BairesDev

Please describe your company and your position there.

Signal is an advertising technology company that allows brands to better understand and market directly to their own customers through a suite of products.

For what projects/services did your company hire BairesDev?

We hired BairesDev to augment our current engineering staff for the frontend, backend and QA teams.

What were your goals for this project?

To provide cost-effective, reliable engineers to help out our on-site teams members.

How did you select this vendor?

We went through an RFP process.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They continually participate in the planning and implementation phases of our products. They are in our on-call support rotation and lead teams and initatives.

What was the team composition?

We are currently working within a staff-augmentation model so we have individuals as part of larger teams. We also have one team that is currently run completely by BairesDev.

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

One team that is completely run by BairesDev engineers is currently 1/3rd of the size as it was 12 months ago, with honestly, greater throughput.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Since we have been in a staff augmentation model and the resoruces being near-shore, management of the team has the same as the rest of our in-house resources.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I was impressed with the quality of the engineers and thoughtful management of the account.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I would like to see more "team" hires, than individuals, but to be honest we haven't explored that much with them yet.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Prolific 1 partners with entertainment rights-holders, combining industry-leading technology with expert analysis to drive incremental revenue and attendance for live events. Our flexible solutions and innovative distribution platform deliver more fans for every event, on your terms. I act as the VP Engineering for our company.

For what projects/services did your company hire BairesDev?

We hired BairesDev to augment our staff and for assistance in developing an internal inventory management system. The application focused on mapping events from various sources, managing ticket inventory and giving manual and automated guidance on pricing.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals were to automate many of the manual processes we had been doing in regarding to event mapping and inventory pricing for distribution to various distribution channels.

How did you select this vendor?

We selected BairesDev as they had worked with our parent company previously and we had a good relationship with them.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They designed and developed a system that pulled market based pricing changes for events that we held inventory. They also created automated processes to map our events with inventory to various distribution channel events. Together the systems functioned to keep our inventory fresh and the data allowed our pricing team members to have an accurate view of the ticket market as a whole.

What was the team composition?

The project fluctuated between 6-10 team members. We had an internal database administrator and project manager although BairesDev did initially provide a project manager as well. We began with a designer to help us get the look and feel templates created and then proceeded with the front-end and back-end developers and one tech lead.

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

Our solution has been in production for the last several months and we have been working to increase performance and reduce the impact of bugs/issues. We are targeting January 1 2020 as a fully functioning solution with increased performance and limited bugs/issues.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We began the project with a hired BairesDev project manager. We had our own internal project manager too so we eventually rolled off the hired project manager once the project was up and running smoothly.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

BairesDev was well represented with some talented and experienced developers. The designer was very good and delivered the templates in a timely and efficient manner. The initial design worked well throughout the entire project. Developers were very responsive and easy to reach in times of need. Our having a daily call helped facilitate effective communication.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There seemed to be very little overlap in technical skills. This was both good and bad in that each developer would be responsible for their area of the application (algorhythm, automated processes, build/deployment, etc.) . This worked well to separate the developer's effort but would occasionally slow us down when one specific area needed a lot of attention and we were dependent on the single developer doing much of the work for this area of the application.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our company develops software to provide timely responses of available mortgage products and pricing to borrowers looking for a loan. It optimizes the collection of this information from various providers, then returns consolidated results to users of the system.

I am in charge of all Software Architecture and Development.

For what projects/services did your company hire BairesDev?

We hired BairesDev to provide 2 teams to work on various parts of our overall solution. These teams would function as co-equal teams alongside the domestic development teams.

What were your goals for this project?

I wanted to double my development capacity for two key areas of our product offering. There were strategic opportunities to increase our feature output to our clients, and hiring additional teams allow us to accelerate our output.

How did you select this vendor?

I went through a process of identifying multiple, potential offshore partners to work with our domestic staff. One of my prime objectives was to find a partner that could quickly staff 2 teams with a high level of talent.

During the due diligence process, it was clear that BairesDev would be able to meet this need and were able to concretely demonstrate their ability to do so compared to the other potential vendors.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

One team designed, developed and released software to integrate two disparate solutions owned by Optimal Blue to provide end users with a better experience.

