SoftwareMill

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Intelli Messaging lets users cost-effectively build mobile communication into their business processes for either marketing or operations. We work with app providers, telecommunication services companies, and large businesses. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SoftwareMill?

We offer the technology to deliver simple or complex messages reliably. Our services include SMS API gateway services with full customer account management, re-brandable end-user SMS messaging applications, and mobile and web CMS services.

The volume of messages we were routing for customers was about to extend past the capacity of our existing system. We especially needed to maintain an excellent level of service for customers by addressing our high throughput and availability requirements. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SoftwareMill was engaged to develop a new bulk-messaging gateway that met our expectations for messaging volume, throughput, and availability. This included software design and development, testing, deployment, support, and project management for the new gateway system.

How did you come to work with SoftwareMill?

While researching technologies for the new system, I came across articles by SoftwareMill. After initial discussions, I soon realized that SoftwareMill had the right technical expertise and a well-developed understanding of our challenges. I had also come across (and used) a number of active open-source projects that were contributed by SoftwareMill staff. That really set them apart to us and made me feel that we were engaging the right people for the job.

What is the status of this engagement?

The initial deployment took approximately 8 months. Over the next 3 ½ years, SoftwareMill enhanced and handled increasing volumes of traffic. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

By the end of the engagement, the gateway SoftwareMill had developed was carrying the overwhelming bulk of our messaging with higher levels of throughput and much better availability.

What did you find most impressive about SoftwareMill?

Due to the nature of the problem domain, we required early quantifiable results for any of the technology under consideration. SoftwareMill met this challenge and provided an excellent methodology for testing and verifying performance characteristics. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing director of a mobile app development studio based in Silicon Valley, California. We focus primarily on iOS, Android, and connected TV applications. Our industry focus is typically media entertainment.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SoftwareMill?

We were looking to supplement our engineering staff in Silicon Valley, primarily for server-side technology. All of our resourcing engagements have involved adding members from an external supplier's team to supplement our internal development teams. However, most of our client-side mobile application development has been done with local resources. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve had SoftwareMill work on a number of projects over the years, with a primary focus on server-side developments. In the media and entertainment industries, there’s quite a bit of metadata processing that needs to take place—importing various streams from different data providers, creating APIs that can be accessed from the mobile applications for that data, etc. They’ve been responsible for that on a number of projects. For instance, there’s a pretty extensive process around importing images related to TV and other media. We’ve had them work on projects to auto import, crop, and scale images on the server as well as work on facial recognition solutions. They make that available through APIs to improve the performance of the bandwidth required for mobile apps. They’ve also done a lot of work for us around user account management—security, log-on, authentication—the types of requirements that are needed for mobile apps. They’ve also done server management for us. We’ve looked at scalability, performance and optimizing performances of certain APIs when we see issues.

How did you come to work with SoftwareMill?

I’ve been working with the principal, Adam Warski, and his team since about 2010. Once we got in contact, we were impressed by the quality of their resources. They’re based in Poland, but I found them to be on par with local resources we could find in Silicon Valley. In some cases, they surpass the available resources due to the demand here.

How much have you invested with SoftwareMill?

We have invested nearly $500,000 a year with SoftwareMill.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with some of their resources since about 2010.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I don't have any quantifiable stats. Their projects have been on time and within the agreed upon budget, and I haven't had any issues with major delays or cost overruns. They work well in a remote environment, working on their own initiative and coming up with creative solutions without a lot of hands-on management. We’ve had pretty consistent results on all the projects we’ve assigned them.

How did SoftwareMill perform from a project management standpoint?

We interview their resources before they come on board, taking recommendations from the senior team. We try to target more senior resources within SoftwareMill like those who have 5-years or more of Scala development experience. That’s worked out for us so far, but those resources don't come up often.

They’re the only offshore company I've worked with, and I've had good luck in terms of communication and working with them. There haven't been any language barriers or issues I've encountered that have led us down the wrong path. I have worked primarily with local resources to supplement the team.

We’ve used almost every platform to manage our projects. We tend to use the tool used by the customer, everything from JIRA to Basecamp. They work well in that environment. It’s actually pretty effective when we’re tracking tickets and they’re replying to specific issues. I’d say their preference is JIRA, but they’ve been pretty flexible about working with different VPNs and messaging clients.

Are there any areas SoftwareMill could improve?

I haven't had any issues. They’ve been very professional.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with SoftwareMill?

