Sprinterra

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My company has a software as a service product in the US healthcare market, and I'm basically the head of the product. I’m responsible for everything that has to do with the software.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sprinterra?

We’ve done a few projects with Sprinterra, so it’s been quite a long relationship now over the last two years. However, our goal for this particular project is to update our cloud-based system architecture and redeploy an up-to-date environment using up-to-date services and technologies.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sprinterra is required to re-architect our cloud-based system architecture, and design an updated version of the AWS platform we were using previously. The original platform made use of a few different services and software pieces that were outside of AWS, and we're now working to standardize our AWS services.

The partnership started off as one of several software maintenance tasks that we contracted with Sprinterra. As the work progressed, we decided to bring the end date forward because we needed to complete this particular part of the work much sooner. Sprinterra replanned, rescheduled, and rebudgeted the project.

The platform that’s hosting our services is comprised of web apps, and database APIs connecting to various third-party services. It’s quite a complicated enterprise platform and it requires the team to have expert-level knowledge of AWS services. Additionally, the team must also have good intimate knowledge of the particular software stack that our product is built around.

What is the team composition?

They put together a 5-person team. We have a full stack developer, business analyst, project manager, QA tester, and a DevOps person. They work very well as a team, and they get along with me and my colleagues at my company. The communication is excellent, and they’re very flexible and collaborative.

How did you come to work with Sprinterra?

Sprinterra was previously known to one of the senior executives in our company.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $30,000 on this particular project.

What is the status of this engagement?

The ongoing partnership started in July 2019. This particular project predates me, as it started at a time when I wasn’t working for the company yet.

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

The product has been 100% reliable since deployment. The communication is excellent, and they’re very flexible and collaborative. When we had other pressures and challenges that came along such as additional security and fixes to implement, they handled that within the project very well.

Moreover, the plan they executed at the start of our partnership was successfully delivered within the timescale and budget.

How did Sprinterra perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project plan is articulated and executed very well. By the name of the company, Sprinterra, you can probably imagine that they operate the agile methodology. The projects and deliverables are based on sprints, and we use a management tool to coordinate accordingly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I would say their knowledge and skillset are absolutely perfect for the work that we ask them to do. We’re spread out across the globe. We have people in the US and the UK, and most of the team that worked on this project are in Eastern Europe — and working with them has not been a problem at all.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would simply say no. when I first started working with Sprinterra, I saw where their strengths were. We’ve utilized the services that they’re strong in, so in that respect, there’s nothing we would ask them to do better.

Every company has its strengths and weaknesses. It would be very easy to criticize any development outfit on its weaknesses. However, if you recognize what their strengths are, you must focus all the work on the things that they excel in to avoid any issues.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would advise potential customers to make as much of the opportunity to communicate with them as possible. They’re very willing as a team to respond to questions, and provide detailed explanations and clarifications. Don’t be afraid of the fact that it’s a group of software engineers who are in a distant country.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My organization is called Athena Industries, and I'm the COO. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Sprinterra?

I was trying to come up with some way where we could keep an eye on our cash. An employee stole $70,000 from our ATM cash machines, and we had no clue the money was even missing. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Nick (IT Project Manager), who we've worked with now for 2–3 years, provides quite a bit of banking expertise. He’s helped me come up with ways where we might be able to get a view inside the machines without going into them. He’s among a number of other vaulters or cash loaders that I’m using. 

In the beginning, we started by going over what the issue was. All of a sudden, it was hard to fill the other machines. My business partner was certain that money was being taken from us. I didn’t agree. However, it did seem that money was disappearing from our business. 

Nick came up with a couple of solutions that we tried to implement. Originally, we built a web app that allowed us to do reports, giving us red flags if something was abnormal. That ultimately became what we've called Terravault, which is a management tool for the ATM industry. It's an online app that Nick has helped us build using Django and a couple of other platforms. 

The app works on both iOS and Android phones. When a person goes to the ATM and puts X amount of money, a Y amount of money also goes into our application, which sends up a red flag when there’s a problem. What the application does is help us plan, monitor, and vault the machines more efficiently. 

What is the team composition?

I mainly deal with Nick, who’s in charge of the developers at Sprinterra. When he went on vacation, I dealt with two others from their team. 

How did you come to work with Sprinterra?

My business partner knew Nick and used him and Sprinterra in years past. He said they were the ones we needed to use.  

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested between $50,000–$100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2017, and the project is ongoing. We're finishing up right now and cleaning up the look of the app.

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

The app is a great success, and we use it every single day. I'm beginning the process of selling it to other people. We've come a long way from the idea of trying to find out if somebody's stealing from us to the point where other people might be able to use this app as easily as we can. 

The project has been awesome, and Sprinterra is great. I value Nick's opinion input, and his capabilities are very strong. 