The other team participated in the redesign and implementation of how users and services authenticate against Optimal Blue solutions, improving the security profile of our applications.

What was the team composition?

We employed 7 developers and 2 QA analysts. At times we have added additional developers to supplement the current staff and meet aggressive deadlines. We also have a project manager from BairesDev who works with the team to ensure ongoing deliveries are met in a timely fashion.

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

We have been able to continue with feature development for one of our key solutions, while simultaneously integrating two of our solutions. Without BairesDev staff, one or the other of these key initiatives would not be complete. Our ability to deliver more with BairesDev increases client satisfaction and increases our competitiveness in the marketplace.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Day to day management of the project was handled by domestic development managers and business analysts. This was chosen to ensure timely feedback on work in-process, and to make sure the teams from BairesDev understand the critical nature of the work they provide to the overall success of Optimal Blue.

A BairesDev project manager also interacts with the team on a regular basis to ensure the teams are satisfied with the level of engagement and as a way for BairesDev employees to feel comfortable providing feedback to Optimal Blue.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They did what they said they would do - they helped us quickly on-board two very talented teams of individuals. I found it highly unusual they were able to follow through so quickly as I always expect the sales cycle might exaggerate what will be delivered once a contract is signed. I was thrilled at how closely they worked with us to provide a great outcome.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Any areas of concern or improvement are communicated to BairesDev, and they always respond promptly to address those areas.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We provide system integration and custom implementation services. We have been in business since 1987. We have offices in Danbury, CT and Charlottesville, VA.

For what projects/services did your company hire BairesDev?

BairesDev was hired to augment our development team on custom application development / system integration projects.

What were your goals for this project?

To complete the project on time, on budget, to specification and client expectation.

How did you select this vendor?

Based on the fact that they are in a time zone similar to that of ours. We need to be able to communicate during our work day as a team.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

BairesDev staff provided experienced programming skills.

What was the team composition?

The business analysis, technical specifications, project management, scrum master roles were performed by internal team. BairesDev was utilized to augment the development team.

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

We believe that the ability to have elastic development resource available to meet deadlines for bespoke projects is critical to the success of our business model.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was handled internally. Agile methodology and a variety of project management, communication and version control tools such as Jira, Slack, Confluence, and gitHub were utilized.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The BairesDev programming staff has been knowledgable, skilled, reliable and easy to work with. They responded well to feedback and provided accurate estimates for work effort / time for scheduling sprints. They are familiar with the various collaboration / version control tools and the Agile methodology.

Are there any areas for improvement?

When requesting placement of one person on a project it is key to make sure that that person have the correct skill set and personality to work effectively.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our platform is a solution to one of the key problems many enterprises that rely on farm-source data face: recording, tracking, and reporting of data from many locations, various stakeholders, and often on paper or in Excel spreadsheets. Facing decreasing margins and increasing expectations for raw materials transparency, businesses that rely on agriculture for business success are at risk using this disjointed, antiquated approach to data collection because it lacks efficiency, timeliness, accuracy, and security. I am one of the engineering managers at CropTrak.

For what projects/services did your company hire BairesDev?

We hire BairesDev to provide web developers to fulfill our need for .Net MVC and WebForms developers for our web team.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed to put together a new version of our web application while transitioning between WebForms and MVC. The goal was to deliver a mix between technologies that seemed transition-less to our customers, focusing on overall improvements across the web application.

How did you select this vendor?

I did some research, and called several outsourcing companies. Almost none of them provide outstanding quality, good rate prices and a very flexible hiring process.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We hired their developers to be part of my team, as if they were working with us, so great team skills were also needed.They went though our regular training, and immediately after planning they were able to deliver incredible quality backend and frontend code with little direction.

What was the team composition?

The web team has about 6 people, two web developers and UX/UI specialist from BairesDev, and three local developers in our offices. We are work on the same project using a very flexible version of Agile regardless of geographical location.

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

Our new web effort is still on the works at the moment but we are going to deliver on time, probably a couple of weeks early. Delivering software on time and with good feedback from QA, the board of directors and customers is a great achievement for a small company.

