Unosquare, LLC

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of Next Reason

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Customer Identity Managed Services to achieve the most secure and compliant ecosystem possible using tools that work the best for your business.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Unosquare, LLC to accomplish?

• Accelerate core product development

SOLUTION

How did you find Unosquare, LLC?

Referral

Why did you select Unosquare, LLC over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Unosquare, LLC were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

There are a few projects that Unosquare helps with. First is core product development on enterpise identity platform that consists of authentication and authorization capabilities using AWS built using Kubernetes. The team provides architecture, design, development, and testing capabilities.

The other two projects are customer initiatives using React and NextJS and consist of design and development of system dashboard. In both cases, the teams attend daily standups, participate in the scrum ceremonies, and work in our ticket system just like the rest of the team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Delivery of strategic roadmap items on time and on budget.
• Willingness to adapt to our needs.
• Always going above and beyond to make sure we were getting the value.

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

Very responsive team and management. Well-versed in agile methodology with good communication.

What was your primary form of communication with Unosquare, LLC?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Attitude from everyone (leadership to team members) is always positive and 'can do'. Also, they understand the value of truly caring about the success of their customers opposed to just trying to upsell and find sales opportunities. We never feel pressured and always feel supported.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Unosquare, LLC could have done differently?

Our project is quite complex and so bringing new developers on and setting them up for success is always a challenge. Unosquare has a lot of experience in this regard, so I would love to see that baked into the process.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Director of Quality Assurance. We create Help Authoring Software for Technical Writers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Unosquare, LLC?

We were bringing to market a cloud based version of our desktop application and needed some extra testing.

SOLUTION

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

We talked to and visited a few vendors and found Unosquare to be the most professional and eager to help meet our specific requirements.

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

Creation of test plans and test cases. Execution of said test plans and documentation of results. Direct communication with lead testers and with senior development on issues as they are discovered.

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

Over the course of 7 years we have worked with over 8 manual testers and 1 automation tester.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

As we transition to automated testing, manual testing is still the main reality of software releases. The Unosquare team solves this for us in spades. They are professional, punctual, and helpful when needed. We have released multiple dozens of times in the course of our partnership, no small part in thanks to this team.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We integrate the testers directly into our team. They join us on our daily meetings and give reports directly to us. They are treated (and function) as one of our own team members seamlessly.

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

We are provided with high quality testers at a great price. They constantly give suggestions on new methodologies and other improvements as they encounter them.

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

They consistently meet our needs.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Senior Director of Operations. We are the only, physician-founded, specialty technology platform designed for the Point of Care actively engaging Patients, Caregivers, and Physicians in the Waiting Room, Exam Room, and at home.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Unosquare, LLC?

We hired Unosquare to manage our NOC as well as do testing for all our DevOps.

SOLUTION

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

We searched for the right provider to manage our NOC as well as take on the Q&A function of our DevOps. The team we met understood our needs right away and had potential solutions that we later implemented.

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

The project consists of:

• Creation of our help desk
• Management of our NOC
• DevOps research and testing

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

We have 4 people total on this project. 4 NOC Engineers and 1 manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project is a huge success! It is still ongoing due to the amazing results we see. Our help desk is top notch (was built from scratch) and we now have rigorous QA testing. As a result of our NOC being managed by the team, we now see issues before they happen and the overall health of our digital network has improved as a result.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow is seamless; we forget that they are not our employees. There is constant communication between our team and Unosquare's. Communication is detailed, professional, and gets the answers all need quickly as a result.

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

Their industry knowledge and their overall work ethic. Every project given to them they start on right away with expertise and efficiency.

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

None- team is great!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Director of Technical & Physical operations - meaning all things IT, Facilities & Grounds.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We started using a cloud based payroll provider, but have a SQL ERP on campus that many reports are pulled from. We needed a way to know who was a current employee (and not), set a flag appropriately, and keep things up to date between the two systems.

SOLUTION

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

They have a solid reputation, and I have worked with Unosquare previously on a customization for their fantastic Passcore Pro solution.

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

I lined out the project and designed the data report in the payroll system, ensuring we had a matching key between the two systems. From there, I defined what field should be updated in our campus ERP.

The unosquare team took the API portion and worked to build the connectivity needed to grab and process the data. They provided appropriate configuration files to allow the process to grow with us as we need to change and tweak variables down the road. We used IIS, SQL, a REST API, and they used several programming languages.

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

We had a project manager, a coding supervisor, and a staff member work on the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project works! We are live and it seems to be working well. I really appreciate the team's patience as we dealt with API access issues from one of the vendors.

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

This was a fairly simple project, so all communication was done via email. Unosquare was quick to jump on a teams call to make sure were describing and seeing the same things. Overall, their team was very timely.

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

Consistent positive communication and can-do attitude. I know nothing of the API world, but they guided me through it very well.

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

No - they did excellent in every aspect of this project that they could control!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our company has a few different areas. I work on the cloud based restaurant technology product. I am one of the QA managers for this product.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Unosquare, LLC?

To help with the manual QA testing of the cloud based product. We have since expanded that to include writing test cases and test suites

SOLUTION

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

Someone in the organization had worked with Unosquare at a previous company.

