Spyrosoft

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Unit4 delivers business software worldwide. My position is site director of the R&D office in Wrocław, Poland.

What challenge were you trying to address with SpyroSoft?

We wanted to expand one of our projects for the education market, which required us to organize additional resources quickly. We were looking for software developers, testers, and business analysts to augment our internal staff. The team needed to deliver development using a range of Microsoft-related technologies.

What was the scope of their involvement?

SpyroSoft provides expertise on the Microsoft technology stack, including .NET and database-related components like the SQL Server. The team supports us with data processing and help us write scripts. They also provide insights into the frontend, specifically with Angular JS. Their main responsibilities include software testing, software development, and business analysis.

What is the team composition?

They've supplied 20 resources for the project, including developers, testers, and product owners. Their engineers range from junior- to senior-level members. Having a mix of less experienced people coupled with more experienced people allows us to form more efficient teams.

How did you come to work with SpyroSoft?

I had the chance to work with some of their managers for other companies and projects, and they did a great job on the delivery. They had a good project portfolio, and they fit our needs well. SpyroSoft also offered a good price.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together at the beginning of 2018. The collaboration is ongoing.

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

Because we’ve incorporated their people into our own teams, we measure them the same way we measure all our engineers. We assess their performance in terms of velocity, know-how, and adherence to project schedule. They’ve had to perform both as individuals and as teams. So far, they’ve delivered the resources and quality expected.

How did SpyroSoft perform from a project management standpoint?

We're working on the project across 5–6 locations, but SpyroSoft's team works in our office with us. Since they're a part of our team, they don't operate as an independent group. Rather, we manage them as they work directly with our staff. In terms of communication, we talk face-to-face and use Skype and other internal portfolio tools to coordinate the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

SpyroSoft is very good at reacting to difficult situations. Whenever we've faced an urgent problem or if we've identified an issue with one of the resources—this has only happened once or twice—they would act immediately and offer solutions. They’re very customer-focused, and their response time is excellent. Compared to other vendors, SpyroSoft is much better at addressing our needs, expectations, and requirements. They’re quick and professional.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’re extremely satisfied with what they’ve done so far, and we see no area for improvement. As long as they continue to work with us in the same way, everything is fine.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

It’s good to look at the specific people being offered. The resources they gave us in this collaboration model have been quite valuable at times. They have experts that aren’t readily available on the market, so I suggest exploring their resource pool. This can also help address changes in the organization. For example, we’ve managed to find some database analysis experts, which we couldn’t find anywhere else.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive partner at Digital Enabler based in Austria. We’re in the business of digital transformation, leading the development of digital business models, digital products, and digital services, and driving the integration and implementation of hardware and software systems in this context. In addition, we facilitate organizational change for our clients.

What challenge were you trying to address with SpyroSoft?

We deal with a number of projects for several clients, all in the area of digital transformation, and sometimes deliver entire systems or part of solutions. All the needs of our clients and projects are very diverse when it comes to technologies, and usually, require a rapid start and a sustainable environment to maintain the product. We needed a strategic partner so that we could establish an ecosystem for implementing and maintaining different projects over time.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They set up a team with the skills required for the selected technologies and run between 5–10 projects at a time. They provide development, UI design, QA, and project management across all the projects. We create several types of apps such as web apps, technical middleware in the internet of things area, as well as mobile cross-platform development. Our clients are mainly based in Germany, so the requirements sometimes are presented in German, which isn’t a problem from SpyroSoft.

We usually employ pretty standard technology. We use a whole .NET stack, .NET Core, as well as a Java web framework, Angular, ReactJS, Xamarin or ReactNative for mobile applications. They’re also able to accommodate very specific tasks and needs; for one solution, for example, we needed to generate PDFs using the Adobe Professional Suites, which wasn’t a problem for them.

What is the team composition?

The number of people varies depending on our needs. We used to work with 5–10 people, although we’re scaling up at the moment. The team uses Scrum methodology which gives us a lot of transparency and fast feedback loop. We have developers, architects, QA engineers, testers, and project managers involved. By next year, it will be an even bigger team.

How did you come to work with SpyroSoft?

We’ve known their CEO for a long time and have been their customer since they started. It’s very important that we share the same values as we want to provide the best solutions for our customers. With SpyroSoft, we’ve been able to establish mutual trust down to each person that works on our projects, which is very important to us.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in 2016. We have ongoing projects and are launching a couple at the moment.

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

With SpyroSoft, we’ve achieved really elevated standards while meeting all deadlines and budget constraints. Their work has been of very high quality, which we can measure by the nonexistent or minimal amount of bugs found by our clients.

How did SpyroSoft perform from a project management standpoint?

Our projects have very different characteristics depending on the client’s needs; some are fixed price, others are agile. It’s extremely valuable to us that SpyroSoft can adjust to our needs from a project management perspective. They have a mature methodology and technical toolsets, and as we run several projects, they also have the ability to manage projects for us as one client.

We really like their flexibility, and there’s always an opportunity to speak to the CEO. We like this transparency for both technical questions and also for commercial aspects. We use Jira and Confluence with different plugins. It’s a standard environment and they use the same tools that we use internally, so all has been rather smooth.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We can fully trust them, which is very important when working with a strategic partner. We really appreciate their transparency, flexibility, as well as their willingness to understand our problems and solve them.

We feel that we found a sustainable partnership with them. We’re responsible for a product’s quality, potentially for a very long time, so it’s great that we share the same views on quality, which is very important in the German market.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We are able to openly discuss what can be improved and also how we can contribute to improvements.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open and explain the project as much as possible because our experience shows that the more SpyroSoft knows, the better they’re able to help.