Trembit

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Co-Founder at an ultra creative iOS application company. We build consumer products with brand new experiences. I manage all things technical and engineering.

For what projects/services did your company hire Trembit?

We hired Trembit to build a brand new mobile app from scratch. We leaned on them to provide their expertise in video technologies.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to bring a vision to life and create a mobile application. The goal was to build a very solid app with a strong technical foundation. We'd use this app for go-to-market.

How did you select Trembit?

We searched through hundreds of candidates and shops, and came up with a short list of a handful of final candidates. We ultimately selected Trembit because of their expertise in video technologies, the portfolio of work that they'd done, and the trustworthiness/sincerity/directness from their CEO.

Describe the project in detail.

We provided Trembit our concept, our designs, and some overall guidance. Trembit helped led the charge on all things architecture, technical planning, and building/implementation.

What was the team composition?

We worked with a team of software engineers (client side, server side, QA engineer) and a project manager. We were able to scale up and scale down resources as needed.

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

Trembit did an excellent job in executing on our vision, bringing the software to life, and doing it with very high quality. The big concern when outsourcing development is almost always around quality. But Trembit delivered on a high level. They have excellent engineers, and hold themselves to high standards.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow has been very good. Communication on Slack. Project management on Jira. And regular video conferencing.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The quality of Trembit engineers is excellent. Not only do they know what they're doing, they keep up with the latest and greatest, the most modern SDC best practices and engineering tactics. They are very fluent in the world of software engineering. It surprised me how far 'off-shore' development has come over the years. Trembit is equally as good, if not better, than working with most software developers in the US.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Early on we had some difficulties with wiring money to an international account. But that was eventually resolved and is no longer an issue.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product manager of a Stockholm-based startup called Learnster, a next-generation learning platform. We’re developing it for a number of clients and we’re working with course administration, e-learning, and such.

What challenge were you trying to address with Trembit?

Since we’re a startup, we didn’t have the resources to hire our own staff, so we decided to hire outsourced developers.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Trembit took over from another agency in Kiev that was supporting us. They’re helping us with the development and programming of our solutions, using the Python and Angular programming languages.

What is the team composition?

I believe we’re working with 6–7 people from their team. We’re very open and communicate well with them. We have scrum meetings every morning and we follow up on Slack.

How did you come to work with Trembit?

We were facing a lot of problems with our development agency at the time, so our CTO introduced us to Trembit. He had worked with them before and said he had an excellent experience. We also received valuable information from other startups saying that there were talented and competent developers in Ukraine. The country was also quite close to our time zone, so we decided to hand over the work to them.

How much have you invested with them?

I don’t have the exact figures, but I estimate the total is between $60,000–$70,000 or more.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in December 2017. The platform was in place at the start of our collaboration, but we’ve redesigned it and improved its coding with Trembit. The new version was launched in August or September of 2018.

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

Their diligent team takes action and ownership of their work and resolves issues quickly even during off-hours, which has led to high-quality solutions. Our CTO considers their coding work solid. Furthermore, they’re proactive in proposing alternatives to our ideas and at coming up with technical solutions.

Right now, they’re very adaptive to the way we’re working, especially since we’re a startup and we don’t have a lot of structure in place. They’ve let us know that we still need to create a lot of basic functionalities for our solution, but are also aware that we will tackle that in the future.

Also, their problem solving is amazing. We haven’t experienced too many bugs, but this is also due to designing and producing some good specs on our side.

How did Trembit perform from a project management standpoint?

First of all, they have great English skills, so we can communicate easily. Secondly, the team assigned to us is quite service-oriented. We’re very open with them and I think they feel like a part of the team. We try to take care of them as if they were our own personnel.

We’re very impressed with their competence, culture, and how they’re supporting us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They understand both the customer and the business, which is something that’s hard to find in a developer. The previous vendor worked with code well but didn’t understand us when we tried to explain some concepts and interface solutions.

Trembit, on the other hand, understood us completely and knew exactly what to do. Even though our specs aren’t complete, Trembit is asking the right questions. They think about the logical process and how things should be for end users and administrators, which is fantastic for me.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have improvements to mention at the moment. So far, Trembit has been great to work with. They provide good coding, collaboration, support, and understanding. I don’t know how they’d work in a more structured environment, with more processes and deadlines.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Explain the business and its solution in detail. Spend some time with their team in order to create a good relationship. They work in a remote location, but we’ve visited them. It’s important to create a good relationship and learn who is who and how they work.

Another recommendation is to make them part of the team. They are devoted to us, and in turn, we involve them in the production of our platform. They’re proud to be part of the technical ideas within our company. Being a part of it benefits their development, ideas, and makes them feel that they’re taking part in something great.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder and CEO of a Salesforce add-on. It is a rich, deep application that rewrites the entire CRM experience and its value.

What challenge were you trying to address with Trembit?

I have been using them for client customizations and improvements to the product. I outsource all development, and was having trouble finding the right skills and knowledge of Flash and Salesforce.com. Trembit was knowledgeable and competent in both.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Trembit became my primary vendor after integrating the work of my previous one. They have created an interesting organizational charting tool for salespeople and a marketing tool with both geographic and vertical market information.

They have also improved the performance of the tool and added new sections of code that have allowed me to increase the feature-set over the years.

What is the team dynamic?

I’ve worked with 1-4 people from Trembit’s team at any given time and they work independently. I simply present a spec, ask for it to be completed by a certain time, then Trembit figures out the resourcing. Stanislav Zayarsky [CEO, Trembit] is my main point of contact, and we communicate once every 1-2 months following the constant communication period in the beginning.

How did you come to work with Trembit?

I was considering multiple vendors. I typically give people small tasks, and, if they go well, I give them more and bigger work. Out of the ones I tested out, Trembit was a clear and easy choice. It’s been smooth sailing given that I’ve done this for years.

How much have you invested with Trembit?

The cost of their work has been tens of thousands of dollars.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with Trembit 3-4 years ago.

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

I wait for clients to come up with ideas instead of relying on IT, then we find a way to bring those ideas to a form that can be operationalized within our system. For me to give Trembit credit for client ideas would not be correct, but they have successfully executed a great number of projects.

Client satisfaction is important to me, so, if the vendor isn’t getting me there, I will be on the prowl for someone new. I’ve kept coming back to Trembit because everything was done well, from client satisfaction to client elation.

How did Trembit perform from a project management standpoint?

This is software, so there is always room for improvement in terms of project management. Every time we take on a project, we want it to go wonderfully, when, in fact, there are countless questions around how code is created. Do we do the brute force approach, or do we come up with something elegant? How do we make our choices when the client requires the work in a ridiculous timeframe?

I’ve done a ton of projects with Trembit, and sometimes I’ve been frustrated, but mostly, things went smoothly and they delivered what I needed on time. When we found bugs (and there are always bugs), they were attentive in working with me to make sure they were eliminated. As a result, I’ve had clients who've stuck with me for 6 or more years.

They’ve been generally responsive, and the projects we’ve worked on have been consistently completed on time. We primarily communicate through Skype and Atlassian’s JIRA.

What did you find most impressive about Trembit?

Their skills have really impressed me at times. The team has achieved things in hours that I thought would take days. This doesn’t happen frequently, but, in terms of exceptionalism, there have been times when Trembit quickly came up with some great solutions.

Are there any areas Trembit could improve?

I can talk to Stanislav [CEO, Trembit] about any area of improvement and he addresses it quickly.

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

As with any good project, the client should try to document what it is they’re asking for. They should make sure they have milestones in place so Trembit can deliver as they’re dealing with new work. This isn’t specific to them, but it makes for good management with any new vendor.