Vention

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I'm a department lead at Urban

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We provide at home wellness services like massages, beauty treatments, osteopathy and physiotherapy.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire iTechArt Group to accomplish?

• We needed an experienced iOS developer and a QA Automation Engineer to extend our team.

SOLUTION

How did you find iTechArt Group?

Online Search

Why did you select iTechArt Group over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

What was the size of iTechArt Group’s team?

2-5 Employees

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

We needed an experienced iOS Engineer to work on improvements and new features of our iOS apps, as well as to lead the Apps discipline inside our team. We also needed a QA Automation Engineer to build the foundations of our BDD tests workflows.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• In regards to the QA Automation Engineer, we now have automation flows for BDD tests that run all our happy paths, giving us an improvement on our previous setup of E2E tests. This has also brought the rest of the team into starting to take an approach based on BDD tests.
• The iOS Engineer delivered great quality work right from the start, implementing features to a high standard that have been resulting in conversion improvements, but also bringing his knowledge into the discussion of new features and improvements, contributing with very valuable inputs.

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

Both engineers integrated very well in the team, contributing regularly to any discussions and planning sessions, bringing great suggestions and delivering work of great quality.

What was your primary form of communication with iTechArt Group?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email
• Messaging App

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

They listened to our needs not just on the technical side but also in terms of personality and approach to work. Besides someone with great technical skills, we needed engineers who could be active in discussions, contribute to planning and great in communication, and that’s exactly what we got from iTechArt.

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

Nothing to mention here.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior director of digital transformation of a rail health solutions company. We do non-destructive testing of railroads to keep the railways safe. We look for cracks in the rails and find them before they get dangerous so the track can be maintained.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with iTechArt Group?

We were looking to improve the method that our analysts use to look at the data we collect to make decisions. We wanted to create a new top-level UI/UX design to look at the data.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We initially worked with iTechArt Group to design the UI/UX system and create a design together. Then, they gave us a cost and project plan to develop it, and we went ahead to build the UI/UX.

Most of the discovery process was interviews; iTechArt Group led the process and ultimately came up with a detailed technical design. We used Figma to visualize what they’d produce. Then, they moved on to the main project to build from that design.

We’ve also commissioned iTechArt Group to develop various web technologies and a web app for the interface. We’ll do a beta version next month, and our goal is to have a usable version by April.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with eight teammates. During the design process, we were in contact with the CTO, a senior project manager, and a lead designer. Now that we’re in development, we’ve added a senior developer, a QA specialist, a business analyst, and a web designer.

How did you come to work with iTechArt Group?

They were recommended by another third-party software design company that specialized in cloud computing. We’d worked with them for some time, and they knew we wanted to do UI/UX design. They did some research and recommended iTechArt Group.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent £30,000 (approximately $36,000 USD) for the design, and it’s been £175,000 (approximately $210,000 USD) for development so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began the partnership in December 2021. The project started in July 2022, and our relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ll find out the impact of the tool in a year, but it’s already apparent that it’ll be a significant change in the way we operate. Moreover, the process of working with iTechArt Group has been fantastic. They’re very organized, and the development process has been good. We expect the resulting tool to revolutionize how we do our analysis process.

How did iTechArt Group perform from a project management standpoint?

So far, everything is coming in ahead of budget. iTechArt Group has also done well on time, although there have been delays because we change some things or don’t supply the needed information. Overall, communication is good. We have stand-up meetings, weekly reports, and biweekly updates. iTechArt Group is good at identifying minor issues before they become big, so the project management has been excellent.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They stand out for problem-solving. iTechArt group is great at identifying issues and suggesting solutions. They prepare suggestions on how to solve the problem before we start addressing it so we don’t slow down.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything. They have an excellent process, and we have a great project manager.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

First, outline your specifications. Then, ask iTechArt Group to do a discovery process with your stakeholders and experts to come up with detailed specifications; the process is very valuable.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m Head of Developer Experience at Upvest. We enable businesses to build great investment experiences for their end customers – seamless, secure and across international borders. Our single investment API and digital infrastructure streamline the whole process empowering customers to focus on their core business.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Multiple teams at Upvest have used iTechArt employees. We have used iTechArt employees to help us with the development of our services, treating them as equals to our internal employees. iTechArt employees contribute to every part of the development lifecycle including product design, product development and release as well as product maintenance.