How did Sprinterra perform from a project management standpoint?

There’s been some back-and-forth communication between Nick, Tom, and myself. We go over the issues and ideas we’ve come up with to get better reporting and understanding of what’s inside the machines and what comes out of the vault bags.

We hold meetings every Tuesday at 7:30 AM PST. By the next week, we have a mock-up of what we've done. 

Nick then puts it into production, and then my team uses it. They provide lots of help on the reporting end and define the project's scope, making sure we’re not going off in the wrong direction and heading in the right direction. 

We've used UberConference to communicate, share screens, and look at ideas. We use this conferencing program to discuss our products every single week. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Sprinterra’s business acumen is their most impressive characteristic, as well as their ability to boil things down and make them simple. The app's a pretty voluminous concept, and to be able to make it make sense and work can be a difficult thing.

To be able to boil it all down, focus, and make sure we're headed in the right direction seems to be what their team provides in spades. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

If they were in the US, the project would be a little easier because there’s a time difference. However, Nick has been available any time I need him through email and even phone call conversations. As a result, even the time difference of 8–9 hours isn't that big a deal.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Focus and come up with a concept. I came in not even believing that somebody had stolen from us, but we’ve come up with solutions to determine that. I’m sure it’s going to be different for everybody, but I found Sprinterra to be really helpful.

Potential customers should come up with a concept or anything on paper, and Nick will help you get through it. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the COO of the company and we are a digital music label, offering fans to invest into music.

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

We needed to migrate the operation and outsource the FE and BE development to support the new business model 2017 and 2018. 2019 to 2020 globalrockstar.com was improved to optimize the user experience and performance for mobile devices.

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

Sprinterra was recommended by our CTO.

Deciding factors:

• Existing skills and know how about the underlying database system (Mongo DB)
• Full service capabilities
• FE, BE and inhouse design.
• Price

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

After an initial briefing in July 2017, Sprinterra started with a migration concept to take over the operation and development from inhouse developers (Mongo DB, Angular, ...). Since then various iterations and sprints were executed. Sprinterra is now an integral part of the Global Rockstar team, although they are an outsourced development team. Agile sprint planning is supported by JIRA dashboards, to plan, decide and execute development.

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

• 1x Project lead
• 1x Business analyst
• 1 1/2x Developers
• 1x Tester 1x DevOps

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

After relaunch of our website in March 2020, we saw a substantial increase in mobile usage by 80%. Elements and processes on our website have been copied regularly by competitors since then.

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

We have implemented a team agreement charta with most important do's and don'ts in the collaboration. The collaboration is built on various meetings: Sprint planning Sprint refinement - agile Sprint review - demo of developments Two weeks sprints are planned and documented in JIRA.

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

Generally: How quick they are responding in a day-to-day communication and understood the business model and our industry. Specifically: The relaunch in March 2020 was executed in a great way, as there was no option to extend the deadline, due to a live TV appearance. With a big effort Sprinterra delivered in a professional and excellent way - and even was hot stand by to fix issues during the TV presence!

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

Continuous improvement to comply with deadlines.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder of a fintech company that provides loan refinancing auction services.

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

We needed to develop our platform from scratch in compliance with existing client contracts and best practices in the financial industry. The platform had to manage secure connections for financial institutions, trade entry, trade entry verification to minimize user errors, pre-trade and post-trade messaging between platform users, intelligent workflow management of pre-and post-trade validation steps.

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

We were referred to Sprinterra by another company. In total, 4 companies were bidding for the project. The decision to choose Sprinterra was a function of cost, expectations in terms of product reliability, ability to service product and provide a support team, ability to commit to deadlines.

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

The project started with a 2-month discovery phase where front and back-end requirements were evaluated an architecture designed. Implementation followed with 2-week sprints associated with weekly calls with the development team, product testing and feedback. Development was made in C#/.NET/SQL/ReactJS.

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

One project manager and team coordinator, one software engineer, one back-end developer, one to two front-end developers, one part-time graphic designer.

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

The project had a hard deadline of July 2019, at which time product had to be validated by three asset management firms that would become product users. The development team was able to deliver on time a software version that was validated by four testing teams including three financial institutions and my company.

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

Team coordinator and software engineer participated to every weekly call and were on top of project specifications. Project engineer was well versed in the requirements of financial applications and spend considerable time understanding the underlying product rationale. This helped reduce my company's involvement during software development and helped deliver a rabust product.

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

Management of deadlines.

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

Code needs to be more documented.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a self employed, full time securities trader.

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

I required an automated algorithm to maintain round the clock monitoring of markets and trading of securities; it's a huge challenge to perform such tasks manually.

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

I have known and worked with Executive Team Members Igor Severinovskiy, Eugene Volynsky, and Robert Lampietti for over 20 years. They have always been three of the absolute best of the best Developers that I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with.

