STARNAVI

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

The company builds data analytics software and I'm an executive at the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We provide various API's for clients. We needed additional backend developers to help with systematizing our backend processes running on AWS.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We found them through upwork. Our deciding factors was ease of working with the team and strong profiles of the developers.

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

Work involved refactoring python scripts running on servers to various AWS processors. Also setting up new ingestion pipelines using AWS lambda's, kinesis and redis.

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

We worked with 3 backend python developers from the team and one frontend developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We launched the project on-track and were able to massively expand our data processing and offering. Also we saved about 40% on hosting by using custom database hosting the team set up instead of AWS RDS.

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

Well communicated through Slack and used a ticketing system to keep track of development on Github. The team was well structured with various project management tools.

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

Good, well-meaning developers to work with. Intelligent problem solvers and engaged.

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

The work StarNavi delivered was excellent. Perhaps giving big-picture architecture design choices would have been handy to discuss throughout the project.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am an Agile Product Owner and run a consulting company. We support clients with their software projects.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

I handed over a catalogue of requirements on the basis of which a WebApp was to be developed.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

After I had sent the requirements and a simple data model to StarNavi, their experts worked with me to specify the project. Their professional approach and understanding convinced me immediately, and in the end I got a good price for the implementation.

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

StarNavi first made a prototype that included all the surfaces. This gave both sides a good understanding of what should come out in the end. We left the implementation entirely to StarNavi. We tested it ourselves. After the first use by the client, there was a small round of enhancements, which made some more improvements to the user experience. The app is written with Python in the Django Framework; the code was delivered in a Docker container.

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

The project involved a business modeler, a designer and one or more developers. The contact was almost exclusively through the project manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

That is too early to say.

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

The project was small; extensive communication was not necessary and saved time for both sides. Moreover, the communication was professional and efficient.

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

• Their English was excellent.
• They knew exactly what they were doing.
• Their approach was very professional.

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

In our case, these would only be tiny details that are not worth mentioning here.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a data science group manager in a large international corporation, our department works on product in the filed of predictive maintenance

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire StarNavi?

Starnavi developers are integrated into our development and analytics teams, continously working on the core products of the company (from sofware and data science prespectives)

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We are working with several vendors, the work with StarNavi initiated after receiving initial pool of potential candidates. The work of StarNavi was very arranged, professional and we recieved suitable and great candidates from the beginning of the process.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

One project includes work on core architectural components for one of the critical flows in our system. Other project relates to POC of new capability in a new field that we did not work on before.

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

4 resources, 1 software developer and 3 data scientists

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The developers perform very well within the team. One of the developers is currently leading the development of a very important architectural component

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The recruitement and hiring workflow were very effecient. If there were delays - it was usually from our side, and StarNavi (Vladimir) always kept track and sent reminders to promote the processes

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

We appreciate their continuous and open communication, high-quality candidates, arranged processes, responsive to feedback and adjustments

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

There was one case of change of rate during the process, but we understand that It came from the candidate and we discussed the motivation to avoid such situations in the future

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Chief Product Officer for a medical technology platform focused on improving hospital efficiency by providing critical information for medical clinicians.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We required a full stack developer to help us build the frontend and API for a new events scheduling service, which was required to be completed by the end of 2019. This was successfully completed by the developer that Starnavi provided us.

The project is ongoing as we continue to work on further enhancements to the events scheduling system. We also contacted Starnavi to assist us in finding a QA tester.

We now have an ongoing QA tester that performs regression testing prior to a major release, whilst also building out our testing suite.

SOLUTION

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

Starnavi was recommended through a local contact. After meeting the Starnavi team and experiencing their efficiency in providing high quality candidates, we knew that we wanted to continue working with them.

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

Project 1: Event scheduling service Objective: Develop a service that allows hospital administrators to create events for clinicians to attend and record their attendance for the event.

Key deliverables: Hospital Administrators can create an event for a future date with configurable settings to confirm RSVP and attendance, Mobile users receive a push notification about event and can scan a QR code to record attendance for when they attend the event.

Technologies: React, Python Project 2: Regression Testing Key deliverables: Develop a testing suite to regression test application prior to a major production release

Steps: Develop testing suite, perform test run prior to each production release Technologies: Testrail

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

We have 2 contractors working with us. The first contractor is a fullstack React developer. The second contractor is a QA tester.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have an events scheduling system which is being used by several hospitals. Regression testing has stabilised our production releases since testing suite has been developed.