SOLUTION

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

Whilst ramping up our engineering organisation, we needed to move quickly. We carried out a vendor selection process and ultimately iTechArt was chosen. We were attracted to iTechArt because They have lots of relevant experience as well as a global footprint. iTechArt came with some highly relevant references in the industry.

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

As part of our product engineering teams, iTechArt employees have worked on:

• User onboarding process
• User account creation
• Tenant configuration management
• Fee collection
• Authentication
• Authorisation

Within Upvest, iTechArt employees have utilised many technologies, including:

• Go
• Datadog
• Kubernetes (LinkerD, Terraform)
• Kafka
• PostgreSQL

Delivering this functionality included performance optimisations, platform components contribution, implementation of observability and traceability of the flows. Some of these solutions are critical to the overall quality of the API. We focus on dependability and performance. Every team member needs to bring an excellent sense of code quality to the table. We both expected and got that from iTechArt employees.

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

In total, we have had four people from iTechArt working on tasks in various engineering roles within our Product Engineering group.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Together with iTechArt employees we’ve built and are supporting 19 microservices. In our test environment, we’ve successfully onboarded more than 500,000 users.

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

Within the teams where iTechArt employees are contributing we work in an agile manner. We have ceremonies such as daily standups, sprint planning and review, and retros. We use Slack as a communication tool, Linear as a task management platform and Slite as a knowledge base.

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

The most impressive thing is the way we work together. iTechArt engineers are fully integrated within Upvest and contribute to many aspects of our product. iTechArt engineers have challenged ideas and demonstrated a product mindset. Not only have they executed the tasks given, but they've also shown an understanding of the product's impact and developed the functionality taking into account the domain requirements and user experience.

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

Adjusting fully to the way of working we've adopted, with the iTechArt employees fully integrated into the team, took a little while.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Director of Engineering at Choco. We build software to help companies in the food-industry (restaurants, vendors, etc.) move to more sustainable food-systems.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We were ramping up a new team and additionally needed quickly the support of more developers in specific functions like mobile and web. We hoped to bring more value to our customers in a shorter time frame with the support of ITechArt.

SOLUTION

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

Our main criterion was speed. We needed to staff up our teams quickly and were happy that ITechArt was just as fast in providing us with help without having to blow up our budget.

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

We have two native mobile applications written in Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android. On web, we built our web app with Microfrontends using React. Our backend is an AWS-managed GraphQL service called Appsync. The client developers built several features in collaboration with their teams and across teams and functions.

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

We had two Android, two iOS and two web engineers supporting Choco's development efforts.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Since the engineers were spread across teams/projects, I can share no key metrics. In the end, we did manage to deliver the outcomes to our customers in a timely manner. Without the help of ITechArt we wouldn't have been able to achieve this.

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

The engineers were included in our teams just like any other developer. The would have their team rituals, break down and estimate their tasks and communicate their needs and progress within the team. The engineers who supported Choco had fantastic communication skills. On top of that, we admire the execution mindset and dedication each individual brought to Choco.

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

We are impressed by the flexibility and the close collaboration we have had so far. Things can change rather quickly and ITechArt is a great sparring partner to have alongside a quick-growing, fast-paced business.

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

The quality of engineers really varies. Not all of the engineers worked out over the course of the year. Primarily due to communication skills but also some lack of seniority. While different companies have different needs, I would recommend that every engineer has a good set of English skills.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CTO of a startup company. I am responsible for all technical architecture, personnel, and product decisions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired iTechArt to develop our initial product, from scratch, through MVP. The product was a relatively complex system with many cloud components.

SOLUTION

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

The deciding factors in initial selection were reputation, cost, talent, and availability.

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

The scope of work started with product definition and specification, included architecture specification, and ultimately implementation. The implementation details included selection of FE and BE programming languages, the DB architecture, and security components.

