Techs

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a consultant for a small company that provides B2B digitization services. We create products used to digitize companies, and we’re based in Bucharest, Romania.

What challenge were you trying to address with Techs?

We were looking for a team that could help us digitize a Romanian client of ours that specialized in data analysis and social marketing via surveys. The client had handled that process via other tools and on-field or phone surveys but were spending lots of money on competitor tools. They wanted to develop an in-house solution.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had specific requirements to build the app in Python with a small footprint regarding resource utilization. There’s also a focus on microservices.

My partner and I collected data and requirements from the client, much like product owners, and we translated those into a technical diagram for Techs. Then, Techs devised solutions to design and implement those requirements.

They used the FastAPI and Django frameworks on the backend, Angular on the frontend, PostgreSQL for the database, Redis for message queueing, and some Typescript. There’s also a Docker design model composed in GitHub.

What is the team composition?

I usually talk directly to Igor (Founder & CEO). Jesse (Frontend Developer) is one of the team members, but I don’t know anyone else. Igor is usually the one discussing details with us and presenting their solutions. He works with the team, setting up agile sprints.

We had a product-owner-to-product-owner relationship, as it’s called in the Agile ecosystem.

How did you come to work with Techs?

We posted our requirements on Upwork and interview 10–15 of the companies that qualified. Of the ones that responded to our requirements and budget, 50% were scams. Out of all the others, Techs provided the best design solution.

What I liked about them in the beginning was that they built us a design POC without asking for any payment. That was a big point from my perspective.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost so far is about $15,000. The initial estimate was $22,000, and the cost will possibly go up to $25,000 for this first phase. We plan to invest a percentage of our revenue into developing this platform as well, so this is just the beginning.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Techs in June or July 2021, and we’re on the fifth milestone now. We have an end date, but the project will most probably be continued in the future, for support and new features.  

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

There isn’t too much to say with regards to the client, but their feedback is positive. They love the features Techs has built, but there’s still a lot of work to do. We’re enjoying the partnership so far.

Techs hears what we have to say with regard to requirements. They make all the changes we want easily, and the app is quite well-written. Basing it on microservices was a hard requirement, but they’ve complied. I’m 70% happy with the product they’ve delivered so far, and the remainder will be accomplished in finalizing the app.

Right now, we’re trying to get all the stuff from the old ecosystem into our application to avoid the hard, difficult process of growing the application. We may not have many users at the moment, but we will evolve the app in the future.

How did Techs perform from a project management standpoint?

Igor’s job isn’t very easy, but as a product owner that has a strong background in technology, he’s very organized in creating sprints and organizing his team to achieve deadlines.

We struggled a bit in the beginning because we weren’t using a very agile model. It’s possible that Igor was new to this way of working, but he’s a fast learner. I have good experience managing projects inside some big companies, and Igor applied the input I gave him pretty well. I’m happy with his management.

We communicate via Jira tickets and have a basic Kanban model, mostly based on bugs and incidents raised by me. On his side, Igor translates my requests into stories for his developers.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Techs came up with a design pattern and an architecture solution from the beginning after just a few days of us presenting our big picture request.

As I said, we interviewed 10–20 other contractors on Upwork, and none of them came up with such a solution. They would have gone straight to the technologies that they had; it’s easy to work on what you know, but we had a reason for sticking to Python. Instead of solving the need for us, these other companies offered to sell their solutions. Igor, on the other hand, came with solutions to the needs that we had.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We didn’t do well on our side of providing the requirements on time, so Techs worked with what they had. The most important thing for them to work on is speeding up the journey from idea to production-ready output. They need to align more with the best practices of production applications. My feeling is that they don’t yet have the experience of working with products in production environments, but that’s normally learned over the course of years.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients should prepare requirements well from the beginning. This isn’t an easy task when starting an app from scratch with a company that’s never gone through a digitization process.

The struggle was on our side as well, because we didn’t get very good requirements from our client, requiring us to translate something that’s not easily translatable from a technical point of view.

The bottom line is that Igor’s team knows what to do. If the client simply asks them to do that, then they’ll do it without a problem.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Head of Product

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

Our goal was to develop a proof-of-concept of using the Timescale database as a meter data management system, adding an API to provide access.