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

Very flexible to fit in with our company processes and communication tools.

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

They have excellent service and great quality of candidates.

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

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BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of a telecom company in the US that provides affordable mobile service for customers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

As the company grows and the demand for development to build out better systems for our staff and customers increases, we needed skilled help for the development team to build out internal tools for our agents, more intelligent systems for managing third party integrations, and adding features for a better customer experience in the apps and the customer website.

SOLUTION

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

StarNavi approached us when they saw postings for a developer position. They sent some CVs and coding samples for us to review and based on those, we set up interviews. Since then, StarNavi continues to work with us on hiring needs when they arise and strive to provide us with candidates that have a matching skillset and desired skill level.

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

This is an ongoing project where we continue to build and deploy new features as well as debug and maintain systems. The main technologies used are Python, Django, Flask, Postgres, AWS, ECS, Terraform.

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

We currently have two full time backend developers and two full time devops engineers from Starnavi working on the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

With help from Starnavi, we have managed to build a fully automated platform to optimally manage subscriptions with our main service provider to maximize our profits.

This platform not only manages the subscriptions but also audits the bills from this vendor to compare the charges and generate a report of any discrepancies to detect any incorrect charges. On top of that, the developers have added extensive monitoring to ensure our systems and our service provider's systems are working as expected.

On the infrastructure side, their devops engineers have helped build an entire new and scalable infrastructure with several components on ECS in AWS using Terraform while following best practices.

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

Our company handles the project management. For staff management from their side, they are efficient and effective with their communication and provide reasonable timelines.

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

Their internal vetting process and the level of skill of the developers they have to offer.

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

I would have expected a higher degree of feedback solicitation for their developers, but that is a very minor issue in the scope of things. Additionally, if I have any feedback at any given time, they are open to receiving it and making necessary changes on their side.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are suppliers to the advertising industry, working out logistics for the outdoor advertising market.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire StarNavi?

We are developing a new service offer which required digital and cloud.

What were your goals for this project?

The solution had to be a mix of mobile application and desktop / cloud application. It needed to look good, professional and sexy. It also needed to interact with our legacy local current solution

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

E-mailed 100 potential providers. They were reactive and eager to think about technical solutions and resolution before we had an agreement. I thought they really meant it and so decided to go with them. Their cost were reasonable and they were transparent and trustable.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They helped on the design thanks to their internal design people. Then they helped us thinking about the product and its structure, how our vision could be best translated in the cloud. They developed the whole backend and frontend.

What was the team composition?

We had a project manager who was the interemediary between us and the technical team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We are going to launch in September.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Went very well, we had one person in charge of the relationship and we were using trello to validate steps and then Sprint.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The fact they were no bullshit, transparent and they really tried to think with us about the product without overstepping on our business case.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I think it all depends on the relationship with the project manager. If you go along with him / her, it goes smootly.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder at Duxe Software System. We’re a startup that developed a platform based on a major project we’d previously done for one of Australia’s largest multi-national companies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with StarNavi?

We did our MVP of the product with an outsourced team and found basic issues with how the platform was developed. The backend and the quality of the frontend visualization states needed to be improved. Additionally, the cost of integrating tenants was too expensive for the tenants.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We branched into creating different versions of the MVP for different use cases. This involved backend development changes and modifying the frontend visualization states based on the UX design that our in-house designers had developed.

What is the team composition?

We had a project manager for most of the day-to-day contacts. There was also a dedicated frontend developer and a dedicated backend developer. Toward later stages, we had QA specialists rectifying issues.

It was much easier to work with one developer cohort where they all were in close communication with each other. This prevented us from spending too much time providing multiple versions of briefs to multiple people.

We’d parted with our CFO at this point and dramatically reduced the number of developers we were using from different sources. We chose to concentrate on StarNavi because they were very diligent and provided consistently high-quality work. Additionally, they always looked to improve output and resolve potential issues to preserve the platform’s revenue-generating capabilities.

How did you come to work with StarNavi?

Our former CFO sourced Starnavi and did the due diligence. They determined them to be of a suitable standard and quality.  

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $40000–$55,000 AUD ($27,500–$37,900 USD) with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2018. project completed (next iteration) august 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Their proactivity while scoping the project and reviewing our infrastructure helped eliminate issues that would have been problematic and impacted costs. They also delivered richer functionality. Instead of one MPV, we have three versions of the platform that can be applied to different customer needs. The best part is they all run off the same central platform. Currently, we’re re-engaging StarNavi for another project.