The time zone challenge needs to be taken into consideration if you're US-based, but it’s worked out well for us. Most of our communication either has been early in the morning or toward the evening. In some ways, it’s improved our efficiency in that we can almost have a 24-hour development cycle. We queue up our requirements in the day, pass them on, and then see their progress the next morning in Pacific Time when we continue the engagement. There’s a bit of process required to work with a remote development firm in a different continent, but that’s not necessarily unique to SoftwareMill.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We're a mobile-app development studio based in Silicon Valley, California. We are primarily focused on iOS, Android, and connect-to-TV applications, specifically ones for media and entertainment.

What is your position?

I am the managing director of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with SoftwareMill?

We were looking to supplement our engineering staff in Silicon Valley, primarily for server-side technology development.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

SoftwareMill has provided additional resources for our projects, primarily for server-side Scala development. In the media and entertainment industry, there is a lot of metadata processing which needs to take place—importing various streams from different data providers and creating APIs which can be accessed from mobile applications. SoftwareMill has been responsible for this over a number of projects, working on everything from metadata for TV and media, schedule data, and image importing.

One of our projects involved auto-importing images, cropping and scaling them, and providing face detection through APIs, improving the performance and bandwidth requirements for the mobile app.

SoftwareMill has also done a lot of work for us around user account management, security, login authentication, and so on, in order to meet mobile-app requirements. They've worked on server management, also looking at scalability and performance and optimizing certain APIs when we identified issues.

We are involved in interviewing resources before they come onboard. SoftwareMill does take recommendations for the senior team. We've tried to target resources with more than 5 years of experience in Scala development. Typically, when we needed resources from them, SoftwareMill made someone available. They have a large pool of talent which we've drawn from.

How did you come to work with SoftwareMill?

I have been working with SoftwareMill's principal, Adam Warski, since 2010, preceding my current company. Once I had a chance to work with SoftwareMill's team, we were very impressed with the quality of the resources. The company is based in Poland, but I found them to be on caliber with developers in Silicon Valley, in some cases exceeding them.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The cost of our work with SoftwareMill is north of $500,000 per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

I have been working with SoftwareMill for 5 years. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Qualitatively, SoftwareMill has always hit projects on time and on budget. There have been no issues around major delays or cost overruns. SoftwareMill works well in a remote environment, coming up with creative solutions without a lot of hands-on management. Most of our engineers have been on a senior level, so the results of our work have been consistently high.

How did SoftwareMill perform from a project management standpoint?

We haven't found any major setbacks in working through different time zones. I've worked with a number of their resources and always had a good experience. Adam Warski has been one of our engineers for the duration of our collaboration, but I've worked with a handful of other developers, as we needed to ramp-up.

We tend to use the customer's tracking tool, so we've gone through everything from JIRA to Basecamp. SoftwareMill works well in this environment, and they are effective at replying to tickets and resolving issues. I would say that their preference is JIRA, but SoftwareMill has worked with various project-management and messaging tools.

What distinguishes SoftwareMill from other providers?

SoftwareMill is the only offshore company I've used, so I don't have a good comparison. I've had very good luck in terms of communication in their case. There have been no language barriers or other issues to lead us down a wrong path.

Is there anything SoftwareMill could have improved or done differently?

I haven't had any issues with SoftwareMill. The time zone challenge needs to be taken into consideration by any US-based firm, but most of our communication with SoftwareMill has either been early in the morning or towards evenings. In some ways, it's improved our efficiency to have an almost 24-hour development cycle. We can gather up requirements during the day, pass them on, and see progress the next morning. It's a particular process to work with a development firm from another continent, but this is not unique to SoftwareMill. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a software company offering a CCM [customer correspondence management] correspondence management product. I am the Vice President of Development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SoftwareMill?

We are redesigning and architecting our product for new markets, as well as adding new types of products to our line.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

SoftwareMill provided software design, architecture and development services for our company.

How did you come to work with SoftwareMill?

I went through some of the software components which we wanted to use for our new product and found that SoftwareMill was a contributor for some of them. I contacted all contributor companies and described our requirements. SoftwareMill seemed to have the right team and references for our work.

How much have you invested with SoftwareMill?

The total cost of the project is over one million dollars of which Softwaremill is a part. This is a multi-year effort.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have been working with SoftwareMill for a little over a year. We have an ongoing project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I am extremely satisfied with SoftwareMill. They have moved at a faster pace than any team that our company has used and accomplished a great deal more in one year than we ever  have with any other vendor.

