SoftFormance

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

GIS Center is in Academia Sinica. It’s a research center for humanity and social sciences. I am a research assistant.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SoftFormance?

Because my project is almost based on Plone CMS, including some GIS spatial modules and based on the CMS [content management system] we tried to implement and include some useful modules and packages into the project. Some of them are throughout the site and some of them are the project-based technical integrations.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The CMS is a Python based software called Plone CMS. I’m also a Plone integrator. So I use this as a base to deploy on our projects. I needed a developer to help us implement some extra packages. They are all based on Python language. On our team, I am the most technical one and we have another colleague for digital design and requirement analysis. SoftFormance provided one to three people to help on our project.

How did you come to work with SoftFormance?

I found Vitalia on oDesk. He told me about a group of developers in his company. He told me their name is SoftFormance.

How much have you invested with SoftFormance?

More than $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them three years. We still work with them occasionally. Sometimes I can deal with the projects on my own. If the project size is bigger than I can handle, I will contract more tasks to SoftFormance.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

My experience isn’t much about recruiting the developer on oDesk. I find that Vitalia is one of the best developers I’ve ever met. Not only is the quality good, but the documentation is also good. That’s also important. We work together but separated. We communicate completely via email and documentation. Vitalia and his team are very responsive. The first version took one week. If the result is not perfect, that’s OK because we can do improvements. That’s what I want.

How did SoftFormance perform from a project management standpoint?

We use a program to track the progress of our requirements and also the local developers' time working. So when it’s done, we can calculate the working hours and track the rate. We can clearly find out the result and its corresponding working hour. Sometimes there are some small parts, so we can track them on the issue tracker. Sometimes I pay the money one or two months later, so the project management issue tracker is very important for us to track the project details.

What did you find most impressive about SoftFormance?

The responsiveness and the quality. I compare it with my other experiences. I find that Vitalia and his team will do what they say. Sometimes he’s busy and can’t deliver the work, but he will respond and we can reschedule. Every time I discuss requirements, we can iterate and communicate what is best for me, even though we don’t know the end result, yet.

Are there any areas SoftFormance could improve?

It’s not a problem, but SoftFormance is growing. The team members are paid by the hour, so they lose some flexibility. It’s a common situation for companies. For me, I need to make sure the project is on budget. For example, one time a project was in its early stages and so the budget was not predetermined. I thought he would maybe not charge for this requirement gathering stage, but he did. It’s OK. However, it’s not a common thing in our country. We had to pay for time spent gathering requirements. That was my first time experiencing that.