also pretty rare.

As far as code goes, Ralabs adhered to modern Python and JavaScript standards. Their quality and style were fantastic. If we told them that we needed to do it another way, they would adhere to it pretty quickly, within a few days. They also gave us some advice on good branching and deployment strategies, and we adopted those in accordance with their advice. It was great to incorporate them into our team and quickly execute on the goals we had.

How did Ralabs perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Jira, which we were already using internally. Originally, Ralabs had a project manager work with us to make sure everything was up to date, but we eventually decided that they’d just adhere to our project management. We stopped using their project manager about a week into it. Throughout the project, they were pleasantly fast with getting everything done, and pleasantly on time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They did a good job of advising us on what to do when it was relevant to do so, but they also communicated and listened to what we’d already learned. There were things that we knew about the domain that they didn’t, and there were things that they knew about development and deployment that we didn’t. They did a good job of working together with us and keeping us in the loop, whether it was through Slack or email. 

Aside from technical hard skills, they were also really good about being on time for meetings. They’re based in Ukraine, but they were still available in accordance with our time zone. We engaged them with the expectation that we’d have a couple of hours of overlap per day, but they were certainly more available than that. 

The Ralabs team woke up earlier and stayed up later, especially when we needed it. There were a couple of times when we needed something at what would’ve been the middle of the night for them, and, even though their developer was at home, he responded on Slack.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything that stands out, in terms of huge problems. It was a relatively small project, but they did a good job with it. They were great technically, which was pretty obvious from the get go. 

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Ralabs can do more than just being an execution shop. I’d definitely recommend that people talk to Andrew, show him the problem they’re trying to solve, and listen to him for 10–15 minutes, to see if he identifies anything similar or relevant. 

We’ve worked on quite a few projects, and it was nice to learn from them in the beginning what was relevant. Andrew was really helpful in detailing some of the things he’d seen, and what he’d do in those situations.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of Startup Codeworks

For what projects/services did your company hire Ralabs?

Web Development for a Recruitment Platform

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to build and improve our platform's workflow and user interface, as well as identifying and fixing the system's vulnerabilities, and the issues not identified/fixed by the previous vendors.

How did you select this vendor?

We met Ralabs’ representatives at a tech conference and since then we have been in regular communication with the company’s sales rep. Given the quality failures of the previous vendors we were skeptical at first but we decided based on other clients reference checks to give it a try. The results were very good. . The expertise of the team matched, and some cases exceeded ,our expectations. We engaged a team of Ruby developers for backend development, front-end developers, and also helped us with advanced AWS configuration such as load balancing and security auditing.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Our pivotal requirement was improving the platform’s user interface and updating the system’s workflow. They were tasked with designing and developing both the UI/UX and backend of the platform. Additionally, their team helped us rewrite and update our existing RoR framework. They also replaced our platform’s outdated interface with a much more modern design.

What was the team composition?

3 engineers, 1 product manager, 1 QA, 1 designer

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

They helped us improve the operational performance of the platform and built a user-friendly and responsive interface. This was instrumental as it allowed us to showcase to our client that we were employing the latest designs, libraries, and frameworks. As of now, Ralabs has accomplished more than four projects for us and the quality of the final product has always been very satisfactory.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was as expected. We utilized the agile methodology with weekly sprints and reviews and daily scrum meetings. They employed task tracking and reporting software and followed project management best practices and kept us well informed on milestones etc. The team has always been quick to answer any questions and overall were insightful and incredibly helpful. The company management was also very attentive and checking in with us weekly to ensure the project was on track and within our budget parameters.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Excellent technical expertise. Many companies have strong programmers like RaLabs but they also had some excellent software architects. Getting that right can have a massive positive impact on the development cycle of projects. Also, they didn’t steer us into a partial technology just because they had expertise in it. They were very thoughtful and worked with us to find the right technology for the problem at hand. They also had a good bench of full-stack developers which is often hard to find.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There’s always room for improvement even at the best of companies. We would like to see them continue to grow their data engineering team since they had a deep bench of developers and designers but sometimes we had to wait a few days to avail of their data architect who was in high demand. Overall It was our pleasure to work with Ralabs and we recommend them highly!

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a partner at a hospitality company that provides online education for hospitality. We are currently in the pre-launch stage.

What challenge were you trying to address with Ralabs?

We hired Ralabs to develop the backend for our corporate website, which is supposed to present our services.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had the frontend ready. We then did the initial design and programming, and we were supposed to adopt the backend. We worked on a time and material basis. When we received the invoice for the last sprint, the amount of time spent looked suspicious.