How did SoftwareMill perform from a project management standpoint?

We utilize an Agile methodology. SoftwareMill presents the accomplished work every 2 weeks. SoftwareMill has mostly worked off-site, but we collaborate on a daily basis.

What did you find most impressive about SoftwareMill?

SoftwareMill is extremely adept at picking up new ideas and implementing them. SoftwareMill has always found a solution to our problems and never refused us, which I find unique.

Are there any areas SoftwareMill could improve?

Poland has a long hiring process, so when we need to add someone new to the team, it will usually take SoftwareMill a while to hire and bring in new resources, if there isn't someone on the bench already. SoftwareMill is extremely choosy about whom they bring in, and very good at hiring, but the Polish law imposes a 3-month delay for the hiring process.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with SoftwareMill?

Clients should listen to SoftwareMill's advice on how to run projects, and how to design and develop products. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We sit between people who automate their supply chains, in terms of negotiating product prices and so on, and the providers of said products. Our company provides an intermediary state by which any data the client has, in whatever format, can be sent to us and be mapped to what is needed at the other end of the transaction. Many of these business processes will involve multiple message exchanges involving requests for X amount of a product and confirmations of those requests. We have automated the process all the way up to invoices. Anything that requires human interaction in done through the clients' dashboards.

Since we are an intermediary, we can interact with smaller suppliers that don't have an automated system. While our new platform doesn't provide this yet, there are applications that pretend to be an automated system, but are essentially just a web application.

What is your position?

I am the UI/UX [user interface/user experience] team manager. SoftwareMill is technically part of our UI/UX team. Their focus is taking UI designs and building the software from there.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with SoftwareMill?

We were working on a next-generation platform for our company, for which we hired SoftwareMill.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

SoftwareMill built our platform using a web framework of Scala called Lift. They also used HTML, JavaScript – particularly the jQuery and Knockout libraries – and CSS.

They became involved fairly early in the process, and they've proven to be indispensable to us. Because we have a small team, we don't have much time for hand-holding, so we rely on people to be self-sufficient. Whenever we assign tasks, their team needs to come to us with any questions they may have about the details we supply. SoftwareMill has shined in this respect. They take in the high-level view of the task and get input in terms of design, after which they work through the entire stack, from back-end to front end. They ask the right questions and ultimately build something that does what it should do. Not only this, but they produce high-quality code.

How did you come to work with SoftwareMill?

I started working with the company after they had been hired, so I'm not sure how they were found.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them for between three and four years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

SoftwareMill has been involved in developing most of the key components of our system, either by providing code reviews or by building entire components. They've had a deep contribution to our existing code base, especially the front-end parts of it.

We're in the process of migrating our customers to the new system. So far, we've only gotten good feedback about the UI in terms of how things look and feel. The platform is in stark contrast to our old one. We haven't experienced any significant bug reports. The system is very stable. We do receive enhancement requests, though.

How did SoftwareMill perform from a project management standpoint?

For most of our collaboration, we've employed an open-ended arrangement. We typically ask SoftwareMill to jump on more urgent tasks, meaning that they need to change gears from what they working on at the moment. Regardless of what they're doing, they're generally timely and produce high-quality outputs in terms of features and actual code.

We've implemented Targetprocess internally for project tracking, so SoftwareMill uses it like everyone else. We also use Flowdock, which is a team chat tool. Approximately 98 percent of our interactions are done through it.

What distinguishes SoftwareMill from other providers?

Their quality and communication skills are consistently impressive, both in terms of actual work and when it comes to interacting with us, drafting contracts and so on. I don't have much visibility into the latter processes because they are managed by our vice president, but what I have seen has been high in terms of professionalism. If we could have hired SoftwareMill as our employees, we would have done it four years ago. They are a very well-structured organization, and they have a collaborative approach to helping each other grow within their firm, so they're not interested in becoming our full-time employees.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Vice President of Milton Essex

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

AI driven medical devices for imaging skin prick testing

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SoftwareMill to accomplish?

• Verification of existing PoC solution. 
• Providing explainability methods (XAI) for visual inspection of system prediction justification. 
• Development of alternative ROI (Region of Interest) classification model. 
• Design of overall system architecture for whole system.

SOLUTION

How did you find SoftwareMill?