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

The number of vendor team members varied from 4 to 8 at various points on the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The MVP was extremely well received by customers and investors, enabling the next phase of company growth.

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

Project management was an Agile variation, with 1-week sprints. Typical PM tools were used for this - JIRA, Slack, Figma, etc.

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

The level of technical talent is generally very high, however the higher-level client engagement function is exceptional. There are regular team performance reviews which includes the account manager as well as the local engineering manager. Problem areas are immediately acted upon, and the vendor team is very good at maintaining a very high level of team performance. The flexibility and ability to staff unique needs on a very tight timeline were world-class.

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

The technical performance and result were remarkable and left little room for improvement. The company specializes in technical work however, and as a client of the vendor there is a significant obligation to provide high quality product leadership in order to achieve the best result.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of a fintech called Remotiv. We specialize in Retirement Readiness and Financial Wellness services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We initially hired iTechArt to design and develop a new mobile application and that evolved into an ongoing full-stack relationship. They currently provide design, PM /analyst, mobile development, UX, back end and QA resources across our suite of services.

SOLUTION

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

We were initially enamored with the design work on some projects we reviewed. This led to a deeper vetting through conversations with the team and a few referrals. They provided a thorough project proposal after reviewing our specifications and we were happy with the proposed tech stack, resource plan, and estimated cost for the project.

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

The project was to deliver a new mobile application for ios and Android in React Native. This included an api layer in C# and a backend administrative portal in React, deployed using CI/CD on AWS and our existing SQL Server database infrastructure. Based on our requirements a detailed specification was written by our iTechArt analyst resource, the designer developed a prototype in Figma and the developer resources were off and running after the sprints were defined. Our relationship evolved to enhancing our existing platform on the same tech stack as described above.

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

We currently employ 6 resources:

• 1 PM / analyst
• 1 designer
• 1 QA,
• 1 full stack developer
• 1 back end developer
• 2 mobile developers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were very happy with the initial specification, the design prototypes and the accuracy of time estimates on the sprints. The app was completed and we decided to continue the relationship. The app is still in beta mode however we are well on the way on the 2.0 release.

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

The PM has been a great resource for us and we communicate daily via Slack and have a couple video meetings a week to review any open issues, requirements and design prototypes. JIRA is used on the backend to manage the open issues and sprint details.

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

We decided on them based on the design of products they delivered and were equally impressed with the design work they did for us. The full stack engineer is very well versed in devops and the AWS stack that we use. We are very pleased with the work they have produced for us and continue to provide quality work for us.

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

Communication was a big concern due to the offshore nature of the relationship. While this could always be better I am happy to report that it exceeds what our initial expectation was. The biggest hurdle is the time difference but we are managing this accordingly.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CTO of a fintech startup operating in Africa providing an API to business to be able to issue physical and virtual debit cards to their customers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire iTechArt Group?

We needed back-end developers, business analysts, UX designers and QA testers to augment the small in-house team at Union54.

SOLUTION

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

iTechArt approached us when we concluded our Y-Combinator seed round - they made the process of scaling up the team painless and quick, whilst providing high quality resources.

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

The API was architected as a serverless, event-driven system that needed to scale effortlessly and provide a performant transaction processing capability. We therefore initially needed back-end developers with AWS serverless experience to add scale to the engineering team, as well as QA testers to ensure a quality product.

As the system grew in complexity, a business analyst was added to the team to help with the specification of new features. We also need to build an admin web interface, and at that point needed to add a UX designer to the team so our front-end developers had a well specified design to work from.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

Initially we discussed requirements with the account manager, providing an outline job description for each of the roles. We were then able to interview the candidates and set them a practical exercise to assess their skills. Upon a successful result to the exercise, we agreed start dates and simply signed appropriate SOWs.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to put our MVP into production within 3 months of inception and continue to issue new releases on a regular basis. This has allowed us to capture new clients on an ongoing basis.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

A daily standup helped to keep everyone up-to-date on each other's workloads, and we used a shared Jira kanban board to allocate workloads and check overall progress and move requirements from initial definition, through development, QA and into production.