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

Unosquare originally provided 3 QA engineers so that we could run continuous tests throughout the quarterly release cycle. At the time, we had very little automated and thousands of cases, many of which were not getting run.

As cases were automated and the manual testing tasks were decreasing, we started also using the team to write new test cases and fix existing cases that no longer worked. We have recently added a 4th QA from Unosquare.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

We provide a req, just like we would for any open position. They do a non-technical interview internally and if they pass, they then do an internal technical interview. If they pass that, then I interview. In the most recently added team member, I don't know how many didn't pass the first level, but one didn't pass the second level and one did.

I interviewed the one that did and he became our 4th team member.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have been able to give the team more responsibility over time. This has been successful and everybody who works directly with the team members recognizes their value.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

I'm the main interface between the teams and it works well. The Unosquare liaison has regular meetings with me and is available.

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

Honestly, I've never been the person responsible for a contractor team, so I don't have anything to compare it to. However, I have a good relationship with the team lead (she is one of the 4) and Pedro, who is my liaison.

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

So far so good.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Software Engineering manager overseeing the backend engineering team for Harvard Business Publishing, a content publishing company focusing on improving business management practices, producing both print and digital products.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Unosquare, LLC?

We needed to get several experienced backend developers to work on a fast-paced and fast-tracked project to be completed by end of the fiscal year to meet our goals.

SOLUTION

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

We have worked with Unosquare for many years, and we knew that they always supplied us with very capable and experienced developers, both for backend and frontend needs. We currently have over 20 backend engineers from Unosquare.

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

Unosquare provided 3 engineers for this particular project to augment the existing team - which included previously hired Unosquare developers. They were responsible for creating new microservices from the ground up and were heavily involved in both the architecture and coding of the new microservices. They were also involved in the new process of deploying the code into Docker containers.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

The recruitment process with Unosqure is very smooth. We have regular communications with our account manager, and we discuss with them the skills needed for additional staffing. From there, they provide candidates that we can interview - and they are very transparent with their skillset, so we know that we're getting the right person for the job.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

With their support, we were able to meet our deadline of releasing a new microservice by end-of-fiscal timeframe that we could not have done otherwise.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Even though their developers were remote, we treat them as part of our regular team and involve them in all the decision-making processes. We find that this makes the Unosqaure developers much more vested in the SDLC.

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

They provide highly skilled and highly capable developers that can hit the ground running.

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

None that I can think of. There's a constant feedback loop with our account manager, and any issues are handled quickly and professionally.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

With G2, gain actionable insights based on AI technology and access the most extensive merchant risk database in the industry to make faster high-quality decisions. While G2 maintains the largest merchant risk data repository in the world, we believe that more insight is better than more data. If your organization is processing hundreds of merchant applications, it’s important to think about data in the context of managing workflow at scale. Volumes of information without the data science, domain expertise and machine learning to validate, classify and predict next action isn’t helping make better business decisions. Volumes of false positives create burdensome bottlenecks without delivering value. Senior Software Engineering Manager at G2 Web Services

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Complete rebuild of our core projects and services. Goal was to rebuild a multi million dollar infrastructure and update to todays processes and technologies.

SOLUTION

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

We selected the vendor bases on good recommendations, them willing to work with us very closely, and cost.

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

We have had a 5 year history with Unosquare. We worked with them from initial design, architecture, development, testing, and production deployment. Kubernetes Java Spring React

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

We had about 45-50 developers at our peak with Unosquare. Software Architects Software engineers QA Engineers TPMs Deveops

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project will be successfully launched in 2022.

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

Daily standup in a Kanban like environment. Team worked with TMPs on a daily bases and was overseen by development management team. Jira Github Confluence Miro

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

Very helpful on any problem we had. Will to work with us in many different areas Commitment to success was very high. They've really worked hard to get the project and our teams healthy.

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

None at this time

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior director of talent acquisition for a management consulting firm.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Unosquare, LLC?

They’re working on three different custom application projects for a client of ours.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We provided some intel, but they did some research as well. They work in C#, JavaScript, and Angular.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 1–3 people over the course of the project.

How did you come to work with Unosquare, LLC?

They were recommended to us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $50,000–$500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our relationship started in November 2015, with the first project kicking off in 2016. We’re still working with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The production code was deployed with minimal, if not zero, defects in the last year. Ensuring quality code is how we measure their success. They provide great expertise and valuable insight. On top of that, their client-facing consultants are great.

How did Unosquare, LLC perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re highly communicative. We have regular one-on-ones, speak over the phone, send emails, have video calls, and use Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve been impressed by their price point and the quality of the consultants they have on staff.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing comes to mind.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Develop a relationship with their client success executive. The more information they have, the better suited their consultants will be to meet your needs.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

As the CTO and co-founder of Talkoot I'm responsible for providing a clear technology strategy and productive work environment that aligns with our vision and values.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We have worked on one staff augmentation project together, consisting primarily of back-end development of integrations using C# and Restful APIs on an application written on the ASP.NET MVC framework. React and Visual Studio have also been utilized for UI front-end configuration.

