Sloboda Studio

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder of Orange Club, a fitness studio.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sloboda Studio?

Another company built our website but stopped working with them because the site wasn't working properly. The site had a lot of bugs and our reference links weren't working properly. We needed help from another company to fix the site.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sloboda Studio fixed a lot of bugs on our website as well as the issue with our reference links. Our website has a personal cabinet where people can work with our clients. It’s a diet diary where people can find what they eat during the day and work with their managers.

They also worked on the personal cabinet as well since it didn’t work properly.  Some objects were too close to each other and they fixed the design problems. The Sloboda Studio team helped redesign most of the side, adding video content to our business page and redoing the UI/UX. Now, their team helps with ongoing maintenance and support.

What is the team composition?

My main point of contact was a manager, who in turn put us in contact with a WordPress developer. All our technical questions were directed to the developer and payment questions were for the manager.

How did you come to work with Sloboda Studio?

We asked our friends which companies were good in our country and they told us about Sloboda Studio. We looked at other companies as well but Sloboda Studio was the best because they had the developers we needed. Not many companies work with a website that another company built and there weren’t many WordPress developers, but they did. We were very excited to work with them

How much have you invested with them?

We have invested than $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2020 and it's ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality of their work is really high. The platform works smoothly and runs without bugs. We effectively approached them with a non-functioning website. The bugs meant that it was constantly crashing. The developer understood our problems and made the site exactly how we wanted. Now, the platform is actually usable. If we find any bugs on our website, we text them and they fix them.

How did Sloboda Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

It's been great. We use text messages and video calls to communicate. They're really fast. Anytime I need them, they’re available even if it’s at night or on the weekend.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They work quickly. If I find a bug, I text them right away. By the next day, we’re working on the bug. It’s that fast. They remember our problems and are always ready to work with us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they have nothing to improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Everything was well done.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the CTO and sole developer of an IT startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sloboda Studio?

I needed a full-stack developer to help me develop an application.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, I contacted Sloboda Studio to discuss the position that I was looking for — I basically needed a developer who can focus on my app development needs. After screening through the profiles they provided, I chose one experienced resource and interviewed her. I also spoke with her manager and looked at some of the code work she’s done in the past.

Everything seemed good to me, so I was happy to onboard her. We started the development work in October, and we’re launching the product soon. She’s been working remotely since the start of our engagement.

What is the team composition?

My main point of contact before the app development was the team’s manager. He was the one who gave me the profiles of all the qualified resources for the role I was looking for. He also joined me during the onboarding meeting with the developer, whom I am now working with.

How did you come to work with Sloboda Studio?

They were referred to me by a former colleague who’s worked with them on several occasions. It seemed like a great recommendation, so I was more than happy to go with Sloboda Studio.

How much have you invested with them?

I’ve spent about $30,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in October 2020, and the development work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I’m responsible for reviewing the developer’s code work, and I can be picky in the entire process. I appreciate how she quickly applies all the edits and feedback that I relay to her — it pays a lot when someone you work with takes their time to internalize and apply your feedback so they can improve their work. That alone makes me happy.

How did Sloboda Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Google Drive to send codes and edits back and forth, and they also update me with weekly project reports. I don’t spend a lot of time looking at those because I’ve already established a good working relationship with the developer — I trust that she’ll provide me with the output I need. 

I get monthly invoices from Sloboda Studio when they check in regularly to ensure that the project is actually progressing. That’s basically all we have to do in terms of project management —  I don’t really need much from them in this aspect.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m happy to be working with a very devoted and responsible developer from Sloboda Studio’s team. She really handles my feedback well, and she cares about my vision and the product. Their admin team is also responsive when I ask for other resources to help me with other projects or tasks. With Sloboda Studio, I always get the right developers with relevant skills. They understand my tech needs, and that’s very important.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re doing a great job so far. It’s hard to spot an area for improvement.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Start by giving them a detailed description of what you’re looking for. Their team is pretty good at understanding all the technical aspects of their work, so that’s all they’ll be needing from you.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Short term rental business. I am the COO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired Sloboda in order to build our customized website and app. Our goals were to have a fully functioning and smooth website for users to use

SOLUTION

How did you select Sloboda Studio and what were the deciding factors?