How did StarNavi perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Slack and Jira and had discussions with our main point of contact about design characteristics and clarification of requirements. Jira was our task-oriented mechanism around fixes and liaising with QA.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They quickly identified that our large number of developers prevent clear sightlines. Their recommendations greatly simplified our process.

Their diligence and attention to detail, as well as their desire to add value, rather than just finish the project, were great. They were committed to getting the best possible outcome for us and not just pushing us out the door to make room for a new client.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re nice people with reasonable pricing. It wasn’t easy in the beginning, because we were working with so many developers in unintegrated ways. Once we stopped that and focused on StarNavi’s cohorts, we got substantially better outcomes much quicker.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re in Ukraine and we’re in Australia, so it’s hard to manage timeframes, but they tried really hard. We got into a rhythm where they were available to have direct conversations.

Their output was very efficient. With us spending as little as we did (we were bootstrapping no equity) they had to be really valuable. We felt we got the best possible outcome from StarNavi.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product owner at The Outplay Italy, a video advertising platform. Advertisers can plan video ads, and publishers have the ability to monetize their page views. At the same time, the content owner can monetize the video content produced.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Starnavi?

We needed help with development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve helped us develop our video advertising platform. The team created the API for our dashboard. They used AWS tools and Python. 

What is the team composition?

We’re in contact with a client partner and two other people. 1–2 engineers collected data and created the API.

How did you come to work with Starnavi?

Another developer suggested them to me.

How much have you invested with them?

My company has spent $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2018, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They work really well. They’re not very expensive.

How did Starnavi perform from a project management standpoint?

We work in two-week sprints and have daily standup meetings. We have a good relationship with Starnavi. Their developers are very strong, and we work well together. We communicate via Slack, Skype, and sometimes email. We also use Jira and Confluence.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very precise and dedicated. If we have an urgent issue, they’re very responsive and present.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The communication could be better, and some of their English-language capabilities are too low.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the division director for real estate and health care for a machine learning, analytics, and custom software development company. We build custom solutions for problems in healthcare, finance, real estate, and advertising.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Starnavi?

We hired Starnavi to help with backend and frontend software development for our Compass project.

What were your goals for this project?

We want to create a next-generation real estate platform that makes it easy to understand communities, neighborhoods, and the place that homes have in them.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Starnavi responded to one of our RFPs. We were impressed by their grasp of the technologies and scope of the project, so we selected them.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They helped to design the application architecture, wrote backend and frontend code (using both Python and JavaScript), and contributed extensively to the collection and analysis of data.

What was the team composition?

We worked with four team members, including their CTO, a project manager, and two engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We continue to work toward an MVP, but we expect the Compass project to allow our third-party client to efficiently work in ten to fifteen new markets upon launch. The expected impact is likely to double or triple their leads, with a major impact on revenue.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project was centrally managed by our CTO. The Starnavi engineers worked remotely on assigned tasks and delivered code and other artifacts for testing and review. The engineers were professional, hardworking, and completed tasks on time. It was a pleasure to work with them.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They were extremely transparent. We interacted directly with the project engineers, incorporated them into our workflow, and offered feedback. Their code was high-quality and easy to merge into the larger product. We were also impressed with their language skills. The remainder of the project team is US-based, and we were able to efficiently pass on complex specifications and schemas with the trust that they would be implemented accurately. When there were confusions, misunderstandings, or issues, Starnavi did an excellent job contacting us to get them resolved as quickly as possible. They have an excellent technical team and we look forward to working with them again in the future.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No, we’re completely satisfied.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder and CEO of Kirsch & Kern Professionals GmbH

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We realise taylor made software projects for our international customers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Python development
• full-time
• long-term

SOLUTION

How did you find STARNAVI?

Online Search

Why did you select STARNAVI over others?

Close to my geographic location, Great culture fit, Good value for cost

What was the size of STARNAVI’s team?

1 Employee

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

It is an ongoing project for a company, which offers a very sophisticated software for marketing automation.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• efficient work
• good communication
• reliability

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

yes

What was your primary form of communication with STARNAVI?

Virtual Meeting

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

We're impressed with their flexibility and very good and fast communication.

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

no, all is fine