In part, because of the "on time" delivery, we decided to extend the contract to at least the end of 2020 to work on the next web version of our application. Honestly, it is hard to find quality developers in non-major cities.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Great communication overall, I was able to talk to BairesDev at any time, Skype, email, calls whatever I needed. I took the lead of the team, so I was in charge of the management of the developers. On the BairesDev side, there was a project manager and also and account manager. Great people both, and with excellent English skills.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The most impressive thing about them is how fast they can find the best possible candidate for your specific needs. Two weeks or less. Secondly, I found that the hiring process is easy, fast and reliable.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I don't think so. My experience with BairesDev was and still is great. As a side note for us, the people hiring BairesDev, do a little investigation about the software development culture in South America, and as long as you are willing to understand that there are differences between US developers and developers in South America, BairesDev's developers will delivery quality software on time.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior associate for a management consulting firm.

What challenge were you trying to address with BairesDev?

We needed a development team that provides us with engineering services. BairesDev supports the accelerated growth of a new product line and making some business deadlines we set for ourselves.

What was the scope of their involvement?

BairesDev supplies us with resources specialized in a range of object-oriented programming languages, including Java, Go, and JavaScript. Their team can quickly identify talent and fill in our needs. These roles include design, front- and backend development, quality assurance, documentation, DevOps, and machine learning. 

They have supplied talent and onboarded them into those positions within 1–2 weeks. BairesDev’ resources support us in multiple departments, such as setting up continuous integration and implement our continuous development pipelines. We also use Jenkins, Chef, and Puppet to manage our project and design.

What is the team composition?

We currently have a 21-person team. 

How did you come to work with BairesDev?

We tasked one of our business partners with helping us identify potential offshore and nearshore development teams that could meet the stringent requirements we have for product development. We interviewed 10 different companies, and BairesDev was considered one of the best candidates. We did a formal solicitation process, and they came out with the best proposal for what we needed. As a result, we eventually chose them. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The collaboration started in February 2019 and is ongoing. 

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

Not only is BairesDev extremely quick about filling our open positions, but they’ve also had an extremely high success rate in finding talent that performs to our standards and fits our team. The resources have a high level of expertise, great English language proficiency, and excellent team-building skills. Despite being a few time zones away from where we operate, BairesDev’s team can flex their schedules to work with our normal hours of business.

How did BairesDev perform from a project management standpoint?

BairesDev has an exceptionally strong project management culture. They provide several roles to manage our account. We work with some individuals on the account management and customer success side. We also have an engagement manager and Scrum master who we meet with regularly to provide the broad-level requirements. They’ll then translate that into a detailed list of tasks that the BairesDev team needs to accomplish in each sprint. They’re well-organized, and they respond quickly and handle any requests if we need to change anything.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The speed that BairesDev can staff high-quality individuals into the positions we need is unparalleled. I haven’t run across any other company that can provide resources as quickly or with the level of quality that BairesDev can supply.
    
Are there any areas they could improve?

As with any staff augmentation arrangement, there will always be staff that isn’t up to the challenge. We had some resource early on that didn’t quite meet our expectations. 

However, the way BairesDev handled this was a strength. Their team worked with each resource to mitigate the situation and ended up finding another candidate to fill in the position. They communicated with us from start to finish about our options and were highly responsive throughout the process. The resources they selected wound up being a successful fit. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Hans & Company. We provide consulting services to large Fortune 500 companies, typically around software development, integration, testing, and QA to name a few. By drawing from our global network of partners and subcontractors, we’re able to be more nimble when delivering services.

What challenge were you trying to address with BairesDev?

One of our clients needed to quickly build an internal application for their customers, which were other large-scale companies. The development was behind schedule, so I brought in BairesDev as extra horsepower to expedite the project.

What was the scope of their involvement? 

BairesDev helped develop an enterprise-level e-commerce application. Customers could use the app to buy products, services, and equipment on a large scale.

What is the team composition? 

They had a business analyst, a project manager, and five software engineers.

How did you come to work with BairesDev?

I found BairesDev while searching on Google. They appeared on a number of lists for recommended near-shore companies, so I gave them a call. They replied quickly, and we went through an interview process.