Sloboda offers an expertise in this field and with their competitive pricing and high quality staff they were the ideal match for us

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

They designed and developed our platform. We send work flow charts for every aspect of the website and they build the software to match this

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

They have upwards of 7 staff members working with us. we have a project manager, back and front end developers, app designers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The process is still ongoing but so far we are very satisfied with the results. The team at Sloboda is constantly in communication with us and very efficient with their work.

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

Great. We have regular calls providing us updates on the project. Any issue they have they communicate immediately with us.

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

We love the time and dedication they commit to our project. They are always available for a call at a moments notice

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

We are content with the service provided

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m one of two Co-Founders at Limoo which is an online platform for contractors and temporary workers to find work in Australia.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Sloboda Studio?

We hired Sloboda Studio to build our web platform.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed an MVP to be built to then be able to show our idea to potential investors.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We used Clutch to sort through a number of development studios, talk to each and then decide on who to use. Sloboda were the most responsive and were able to help us form our idea.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Sloboda took my initial wireframes and then designed and developed our solution. We had twice weekly video conferences with our project manager. The team built our product using PHP in the backend and React on the front end hosted in AWS. They were able to offer the best technology and ideas from every member of their team as to extra features and changes to features which were really appreciated.

What was the team composition?

The project team had four people. A project manager, two developers and a designer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our business started from an idea and Sloboda has brought that idea to life. This is the starting block of our business. With the MVP completed we can now go and start bring companies on board to use it and contractors to find work for.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was fantastic. We had our twice weekly meetings and were always able to contact our project manager. We were let know if anything unexpected happened and had good timelines of when features would be completed. We used slack and Asana heavily and google hangouts for our video conferences.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The amount of communication and support that they provided.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We found everything up to our standards.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder of an on-demand ride-hailing company. Similar to other ride-sharing apps, we pick up passengers, but we use three-wheeled motor scooters and have employees instead of independent contractors.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sloboda Studio?

We originally hired them to build our driver and passenger apps.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We provided wireframes and documentation, and they completed full-feature development of our product. Using Swift, they created our iOS app. They also used Ruby on Rails for the backend that houses our data and supports different APIs, connecting the app to our database and other third-party services. This way, we can move data from one place to another.

What is the team composition?

At first, we had 4–5 people on our team, including a project manager, but we’re currently working with two developers and the project manager.

How did you come to work with Sloboda Studio?

They were referred to us from the first developer we worked with.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in August 2018 and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have a lot of reviews on the app store and all feedback has been positive. We have a stable app, stable backend, and a product that people love to use and keep coming back to. It’s truly a testament to the work they’ve done.

How did Sloboda Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

We work directly with the development team, which really fits our management style well. We use Slack for instant communication, Jira for bug tracking, and occasionally we use Google Hangouts or Zoom for face-to-face meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their reliability and consistency have had a significant impact on the project’s success. It can be challenging to work with an overseas team for a long period of time, but they’ve been responsive and have consistently delivered quality work for over a year now.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they’ve been really great.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s important to thoroughly document the requirements for any project, especially when working with an overseas team. A lot of things can be lost in translation, so you should detail project requirements and provide wireframes. The time you spend initially scoping out a project, the more money you’ll save in the long run.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We create online education products and top them up with massive niche offline events.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Sloboda Studio?

When we started our collaboration with Sloboda Studio, our main goal was to create a system to collect the payment data of our clients. We needed to create an admin panel, to house our customers' information. Another goal was to integrate the payment system.

What were your goals for this project?