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

The breadth and depth of talent that they have on tap is impressive, account management is also excellent - if any issues arose, they were swiftly dealt with in a positive manner.

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

As with all offshore / nearshore resourcing, sometimes English was a barrier to efficient communication, but with the addition of a business analyst with excellent English skills, this problem was actually addressed.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Senior Engineering Manager within a Fintech company. I am responsible for the payments processing software teams.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We were working on a project to roll out our product to the US. Part of the project involved developing a new payments architecture. For this we have four engineering teams focussing on different areas of the architecture. iTA provided both Go & PHP developers to build up our engineering teams.

SOLUTION

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

I was referred to iTA by the head of our business unit who had made initial contact with iTA.

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

The team worked on the development of new micro-services as part of our new payment architecture. This involved development in GO. In addition iTA provided one PHP developer to work on maintaining our existing solution.

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

We had 6 engineers from iTA, from relatively junior software engineers through to senior engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The iTA team members worked successfully within the teams to successfully deliver a quality solution (very low number of bugs) on schedule.

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

The teams worked as agile scrum teams. Each team has a dedicated scrum master. Jira was used as the project management tool. The teams followed all the standard ceremonies for scrum.

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

We were able to specify our requirements. iTA worked hard to understand our exact requirements, including working directly with their delivery manager, to ensure that the candidates provided met our requirements. In addition I met bi-weekly with their business manager who at all times was very helpful and enabled us to mutually provide feedback to each other.

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

Nothing

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the cofounder and Head of Product & Experience at Aavia, a Gen Z female hormone health brand educating people and providing insights about their hormone cycle.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We initially brought in iTechArt to build a community forum within our app, where members can post questions about their health to other members and medical advisors. Since we were impressed by their output, we continued working with them to build out insights, health logging, onboarding, and revamping the Bluetooth protocol to our hardware device.

SOLUTION

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

We searched online for overseas contractors as most US hires were out of our startup budget. We chose iTechArt because they were not only affordable, but had strong candidates and have worked with ClassPass before, where we have an investor.

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

Our product designer provided their team with wireframes and designs of a Reddit-style community page, where members can post questions, react to posts, and leave comments. As there were many Apple safety requirements for forums, we pushed out many iterations of the feature on TestFlight every other week for testing, before we pushed it live to our users after 3 months. Our members told us that the revamped community page is much more reliable than it used to be, which we were very happy with.

Now, we release builds every other week to our members with new feature updates, such as a new onboarding flow and actionable insights based on health logs.

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

We currently have 2 iOS developers from iTechArt.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Prior to iTechArt, we had several issues with the community forum, including comments appearing on the wrong posts, comments not appearing at all, or posts being displayed in the wrong order. They were able to fix all the issues and migrated everything from Firebase to Firestore. 

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

The developers are very communicative over Slack and update their tickets in Jira in a timely manner, making it easy to know where they are in their development process. 

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

I was impressed with how much the company cares for their employees. As they do have many developers in Ukraine and Belarus, they were able to provide relocation resources quickly to the developers when the Russian Invasion broke out. I also love that they not only match us with the developers based on their skills but also based on whether they would be a culture fit to the our company. 

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

Nothing I can think of!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CPTO at DirectID. We are a company working in Open Banking and powering the systems that enable real-time credit and risk decisions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed to accelerate a series of our projects in different areas. We engaged iTechArt to provide 4 individuals who could augment 2 of our teams. The first team being our development team (writing for cloud based microservices). The second team being our data science team (providing data insights, models and ML to open banking data).

SOLUTION

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

We needed the flexibility and capability across the broad spectrum of work.

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

We work in sprints - and added this competence in our sprints to be able to achieve our goals.

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

There were 4 in total. 3 in development and 1 in our data science team. They were all of a senior level in their discipline.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We achieved the timelines we needed. This process would not have been a success without iTechArt.

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

As the team were augmented they worked directly with us. Their English was fantastic and they raised any concerns, ideas or concepts well.

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

The flexibility and willingness to help. They solved problems in a quick and efficient way.

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

I do not believe so. They are a great organisation to deal with.