We asked them to check it and the developers said that it was fine. We then notified them that we would carry out an audit, and they confirmed and asked for a few days to prepare some comments. 

After accepting their request, they asked for two more days every week for two months. Ralabs then told us that they wouldn’t provide access to the code to carry out the audit. They wanted us to make the payment first and then they would give us access to code to audit it.

Because of this, we lost our booking with the auditing company and we couldn’t explain to our partners and investors why our development company kept asking for an extension on a weekly basis, and Ralabs couldn’t explain it either. 

We then carried out the audit with multiple auditing companies using time logs and the CMS, and it showed that the time was increased on average by 3–4 times for the last sprint. We also evaluated the whole project and came to the conclusion that 6–8 times more time was spent on development than necessary.

We did extensive research and talked to companies worldwide, asking them for their estimates. None of them could come close to explaining how we ended up spending that much time on this project.

What is the team composition?

Our main point of contact was Roman (CTO & Co-Founder) and we worked with 3–4 developers. Throughout the process, we were in touch with Roman and he was very nice and easy to talk to. However, we had a different experience with Andrew (CEO) who was unwilling to listen to us or negotiate.

We tried to go through friendly negotiation stages and even engaged mediators who we covered financially. During the 2-week timeframe we had allocated for negotiations, the CEO couldn’t find time to talk to us although he knew the project was on hold and we needed to solve it asap as we were losing time and money.

How did you come to work with Ralabs?

Our design partner, who we are very happy with, had experience working with Ralabs and recommended them. So, we thought that it would be easy for us to work with them too. 

How much have you invested with them?

We paid $20,000. We didn’t cover the last sprints because we wanted to check the work.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from April 2019–May 2020. We told them we would be doing the audit in February 2020 and it was in April 2020 that we asked them to provide an explanation for why they kept playing for time and avoiding the audit.

We tried to be patient with them, believing that they would eventually give us access but, in May 2020, they said they wouldn’t do that.

Describe the impact this engagement has had on your business.

We will have to redo the whole project as the quality was low. We were supposed to have the project done by March 2020, but now it’s on hold. Additionally, we don’t have a website because everything is in the hands of Ralabs. Due to all of this, our relationship with our partners and investors has worsened. 

We lost money, time, and our relationship with investors because of Ralabs. Our company has also experienced financial losses not only because of the standstill when we still have to pay salaries and cannot operate, but also because we paid for auditing services and for mediators to carry out friendly negotiations that didn’t end up happening because the team couldn’t find a time to talk to us. 

After doing research and estimations, we discovered that we can redo what we have now with dozens of other companies within 3–4 weeks. Overall, we’re in a very bad position because of this. We trusted the recommendation that we got and we didn’t do many checks while we were hiring them.

How did Ralabs perform from a project management standpoint?

The project managers on our side had to spend more time on the project because Ralabs’ project managers had missed certain information or had forgotten to transfer it to IT. Most of the bugs that needed to be corrected had to be repeated 3–5 times.

Everything was perfectly fine up until we requested to carry out the audit. The team wasn’t able to meet deadlines. When we were adopting the backend to the new design, it took them three times longer than originally planned.  

Is there anything that the vendor did well or that you would consider a strength?

The CTO did his best to negotiate, but we understood that he didn’t have a say in this situation.

In what specific areas can they improve?

I would suggest that they don’t treat customers like this, cheat, or play for time in the manner that we experienced. Ralabs knew that they put us in a bad position when they did this. If they know that they’ve done something wrong, they should just be honest about it, talk to their clients, try to understand their position, and not avoid it.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be careful and understand that you won't be able to check the work provided. The whole experience ended up being a nightmare from a business point of view.

This review was updated by the client on July 10, 2020. The original star ratings were: Overall - 0.5, Quality - 2, Schedule - 1, Cost - 0.5, NPS - 0.5. New content is below:

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had two scopes of work with the developer - both involved backend work. The first sprint went fine and according to the schedule with a fixed price approach. For the second one, we were supposed to adopt the previously developed backend to an updated design working on a time and material basis.

Our expectations were that the second sprint would go as efficiently as the first one went and at some point, we relaxed the control over the situation. This eventually led to misunderstandings and different views on how the work should be done and how long it should take.

The whole situation generated confusion between our companies and we decided to find another developing company to proceed with.

What is the team dynamic?

Our main point of contact was Roman (CTO & Co-Founder) and we worked with 3–4 developers on an ongoing basis. Throughout the process, we were in touch with Roman and he was very nice and easy to talk to.