We were in need of high speed system that would integrate payment functionality into our internal systems and work seamlessly with the rest of our complex eco system.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

The story started when we decided to create a Profit Group Consulting project. We didn’t choose the company to develop products for us, but we were looking for partners. When we met their CEO, Pavel Obod, and learned more about Sloboda Studio's expertise and experienced developers, we decided to collaborate and create a project for the IT service company's niche consulting.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

For the back-end, they used Ruby on Rails. Sloboda Studio developers also applied Active admin gems for generating administration style interfaces.

What was the team composition?

Sloboda Studio created a simple and useful solution and made the final product with minimal, yet valuable, resources. The whole team composition included one back-end developer and one project manager/QA.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

When we started our collaboration with Sloboda Studio, we needed our tasks to be completed on time. The team really exceeded our expectations—they completed the project in just one week. They also stayed in touch and made decisions based on practical experience, so you can be sure that people in Sloboda Studio know exactly what they are developing.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We like to maintain communication through each collaboration, and this is exactly why we made the right choice with Sloboda Studio. However, the project consisted only of one project manager and Rails developer.

During the development stage, the Sloboda Studio team used mostly GitLab for project management, in addition to coordinating stand-ups to share how the work was going. They always ask a lot of questions and propose their own solutions, so was pretty easy to arrange an efficient working process and perform the results up to deadlines.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The greatest aspects of Sloboda Studio are their experience and expertise. These allowed us to get the results ASAP, as the team not only has the experience but also provides excellent project management. This was really useful for us, as we needed to build clear communication and get an understanding of our technical and business goals.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nothing worth mentioning here. If I had any questions, we discussed them right away and choose an appropriate solution, so there is nothing really critical to be improved on at this point.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Veeqo, an e-commerce automation platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sloboda Studio?

We raised a lot of investment money in January, and there was a really short amount of time between the actual date when we were going to receive the funds and the date when we were scheduled to present to the investors. There was no chance that we could’ve expanded our team quick enough on our own to build the platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’re responsible for the core part of the e-commerce platform. They’re using Ruby on Rails, RabbitMQ, Sidekick, and JavaScript. The product already exists and is being used, but they’re helping with continued development. We’re automating large e-commerce businesses, specifically those who trade on Amazon, eBay, Shopify, and WooCommerce. We integrate with all of those platforms.

We also integrate with shipping couriers like USPS, FedEx, and DHL. Our product automates the entire lifecycle of an e-commerce order inside a large e-commerce business. The Sloboda Studio team is responsible for that part of the functionality, which comes after the order has been placed and shipped. Sometimes orders are returned, and other times there’s an inquiry from a customer asking where their order is. All of that has to be automated as well, which is what they’re working on.

What is the team composition?

There’s a team leader, who is a very experienced developer, and two other web developers. We treat them as we would our own in-house development department. The team hasn’t changed since we started.

How did you come to work with Sloboda Studio?

We started to search for an agency that could supply us with an established team, including a team leader, that knows how to work well with each other. We chose Sloboda Studio over all of the other teams because they appeared to be the best for us.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2019, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We hired them with the intention that they would be productive from day one, and that is exactly what happened. We’ve entrusted them with the core parts of our product, and they've developed high-quality components. They communicated with our other teams as well to make sure they weren’t doing anything wrong. We’re happy with what they’re doing for the price that they charge.

How did Sloboda Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

We treat them as if they were part of our own company. They’ve provided us a contact person in case we experienced any issues, but there wasn’t a single case when we had to contact that person. Everything that happens has been dealt with internally.

We provide a product owner who forms the backlog, and their team handles time estimates and functionality analysis. They measure their own productivity against those estimations. We use Jira to track estimates and the actual time spent on a ticket.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were extremely professional in how they reacted to both positive and negative feedback, and they always acted on our recommendations. I love that about them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

If there was anything we didn’t like, we talked to them like we would our internal team.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you rely on the leadership inside the team that you hire, everything will be okay. Sloboda Studio is known for having good leadership inside their team.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

TikkTalk is a marketplace software for interpretation services. It offers an open marketplace in which interpreters can create an account and receive assignments from anywhere in the world, allowing businesses to click a button and work with speakers of any language.