Referral

Why did you select SoftwareMill over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Referred to me

How many teammates from SoftwareMill were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

The work carried out on the XAI of the previously developed ML model. The project provided an insight into the architecture of the ML model and its necessary corrections, in particular with regard to the input data to the model. This has simplified the data acquisition process and eliminated the drawbacks affecting the model's correct prediction process.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• AUC (Area under Curve) for image classification methods 
• F1/Precision/Recall for identification of occurrence of allergic reaction. 
• Invariance of model predictions to small input perturbations (indicated by XAI) 
• Insertion/Deletion scores for evaluation of XAI methods

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

Items delivered on time.

What was your primary form of communication with SoftwareMill?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Their understanding of the subject matter of the tasks and their commitment was impressive.

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

Documentation and a report on the task performed can be better organised.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the Director of Product of a financial services company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Wealth management technology

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SoftwareMill to accomplish?

• Expand the interface for rebalancing portfolios
• Build a task management tool
• Digital account opening

SOLUTION

How did you find SoftwareMill?

Referral

Why did you select SoftwareMill over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from SoftwareMill were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Built tools for (1) automated portfolio rebalancing and (2) task management. SoftwareMill was provided with designs and product requirements for both of these projects. SoftwareMill designed the engineering solution with oversight from our in-house engineering team, and then implemented the front and back end for these tools. Our team was very happy with the quality of the work and communication between our teams.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Successfully built portfolio rebalancing and task management tools which continue to be used in production today.

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

Their project management and communication skills are strong. Well-scoped projects were delivered on time, and when projects needed timeline extensions, communication was prompt.

What was your primary form of communication with SoftwareMill?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Communication was strong. The team was also good at absorbing domain knowledge and being thoughtful in designing engineering solutions.

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

No significant complaints.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Director of machine learning at EXINI. The company develops software as medical device. Foremost within prostate cancer diagnostics.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire SoftwareMill?

We were in the research phase of a project and needed to explore the possibility to use AI for prostate lesion detection.

What were your goals for this project?

There are many ways to address the challenge and we needed some extra help in narrowing it down and evaluating different solutions.

SOLUTION

How did you selectSoftwareMill?

We went with SoftwareMill simply because we have had very good experience with them in the past. We know we would get highly skilled consultants.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

Work tasks involved were, developing, evaluating and testing various deep learning models. Also performing in depth analysis of performance in terms of memory and cpu optimization. Every step needed to be thoroughly documented since the result might be used as a base in a medical device.

What was the team composition?

We went with just on consultant and he was part of the team from start to finish in this project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

During this projects duration I never got a missed deliverable from softwaremill and the responsibility the consultant showed was impressive with coming up with own ideas on how to move forward and flag when something was heading the wrong direction.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We work in 2-3 week long sprints with daily meetings and this suited very well with the fact that softwaremill was working remotely. End overall result was good but that is irrelevant in our case since it was on a research level.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Even if we had a bad outcome the work that was done on the way was really good.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CTO for real estate investment platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired SoftwareMill to help us deliver new features on a very tight schedule.

SOLUTION

How did you select SoftwareMill and what were the deciding factors?

I have always wanted to work with SoftwareMill as they are well known JVM experts.

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

They refactored large parts of the system to DDD-like architecture which decoupled the components and made implementing new features easy.

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

There were 3 people from the vendor's team, including a 2 senior developers and tester. Other resources would come and go depending on the project needs

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Easily extendable, well tested and lowly coupled components.

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

We communicated through Skype, Slack and email.

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

We had direct access to the developers which didn't fear to give constructive feedback and suggestions how to improve architecture and maintainability of code.

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

I have nothing but positive things to say about SoftwareMill.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

NEXOCODE is software company focused on Agile teams delivery. We develop tailor-made software in-house for our customers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what reason(s) did your company hire SoftwareMill?

We needed to speed up time of delivery.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed an MVP version of product within a short period of time and the ability for it to be maintained and extended later.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We selected them after reading reviews on the web.

Describe the project in detail.

Unfortunately, we can't say too much because we have an NDA with our client. This is a back office system for supporting corporative processes. It allows users to maintain and develop a community of technology experts.

What was the team composition?

We've taken one software developer from SoftwareMill. The team on our side consisted from three developers, UX designer and Scrum Master.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Unfortunately, there are no metrics to share at this time. 

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our workflow was very effective! The developer assigned to our project was almost instantly available and ready to take on new challenges.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They have top-level communication and I was also happy with the seniority of the developer assigned to us. 

Are there any areas for improvement?

I couldn't think of any from our three months of cooperation.

Company Responses

CONTENT QUALITY = C

Needs more content before viable to publish