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

We put out an invitation to tender through the Upwork platform and evaluated a number of responses before selecting Techs for this work.

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

We started with a several requirements capture meetings. Subsequently Techs produced a detailed software requirement document to be the specification for the work.

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

There we 2 people in the vendors team on this project.

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

We were able to successfully demonstrate that the Timescale database was suitable for our needs and are now able to progress the project to full implementation in the future.

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

Their communication and timeliness were excellent. We used email and our internal comms tool (Discord) to do the work, as well as regular checkins to Github.

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

Communication from Techs was really good, which helped to move things along, and rapidly iterate on the solution.

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

Nothing of note.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are IT architects who are building a tool which will ease the life of building the architecture documentation.

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

We needed a team of professional developers to build our application. We had all the specifications, knowing exactly what we wanted. We collaborate with Techs team leader to refine the functionalities and improve the code.

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

Techs already worked on projects in line with our application. They also had good reviews. The interview and the exchanges we had convinced us.

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

We use Python. The project is divided into milestones. Techs works with sprints taking into account several parts of the milestones. The delivery is the code and the application functionalities.

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

We work with only one person which directly manage his team. There are several developers involved in our project but we do not talk with them directly.

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

The delivered code is of good quality. The bugs and problems found are shared and Techs tries to solve them.

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

We have a weekly meeting of 30 minutes to discuss the actual topics, issues, bugs, etc. We exchange daily using Slack. When needed, we have longer meeting to discuss more deeply the important topics.

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

First, they are good and nice people. They listened carefully to our remarks and always did their best to satisfy us. The quality of their code is excellent. They also are able to propose alternatives or better solutions for problems we face.

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

The quality of the work is great, no question about that. However, there were some delays in the planning. That can be explained by the complexity of the tasks.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Polstrat is a political consultancy. We provide resourcing strategy for politicians in India. I’m the director, and I look over almost everything in the organization. We’re a three-year-old organization with a team of nine people.

What challenge were you trying to address with Techs?

We focus a lot on business and strategy, and we’re trying to get into tech solutions for our clients. There aren’t a lot of tech solutions available in the Indian political landscape. A lot of things are done manually, in terms of communication and data collection, and analysis.

We were trying to automate this, and give politicians access to all the data through a single solution, and cut down on the time and resources they need.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Techs is developing a proprietary dashboard for our clients. We started with a small proof of concept, which was mostly backend work. One big feature is virtual maps of constituencies, displaying electoral and demographic data, grievances, and so on. The tool also does data collection.

That was a two-month project, and we spent the next six months figuring out how to take it forward. We’ve made a lot of changes since the beginning.  

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked mostly with Igor (Founder & CEO) and with a UI/UX designer. As I understand it, Igor has done most of the work on the project.

How did you come to work with Techs?

We found them on Upwork. We spent a lot of time looking at companies in India, and it was very difficult to find a professional one with the right coding skills. The bigger organizations would be too slow, and we didn’t want to go down that path, especially when testing the concept, so we decided to find a freelancer.

We spoke to a few people, and Igor stood out. He came with a lot of ideas on how we could implement the ideas we had.  

How much have you invested with them?

We have invested around $11,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The first project ran between August–October 2019, and the second project started in June 2020. We’re almost done but it is ongoing for now.

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

The quality of work is really good. Igor was very good at creating everything we discussed. He went above and beyond to make sure we were happy with the work. We kept milestones for different parts of the platform, and we tested each one. 

How did Techs perform from a project management standpoint?

We had regular conversations about the work, and the communication between teams was clear. We had a project manager on our end, who had a technical background and managed a lot of the communication with Igor. We tracked time through Upwork, and I don’t think there were any other tools used.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a young team. Techs is very enterprising and professional in their approach to the project. I’m really happy with the work we’ve done overall.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re in Sweden, and I’m based in India, which has made communication and time management more complicated. I would’ve wanted to have someone local that I could sit down with, but that’s not their fault. That was the only limitation of the project.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Be very clear about what your requirements are. It’s important to break things down and explain everything right from the beginning. We learned from phase one, and we were clearer in phase two.