One of the main goals of our project is to help the refugee crisis. Many of the people coming here don't speak European languages, so clinics, hospitals, shops, police, and so on, can click a button on our app or website and have a direct video translation.

What is your position?

I am the Chief Executive Officer and a co-founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Sloboda Studio?

The business challenge was mostly economical; we couldn't afford to hire engineers in Oslo. I attempted to outsource in many different places, connecting to 29 different individuals in total in the last 4 months.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

We've come to have a team of 10 employed consultants, 8 of them being from Sloboda Studio. During tight deadlines, we employed as many as 10 people from Sloboda Studio. The frontend and backend of our website has been entirely built by Sloboda Studio. They used Ruby on Rails, as well as VueJS on the backend and frontend. Sloboda Studio used many third-party APIs like Google Analytics for tracking, which was integrated quite nicely. They integrated tools for SEO, CRM, analytics, ad-tracking, UX management and WebRTC purposes as well.

We use SendGrid for emails and we are deployed on Heroku, which Sloboda Studio managed as well. They're also in charge of quality assurance, using our specs for test coverage.

We have used Sloboda Studio for many other gems and open-source projects. In total, we have implemented 74 components, which is a normal figure for any open-source project.

Sloboda Studio built our initial minimum viable product and are now in charge of full development.

How did you come to work with Sloboda Studio?

I searched for Ruby on Rails booking system projects. I noticed that the quality of individual engineers on freelance websites was always questionable. They didn't always work alone, even though they presented themselves as individuals, instead of working for companies. As such, I didn't have a guarantee of always working with the same person. Instead of looking for freelancers, I looked for existing projects based on my stack, found the companies responsible for them and contacted each one. One of those was Sloboda Studio. I initially decided to give each one smaller tasks requiring 10-20 hours of work, mostly on the frontend, so that there was a better chance of actually using their output, instead of throwing it away. I hired an individual from Sloboda in mid-February 2016 for 2 weeks. He worked fast and well. I liked his quality, so I decided to add 2 more people for the backend, growing our team slowly to 8 people.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Sloboda Studio in February 2016. We launched an internal prototype after 4 months of development, which we tested with interpreters and businesses. The public product was launched last week, after an additional 4 months of development. We plan to cater more towards improving the product in order to provide better onboarding and an improved experience after the launch. We have a continuing relationship with Sloboda Studio.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Sloboda Studio implemented tests for the work on their own, without being asked. I appreciated that this was brought up. Sloboda Studio also came up with many good ideas by themselves, having open discussions with me, weeding through the bad ideas. I missed this approach from other agencies. I like being told when something is right or wrong. I did work with another agency in Poland which simply couldn't see the big picture, coming to waste a number of hours. This hasn't been the case with Sloboda. They've been very open and have also worked overtime on weekends and during late hours, when necessary. Sloboda Studio understood that we have a deadline, so they went above and beyond my expectations.

How did Sloboda Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

I have only been working with one person from Sloboda Studio for project management. She has been very good, following up well and helping convert ideas into tasks and schedules. For any engineering project, the schedule will never be as accurate as it should. We never finished anything exactly in the number of hours predicted, but we've always been able to release on the right date, even if with extra hours. I'm a coder myself, so I've always been able to push the work ahead.

What distinguishes Sloboda Studio from other providers?

Comparing Sloboda Studio with other agencies I've worked with, I can say that they've been able to understand why we are working on this project. Sloboda Studio understands us and our customers, and have built an amazing product for us.

I had our team from Sloboda Studio come to Oslo and spend 10 days on the project, which helped me explain our idea to them. They've come to understand the purpose behind our project and have come up with good ideas, helping me with planning and projections.

Is there anything Sloboda Studio could have improved or done differently?

Some of the members from Sloboda Studio could improve their English. They are taking classes, but this is still an issue. A bit more improvement on the frontend work would also be welcomed. This is partly due to the fact that we've prioritized backend tasks and only have one person working for frontend development.