SOLUTION

How did you select Unosquare, LLC and what were the deciding factors?

Unosquare is a locally managed, nearshore option that fit our needs for flexibility and resource allocation expertise.

The driving force in our decision was the value proposition to integrate team member as though they are permanent employees committed to the success of the company.

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

The project of building integrations contains multiple milestones and will be an ongoing effort indefinitely. The scope of the initial milestone was to build a proof of concept middleware solution, Olli, that interacts with RESTful API endpoints between Talkoot and Shopify.

This solution was developed on-time with minimal impact on the production code-base within 4 months. The scope of the next project was to expand upon that integration with a lightweight application named Pagemunk that will be publicly marketed within the Shopify store.

This project utilizes it's own cloud-based serverless architecture and will be targeting small-sized customers. 6 months into this work we are just now code-complete and are about to wrap up regression for submission.

The third project started about 3 months ago and utilized both of these first two projects to expand the integration efforts with Shopify into a generic structure extensible for multiple channels including Amazon, Hybris, Magento, Salesforce, etc.

This integration will be interfacing the legacy Talkoot architecture that targets enterprise customers into push & pull reconciliation commands for products and variants, formatted content and organized media such as images and videos.

Our hope is to be code-complete with the first iteration by the end of March. Our next projects include expansion on Pagemunk, integration with Hybris (SAP) and completing beta for the BrandCenter module within Talkoot.

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

We have worked with 3 Unosquare individuals so far. Carlos has been working since February of 2020 as a senior developer. Eliel worked for nearly 2 months as a junior developer. Tony is joining as a senior developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The projects have been delivered on-time and with solid foundation. We have an agile process, but we do require initial designs and architecture to be firmly decided upon before coding a solution.

The Unosquare team members have significantly contributed to planning and direction.

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

We communicate on a daily basis through Zoom meetings and live-chat in Slack. A remote workplace has been a competitive advantage for us and thus we rely on a flexible culture and sense of community belonging to motivate our staff.

The Unosquare hires that fit in are ones that are friendly, engaging and understand the big picture.

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

Unosquare has all of the expected requisites for a software consulting firm including skill matching, HR processes, ongoing monitoring.

However, the real competitive advantage that attracted us was their ability to integrate the personnel into the company culture as a valuable member of our community.

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

We have been very fortunate with the Unosquare team members. We did have one surprise when a member decided to move on to another firm, but that seemed to be circumstantial and caught everyone off-guard.

Unosquare's ability to problem solve that moment saved our roadmap timeline and has only strengthened our relationship.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of a Rhode Island based firm offering services around business and technology consulting and application development. I manage the development team, oversee the technology consulting practice, and am responsible for service delivery.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Unosquare, LLC?

Unosquare has augmented our staff with resources in front-end web development, UI/UX design, and quality assurance. Our flagship project is a social media platform for communities and brands; however, we've used Unosquare talent on other projects as well.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed talented, cost-effective staff that could bring to life a vision for a high quality, user friendly SaaS product.

SOLUTION

How did you select Unosquare, LLC?

Unosquare's transparent pricing model and flexible terms made us decide to partner with them, and the level of professionalism of the talent they provide keep us engaged with them on an ongoing basis.

Describe the project in detail.

The customer's vision was a branded portal that he could launch for members of his community to communicate and share ideas. Unosquare's UX/UI designer was involved early with interviews, user personas, and market research. It was a truly professional UI-building approach.

Once a design and information architecture was complete, Unosquare team members were in constant communication with our internal staff, attending daily standups and participating in the sprint planning process. We provided direction, but the Unosquare team provided a tremendous amount of valuable input and insight as we moved through the development life cycle.

What was the team composition?

At various parts of the project, we used Unosquare talent for intermediate-level Front-End Development (ReactJS & React Native), UI/UX design, and a quality assurance engineer. We have an in-house project manager/business analyst and two senior full-stack engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our app development team builds mostly functional business apps rather than end-user heavy software, so cost is paramount. Unosquare has allowed us to offer competitive price points to our customers while maintaining a high quality of service.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We are in frequent communication with our account manager and customer success manager. Requests are always answered in a timely manner.

When our billing methods began to get complicated, Unosquare worked with us to set up a custom system for reporting out work allocations. They were able to deploy this quickly and it allowed us to achieve better accuracy in billing and a higher confidence in our profitability reporting.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Unosquare is very transparent and willing to work with us in good faith. Other nearshore vendors have complicated rules, "gotchya" clauses, and arcane pricing structures. When we need help from Unosquare, we're never put in a position where we're being pitched to, or nickle-and-dimed about a price point on talent. They quickly provide high-quality personnel and are upfront about the cost involved.

Are there any areas for improvement?

The new ClientCore site is great, but it would be wonderful if it could include a history of invoices (full copies, not just the invoiced amount) and reporting on hours allocated. Currently, I need to request manual reports from our account representative.

He's always speedy about it, but it'd be great to be able to get that on our own. Also, QA engineers have a limited amount of devices at their disposal to test with - mainly, their own. It would be great if Unosquare could provide them with a testing platform like browser stack or AWS device farm for true cross-platform QA.