The main factor that sold me on them was our mutual alignment on business practices. Both of us viewed doing business the same way, so we eventually struck a contract together.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $150,000–$200,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

Their work lasted from May–August 2019, so about three months.

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

It’s hard to attribute specific metrics to BairesDev since they were one of three subcontracted teams. Likewise, I don’t have any insights into product usage, but I do know that more features are being developed every month.

How did BairesDev perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed as expected. We mostly communicated over Skype, email, phone, and conference lines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their vetting of candidates and standards for who can join the company seem to be more stringent than others.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, the work was satisfactory.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?
 
Don't choose them based on price. Choose them for what you're trying to solve and see if they can provide the best solution.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO at Swordpoint Services LLC. We work out of Atlanta, Georgia.

What challenge were you trying to address with BairesDev?

We were looking for app developers who could enhance an existing app we have in the field.

What was the scope of their involvement?

For the bulk of the project, we were working with one of their developers who were responsible for app and API development for our iOS and Android product. To complete the project, they used Xamarin and C#. 

What is the team composition?

At some points, we had 2–3 developers working on the project, but we typically had a single developer at our disposal.

How did you come to work with BairesDev?

I received their information from a friend and colleague who used their services before.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $110,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The collaboration lasted from October 2018–August 2019.

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

Since our work started with them, we’ve been able to implement about eight minor version upgrades and one major upgrade to the app.

How did BairesDev perform from a project management standpoint?

They used Trello to manage the development work, and that was great for us. Their team improved our code source management system, so collaborating with multiple developers is simple. The work they’ve done has been outstanding from the beginning. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The project management team was aggressive in contacting us to make sure we were happy with the services we were receiving. That was quite refreshing. Additionally, the developer they assigned us was very bright, able to refine and improve upon the process. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re pretty expensive compared to other offshore developers I’ve seen, but the quality of work is much better. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of Tackzee, a mobile app for taxis on the island of Nantucket.

What challenge were you trying to address with BairesDev?

We hired BairesDev to build mobile applications for the drivers and consumers.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They used a .NET framework, developing the iOS and Android apps using Xamarin and a SQL server.

What is the team composition?

At the height of the engagement, we had five developers, a project manager, and a couple of QA testers.

How did you come to work with BairesDev?

I used them previously at another company, so I knew what to expect when engaging with their team.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent roughly $400,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with BairesDev from October 2017–2018.

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

Overall, BairesDev did a good job. There are issues to be expected during projects like this. Some quality issues could be fixed. For example, someone recently was double charged. We expedited some of the work and may have cut corners to get it finished as fast as possible, so I wouldn’t necessarily blame them. I pushed them pretty hard. There are some things I expect any developer could find during a simple testing phase, so that was a little disappointing, but I was happy with them.

How did BairesDev perform from a project management standpoint?

Our project management tools were Jira and Flowdock. The assigned project manager was the strongest one I’ve ever worked within the last 20 years. She was phenomenal, doing her best to meet my expectations. I had no problems with the management aspect.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I previously mentioned their excellent project management style, but ultimately, BairesDev delivered what I had asked them to build. Their team is tech-savvy, meeting all of the requirements. I’m delighted with their work product.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Some of the communications we had with the tech lead could’ve been better. If I report an issue, I expect that the person would go in and not go into all the work that they have to do. I understand that it takes time to investigate it, so I don’t need to be told that. I expect a tech lead to go beyond the core specifications and fill in the gaps. That would be my only critique.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product and R&D manager for Rolls-Royce Process Automation and Monitoring Systems (PAMS). Our primary business area is the installation and maintenance of plant process computer systems at nuclear power plants.

What challenge were you trying to address with BairesDev? 

Primarily driven by cybersecurity concerns within the nuclear industry, we have significantly changed the architecture of our system over the past 5-6 years. Implementing some of the requirements to comply with new regulations required us to isolate our systems even further. In practice, this made data availability for support staff members at nuclear sites either impossible or highly restricted. 