UPDATED REVIEW

This review was updated on May 28th, 2019 by the client. New content is below. 

BACKGROUND

What have been some of the changes that the product has gone through?

We've worked with Sloboda Studio on the production and deployment of three marketplaces: TikkTalk, Home Services and Counseling Services.

The most significant change we've made has been splitting the product into separate parts for marketplace technology and the language company. Over the last three years, we've created a core engine for our three different marketplaces dedicated to language, career counseling, and home services. We built this entire package in partnership with Sloboda Studio.

Our three different companies run separately and independently. Our team developed the software for the core engine that runs a fourth company, while our subsidiary owns the marketplace engine. 

SOLUTION

Are you still one of the main contacts to collaborate with Sloboda Studio?

I'm the CEO of two of the companies. The other two businesses are my customers. They contracted the projects through me, and I am working on completing them with Sloboda Studio.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sloboda Studio is our company's largest software provider.

Has the team changed?

We've changed our product architecture and engineering processes within the last three years. Over that period, we've scaled up our team to 35 different people at its largest. 

Right now, we work with roughly 10–12 people from Sloboda Studios on documentation, QA, project management, software development, and almost every area of full stack development.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent more than $500,000 at this point.

What is the status of this engagement?

As long as the people are still at Sloboda Studio, we will continue working with them indefinitely.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Sloboda Studio is one of the few teams I truly trust. They've always done right by our business. I made it clear to them that I value the people on their team.  If they change companies, I would naturally move with them. I'm focused on the talent at Sloboda Studio.

Year-over-year, our revenue has increased by a factor of eight since we've integrated the new software on top of the technology platform we developed together. Our company has grown significantly with Sloboda Studio's support.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Sloboda Studio is the best team I've found in the industry.

Are there any areas they could improve?

My only suggestion would be to grow their team size and hire additional talented developers. I've encouraged developers I know to work for Sloboda Studio so I can hire them through the company. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there. 

I’m the CTO at Hudson Medical Group. We’re a multi-specialty medical practice with locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. Our facilities process about 50,000 patients visits per year.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sloboda Studio? 

We manage our practice with a series of administrative tools, including a custom CRM, a medical record system, and a patient-facing iOS app. However, we wanted to automate a bunch of these processes, which required further backend development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

We already had the basic MVP of our CRM, so Sloboda Studio was responsible for building out our system’s backend features using Ruby on Rails. 

To automate our administrative processes, the team focused on connecting our custom CRM, medical system, and iOS app together. They refined our APIs so that we could send data from our CRM to the medical system and vice versa (e.g., clinical outcome, patient appointments, emails), and they also enhanced our iOS app’s backend, which allowed it to connect to our medical system’s API.

Currently, all of the initial scope items are in production, but we’re still coming up with new features to build. They’re now working on SSL features to secure our tools.

What is the team composition?  

I work with a project manager and two engineers.

How did you come to work with Sloboda Studio? 

Sloboda Studio reached out to me on LinkedIn. Since I’m a Rails engineer myself, I was able to vet them and found them to be a great partner to work with. A couple of months later, they helped us with some of the basic integration work for our project, and we've worked with them since.

How much have you invested with them? 

We’ve spent about $15,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement? 

We started working with them in December 2018, and the engagement is ongoing. We liked their team so much that we decided to continue building more features with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I regularly review Sloboda Studio’s code in GitHub, and it’s been really great. They write clear code, develop excellent unit tests for us, and are great at looking at edge cases. If I ask them about a certain feature, they’ll go over all of the different edge cases that they’ve come across while reading the API documentation. Then, they’ll write out a well-structured email for us to discuss. 

How did Sloboda Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

The team hits our deadlines and communicates ahead of time if something will take longer than expected. We use a project tracking sheet, which gives us a lot of visibility on what’s being done at the moment, and they update their time estimates as we proceed through the sprint. As a result, we haven’t had any surprises.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Besides their excellent communication skills and transparency, I’m most impressed by how they think about problems. They’re able to conceptualize all of the edge cases before they build something rather than after. That’s been really valuable because we haven’t had to go in and discover unforeseen edge cases on our own.