Although, initially, we found it hard to come to an agreement with Andrew (CEO) we want to acknowledge that he eventually heard us and put a lot of effort into communication.

We resumed our negotiations efficiently, and we are pleased to confirm that Ralabs showed respect to our circumstances, and they agreed to satisfy our requirements and compensate for our expenses.

How much have you invested with them?

We paid $16,000

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in April 2019 and the disagreements arose in April 2020. In June 2020, we terminated the collaboration in a friendly manner without any claims from either side.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How did your relationship with the vendor evolve?

We have gone through different stages in our relationship. As in any collaboration, we had periods when everything moved smoothly and periods when complexities or misalignments in understanding, views, or approaches between our team arose.

While we decided it was best for both teams to stop the engagement, we are pleased with the fact that the termination went smoothly and based on the future interests of both our project and Ralabs'.

How did Ralabs address the challenges that arose?

Despite misunderstandings and lack of efficiency in the negotiations at the outset, in the end, Ralabs' management team demonstrated a willingness to collaborate and to take into consideration the difficulties and long-term interests of the client. Eventually, we came to a mutual agreement that satisfied all of our interests.

Describe the impact this engagement has had on your business.

We decided to redo the project as the speed and approach appeared to be unsuitable for our needs.

As a result of the incomprehension and lack of efficient communication with Ralabs, we have gone through a difficult and burdensome period of keeping the project on hold and having complicated relations with investors and partners.

However, we want to commend Ralabs' efforts in resolving the generated complexity between our companies. We have seen the transformation in attitude and approach from their management.

I am sure that both of our teams have emerged from this crisis being wiser and more attentive. Eventually, Ralabs navigated this situation with a focus on long-term relations and the client’s interests.

How was project management handled?

The project managers on our side had to spend more time on the project because occasionally information was missed or not transferred in a timely manner to respective managers. Even though we terminated the partnership, Ralabs consented to fix the bugs.

Is there anything that the vendor did well or that you would consider a strength?

Roman, the CTO did his best to negotiate throughout the collaboration. The CEO demonstrated an ability to adapt, pay attention, and stand up for the long-term interests of both his company and his client.

In what specific areas can they improve?

We suggest that Ralabs pay attention to customer dissatisfaction at earlier stages and be more transparent in their communication. This is a good lesson for both of us and I'm sure this situation will not be repeated with new clients. We are glad to have ended this collaboration with mutual respect and understanding.

What advice do you have for clients with similar needs to yours?

Discuss everything with more attention, and clear out confusion or unexplained issues right away. Additionally, be clear and insistent in explaining your position and arising complications if you have any.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a UX designer and also the CCO of Talck. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Ralabs?

We thought of a concept that would give housing corporations and their tenants better communication between one another. Our team needed to develop a platform that would realize our concept.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I designed the whole platform, and we wrote technical documentation together. Then, we had two sessions to determine the best approach for developing the app. That allowed us to figure out what kind of timeline and staffing would be appropriate. Eventually, we chose a technical direction. From there, they took on all the development work for the solution. They used Ruby on Rails on the backend as well as React and Angular on the frontend.  

What is the team composition?

We had a project manager, a frontend developer, a backend developer, a DevOps developer, and another resource. They weren’t all full-time, but we did have five of their team members assigned to the work. 

How did you come to work with Ralabs?

I’d worked with their team in the past and had a great experience with them. Initially, I met them at a conference. They were kind and professional, and I appreciated our chats. We sent out proposals to multiple agencies to see what ideas they had for the work.

They were easily the winner due to their professionalism, willingness to think ahead, and their affordable price points. After selecting them the first time, we had a great collaboration. I never thought about hiring anyone else for the work.  

What is the status of this engagement?

We collaborated from January–November 2019.  

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

We’re running a pilot test with one client and 1,000 houses. The solution is fully-functioning, and both parties are using it for communication. We haven’t had any issues—it’s working flawlessly and as expected.  

How did Ralabs perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re always standing by to help us. We planned the project in Excel and worked closely with them to make sure we were both on the same page. Sometimes deadlines weren’t hit, but everything we needed was there on time. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re always pushing us to improve the product. We can take comfort in knowing that they won’t be building the solution blindly because they’re always asking the right questions. They think along with me to ensure that the quality is high. Their technical approach is also well-developed. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Sometimes deadlines weren’t made. Although they always clearly communicated when this was going to be the case, it would be nice to have clearer estimates at the beginning of a project.