In early 2018, I began the process of determining whether we could build the mobile app in-house or if we needed external support. After investigating the capabilities within our organization for a couple of months, I determined we could manage the backend and web service. We needed help with the frontend because we lack those development skills internally.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We modified our architecture with the added capability of delivering real-time data we collect in the plant to support staff. Employees included within the envelope of secure users can access data on safe operations of the plant and environmental protection through a mobile app to help the operational staff produce power. Our team’s engineers built a RESTful-based API and used JSON to transfer information back and forth from the web service. 

I brought BairesDev on to help us build the frontend of a mobile app that consumes data sent from our web service. We’re developing it to support both Android and iOS. There is a relatively small amount of native code for each platform. The bulk of the app runs on a progressive web app (PWA) with a common code baseline for both platforms

We started with a discovery kickoff that lasted two weeks. When they came to our offices, we sat down together to hash out the project. I provided exact requirements. We discussed the functionality and mapped each feature back to the scoping document I had created. After we broke the project down, we entered each aspect into Jira.

Our biggest technical challenge was deploying push notifications built using Firebase under the iOS platform. Apple is very particular and restrictive about how they allow companies to send users notifications to their devices.

What is the team composition? 

The team includes a lead developer, a supporting developer, a scrum master, a UX designer, and a QA person. I also interact with a business development manager on a regular basis and speak with other marketing resources periodically as well.

How did you come to work with BairesDev?

I conducted various Google searches and asked my contacts in the industry which kinds of resources they had used to build mobile apps. For a while, I couldn’t find any companies that fit the bill for us until the CEO of BairesDev sent me a very timely email.

Another company contacted me and I found two other potential candidates around the same time. During a two-month evaluation process, I wrote out scoping document to send to the four vendors. I held various phone conversations with each one and quickly eliminated two.

Based on our discussions and their references, BairesDev was clearly the most experienced in the areas that I wanted to build the frontend to address. They were more competent than the other companies and had already built an enterprise-scale mobile app. I wanted to leverage the expertise that they brought to the table and liked their overall approach. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $125,000-$150,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2019, and the work is ongoing.  Our current plan is to continue using BairesDev for version two of our mobile app. We are already in negotiations about a follow-on project with another group in our organization that I’ll be helping to facilitate. We hope to kick that off sometime this fall.

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

BairesDev has helped us make a lot of progress in a short amount of time. We’ve worked really well together as a cohesive group. Every member of their team has been extremely professional and fully met my expectations. 

The quality of everyone they’ve assigned to our project has met or exceeded my expectations. In particular, the lead developer is awesome. He’s a great person and is highly knowledgeable. Both developers are skilled and have deep knowledge in our primary areas of interest. 

The UX designer did an amazing job of getting us started with the wireframes. He was very easy to work with and receptive to all my feedback. The QA representative excelled in their role, as well. He has been my primary contact for every issue I found or technical concern I've had.

How did BairesDev perform from a project management standpoint?

BairesDev has implemented a top-down agile methodology flawlessly. Their solid understanding of the process really shows in the results. We hold daily standups and use Slack for team communication. They helped us ensure we set everything up during the discovery phase as we planned out the entire project.

The project consisted of six sprints, and BairesDev has worked extremely hard to complete all the assigned tasks in each one. The final sprint was for user acceptance testing. As simulator we run of the nuclear plant provides the data from the web service we use for the mobile app development. Eventually, we will use Jenkins and a production-like environment to deploy our product to customers.

The toolset they introduced me to has been phenomenal. We use Jira to track all the epics and user stories, then break everything down into sub-tasks. They also use an estimation tool. We’re using GitHub to store all our code. They’ve done a great job of keeping the latest and greatest code in the repositories I set up, and they’re very knowledgeable about accessing VMs. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

BairesDev is a team of hard workers. Their level of responsiveness has been outstanding. Every time I have a question, they answer me instantly. Their attention to detail has exceeded my expectations. 

They’ve listened carefully and been very receptive during our discussions.  BairesDev helps us find out the most important aspects to emphasize so we could allocate our attention appropriately.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

The language barrier had posed some minor difficulties since we speak different languages natively. We’ve had some difficulty around technical concepts at times, but communication has been great overall. Exchanging ideas in Slack seems to come across more clearly than in verbal conversations.