Are there any areas they could improve? 

No, I can’t think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you have a clearly defined spec so that you can effectively communicate the intent of the project and the features that you want to build. That documentation helps Sloboda Studio come up with multiple solutions in case they see a potential problem.
 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of operations for StudySoup, an EdTech startup. Our marketplace enables university students to get paid for sharing their notes with classmates.

We provide a platform for naturally inclined, skilled notetakers to post and share documents with students who struggle to follow along in lectures or who might have missed a class. We pay the notetakers and resell their materials to classmates who need them. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sloboda Studio?

In recent years, our development resources have been somewhat limited. We’ve slowed down product development, and our developers have been focusing on a different project. We needed an outsourced team to take care of bug fixes and performance issues on our platform. 

Due to our marketing strategy, we acquire most student users at the beginning of the semester. Some of our channels were experiencing problems with data and loading times. The platform simply wasn’t prepared for hundreds of new users all at once. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our platform was initially built on Ruby on Rails, and Sloboda Studio has the specific development expertise to manage it. They started by resolving performance issues. 

Initially, we only requested backend development. We ended up needing frontend services as well. Sloboda Studio made frontend resources available for us right away, which was a great help.

What is the team composition? 

We mainly worked with one developer, Kostyantin (Ruby Developer, Sloboda Studio). We didn’t interface with the frontend developers. Whenever we needed another resource to support their developer, I was always amazed that they’d have one ready within 48 hours.

How did you come to work with Sloboda Studio?

A couple of agencies came highly recommended, but we also wanted to consider providers we hadn’t heard of before. We chose Sloboda Studio because they were extremely professional and offered great prices. They seemed like a team we would enjoy working with.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from December 2018–January 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Sloboda Studio alleviated all the performance issues. Hiring a domestic developer would have cost us 150% more for the same work. They accomplished the objectives we set, and their team worked hand-in-hand with ours. 

We’re really pleased we partnered with Sloboda Studio. Our budget was the only reason we couldn’t extend the contract.

The lead developer performed will in a challenging situation. We hadn’t used outsourced developers before and had high expectations for a startup.

How did Sloboda Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

One of the company’s principals attended our initial planning meeting. Alex (Project Lead, Sloboda Studio) wanted to make sure that the engagement met our expectations. Daily kickoff meetings included the lead developer from Sloboda Studio, myself, our company’s co-founder and CTO, and another external project manager. Even though this was a lot of people to manage, they did so very effectively.

We used the time zone difference between us to our advantage. When I’d start my day three hours before business hours began, I’d check Slack for questions from the developer. At that point, he’d have been online for six hours. We conducted code reviews and testing throughout the day. I sent instructions in Google Docs and videos that indicated where to focus. We held check-in meetings toward the end of his day, leaving him about an hour to resolve any issues before logging off. 

Rather than us having to adopt their communication practices, they were happy to use ours. We included them in our Slack teams. There wasn’t an excessive language barrier, and we talked through any misunderstandings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team is highly organized, accessible, and responsive. They answered all our questions. Sloboda Studio genuinely cared about completing our project at the price they quoted us. There were never hidden charges. I was quite impressed. If I needed to reach the COO, he’d respond on Slack within 20 minutes.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We required outside project management. I don’t recall if they offer those services, but they should consider doing so if they don’t already. They could provide a project manager and increase the rate by 25%.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If clients are based in the U.S. or Latin America, they should be empathetic about the time zone difference.  Having different schedules and locations poses challenges. Be understanding if a provider can’t work the exact same hours as you,

This type of engagement goes hand-in-hand with asynchronous collaboration, which can honestly be more productive. Constant communication can pose distractions. I suggest dedicating 30-60 minutes to answer questions, and putting a process in place for daily check-in meetings.