Their attention to detail, problem solving skills, and work ethics are outstanding, and selecting Sprinterra was one of the easiest & most rewarding choices I've ever made.

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

This is a bit difficult to do, as it involves proprietary trading methodologies. But basically, they created an algorithm for me that, as mentioned above, perfectly fits my needs of monitoring markets and trading securities based on specific parameters, 24 hours a day, by connecting to / interacting with a brokerage's API.

They were extremely diligent, timely, offered wonderful advice, designed a very user friendy internet based interface, took initiative and instituted their own great ideas, immediately (amazingly quickly) updated the software for any issues I discovered, etc etc. Please let me know if you require any additional information...

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

Four members directly: Igor Severinovskiy, CEO & Co-Founder Eugene Volynsky, COO & Co-Founder Nick Surygin, Project Manager Yurii Chabanov, I am not sure of his title, apologies Nataliia Iashchuk, Chief Delivery Officer.

There were also several Developers who worked on the project, but I did not have direct contact with them.

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

Every single thing that the team worked on and did was simply outstanding. Please see my earlier comments above, and pelase let me know if you need any additional information.

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

Management style was very welcoming; it felt like friends / family. Communication was always great and very prompt; scheduled zoom conference / video calls and sharing of screens, phone calls, e-mails, etc etc.

At first weekly, and once development was underway & advancing, it became on the spot, 24/7, as required. This was very helpful & appreciated.

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

There is, literally, not a single negative thing that I can possibly think of. They are absolutely top notch in every aspect imaginable.

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

Not a single thing.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was a manager for a financial services consulting firm. We did consulting services and operations on behalf of various sized clients and also built in-house business applications to support those consulting practices.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sprinterra?

We worked with them on several projects to help build business applications. We had our own in-house software development, but often we would need extra development support. It usually depended on the project schedule and budget.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were a mostly Microsoft and .NET environment, and all of our business applications were web-based. They were project management business workflow applications that supported different consulting lines. Sprinterra worked with our in-house software engineers using C# and .NET to build out the functionality of multiple applications.

What is the team composition?

For the first few years we worked together, we had a dedicated project manager and as we began to develop more projects in-house it became a combination of individuals that augmented teams on our side. After the initial project, we had subsequent project managers from their side.

How did you come to work with Sprinterra?

They were already in place when I came onboard, but I believe Sprinterra’s CEO had worked with the company for a previous engagement.

How much have you invested with them?

The price varied monthly based on how much support we needed. At the highest, we were paying about $200,000 a month, and at the lowest, it was less than $50,000 a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

They started in early 2012. I believe they phased down how much they worked together in the first or second quarter of 2018.

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

There aren’t metrics supporting their work because they were a supporting part of the team, and also because measuring results and ROI wasn’t a high priority for the company at that time. We determined success by seeing how functionality was built out to meet market demand.

How did Sprinterra perform from a project management standpoint?

The project manager we had during the initial project, was very strong and brought a lot of helpful recommendations and practices. He facilitated effective team processes. After he left, Sprinterra backfilled that position with someone that wasn’t as strong. We struggled with that person for about a year until we discussed the negative impacts with Sprinterra. After that, they replaced that person with someone who was a better fit for us. In general, the people from Sprinterra that have been trained in project management were strong and complementary to what we needed.

We used Jira as our project management tool, and the Sprinterra project managers were fluent in that and administered some of the boards we were using. We generally communicated over Skype, instant messaging, or phone conferences. We also used email for high-level summaries. The ease of communication varied based on individual language skills, but overall it was decent for an offshore company.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The people Sprinterra recruited were higher quality than what I’ve dealt with before. They were easy to work with, willing to learn, motivated to work, and committed to understanding our business goals. They were easy and pleasant to work with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only thing that sticks out is the period when we weren’t getting the best project management with the transition in that position. They were slow to resolve that issue, so we were struggling for a little over a year with someone that wasn’t fulfilling the responsibilities of the role. They could definitely be more proactive in resolving issues that are coming from high-level positions.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend conducting your own interviews for each individual that will potentially join the teams. Also be sure to have regular check-ins on how things are going at a high level to hold them accountable to the quality.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Lauren B is a retail jewelry and diamond company based in New York City.I am the COO

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

To create a custom CRM system to manage our business; orders, inventory, scheduling and more.

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

I was referred to them by a colleague and after comparing to other companies found them to be the best fit.

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

Creating CRM system and then continually updating it

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

We work with one person directly at a time who then coordinates with other members of their team to execute goals.

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

Great results so far and has made our business run smoother and able to operate remotely via the cloud

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

They are very professional, quick to respond, and fast to resolve any issues. They are also great at meeting deadlines.

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

Pricing and quality

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

Not that I know of