The Software House

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CTO of Bethink

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Bethink is an EdTech company, developing both an e-learning platform and medical and high school level learning environments.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire The Software House to accomplish?

• Custom CMS and websites development
• E-commerce development

SOLUTION

How did you find The Software House?

Referral

Why did you select The Software House over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from The Software House were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Initially, The Software House team was responsible for developing our custom implementation of the Statamic CMS. Together, we established a robust approach to building websites using reusable blocks. This collaboration resulted in a system capable of managing multiple websites with custom theming, complex content management, and internationalization.

Given our satisfaction with these results, we partnered with them again to build a new e-commerce module for Bethink's products and services using the Medusa JS framework. This ongoing project will support the launch of our new brand, Medcourses.com — a global medical education platform.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We successfully launched three websites using our new system, migrated all content from the legacy platform, and introduced several custom blocks. The infrastructure is now significantly more stable, and all components are properly version-controlled.

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

The Software House's team was extremely flexible with their pricing and team composition. We had a few requests along the way, and they were always eager to find a mutually beneficial solution. The projects are complex and require managing two different roadmaps; they generally did a great job managing deadlines and the associated communication.

What was your primary form of communication with The Software House?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Finding competent talent at software houses is rare, but TSH is certainly above average. I believe this is because they maintain a permanent team that shares best practices and undergoes regular performance evaluations.

I have mentioned this before, but I was also very impressed by their client-focused approach regarding adjustments to pricing and team composition.

Are there any areas for improvement or something The Software House could have done differently?

Our company prioritizes precise, proactive communication regarding project status to reduce stakeholder uncertainty. While our current efforts are generally effective, we are continuously developing new practices to better meet our needs.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a technical product manager at Smartum Oy, an employee wellness company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Software House?

We needed their team to update our e-payment platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Software House recreated and modernized the front- and backend of our e-payment platform, which was also built by the other members of their team back in 2017. We gave them access to our existing platform and provided the API documentation for our backend. 

The Software House then proceeded with redeveloping it to improve the ordering, payment, and distribution processes. We previously used Drupal to run our system, and their team replaced that with a React-reliant payment platform.

What is the team composition?

We worked with one project manager and one developer for this project. However, we used to work with a bigger team for our previous development projects with The Software House.

How did you come to work with The Software House?

As I mentioned, we already worked with The Software House prior to our site update needs, so we thought it was best to hire them again for this project — we all knew that they’re a proactive team that gave us a good working experience.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about €1 million (approximately $1.2 million USD) on all their development projects.

What is the status of this engagement?

The redevelopment project ran from March–July 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We weren’t able to keep track of quantitative data, but The Software House delivered an improved platform that pleased our customers. They especially appreciated the system’s user-friendly frontend, which in turn gave us fewer support issues and complaints to process. 

How did The Software House perform from a project management standpoint?

They were a responsible and communicative team. We dealt with some issues at the beginning of our project —  we only provided them with the API documentation, and they found it challenging to connect that with our internal operations. However, they quickly addressed that by adjusting their learning process. 

The miscalculations were mainly on our end, but they remained proactive and cooperative. Overall, we were pleased with the professionalism they showed.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What truly set The Software House apart was their communicative nature, which was exemplary given that they were a foreign company. Their work ethic and project management skills made for a highly organized process.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There was no issue that they left unaddressed.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure to plan your project thoroughly with your internal team before relaying everything to The Software House. Had we realized the importance of this step early on, we wouldn’t have dealt with any delays and issues during the project.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a software architect that works for an events services company. We’re one of the main event organizers in central Europe, not limited to ticketing, but that’s our main business.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Software House?

We outsourced custom software development work to The Software House.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We came to them with ready-made requirements, and we discussed them with The Software House. After consulting with them, we made some modifications and went through the solutions suggested in the requirements in an agile and scrum-like development process.

Their team did the backend development on Node.js provided by Docker containers and frontend development using JavaScript and the React framework. They also used AWS.

What is the team composition?

We had up to three software developers from junior to senior levels. We also had a project manager on the TSH side and a QA engineer.

How did you come to work with The Software House?

We found them through a network recommendation.

How much have you invested with them?

Overall, it was around €200,000 (approximately $235,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

The ongoing partnership began in September 2019. Because of COVID-19’s impact, we put things on hold. Since November 2020, we’ve been working with them on a different project, but it’s using the same technologies and setup.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The final product is in production, and we’re absolutely content with it. It’s also making a profit for us.

Their team said it would take half a year, and it was more or less done in that time. I’ve never seen such a precise estimate; it was really on point. The budget projections were always very correct, and I was very impressed with how precise the estimates met the actual reality.

How did The Software House perform from a project management standpoint?

We typically communicate through Slack, which both of our companies were familiar with. We also have Zoom meetings and use Jira for project management and tickets.

Their team is very responsive. We always get an immediate response, and they have always been available to us. We’re located in Germany, and they’re in Poland. We’ve regularly visited each other.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re also a software company. They actually gave us access to their tech people right from the start.

The communication from the beginning was between the tech people on our side and the tech people on their side. It was easy, and they were approachable. There was no shield between their technical staff and ours, which has been nice.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not really. The way we work together has been fine from both sides.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

This isn’t specific to The Software House, but I think any software agency can best help if you know what you want. I don’t have anything specific.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of an e-commerce hosting company that provides servers and additional services for many big e-commerce companies in Holland and Europe.

I’m responsible for managing the software development teams for customizing products and processes and for automation.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Software House?

We have only three in-house developers, and our priorities are determined by how it’s going with customers. It’s hard to plan the work and it can be frustrating.

We were looking for a way to extend our developer capacity so that we could make a roadmap.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We worked with The Software House in a team extension model, not the team as a service. We used our own processes and project management methods. We set up the architecture for the ideas we had, and they helped us with the implementation.

They helped us execute what we wanted to do so that we could also build on top of it ourselves. We still felt it was our own code, and we still determined a lot of basic things like the frameworks to use.

They did mainly web development for both the frontend and backend. We used React on the frontend and Symfony PHP on the backend for some products.

One of the features they built for us is DNS management. It allows our customers to manage their domains. It’s a common functionality for hosting providers, and it’s a good additional service to have. It’s best to offer clients a single product where they can manage their webshop, server, and domains.

The Software House also developed a notifications API. It enables customers to get notified when certain things are going on with their servers and applications. Notifications are made via WhatsApp, email, or Slack. They set up the first version of that, and we’re building on top of it ourselves now.

What is the team composition?

We worked with around seven people from The Software House: frontend and backend developers, QA engineers, and a project manager. Their setup is such that the members switch to other projects sometimes. In total, we’ve worked with three frontend and four backend developers.

This wasn’t an issue for us because The Software House made all the knowledge transferring internally. We didn’t have to give explanations again every time; we onboarded a developer only once, and that person onboarded the next developer that worked on the project.

How did you come to work with The Software House?

I’d had some experiences with outsourcing. Not all of them were great, but I could definitely see the potential.

A friend of mine had used them for one of his projects and then recommended me to the company. He’s the CTO at another startup in Amsterdam. I’d known him for a long time, so if he gave me a recommendation, I wouldn’t be afraid of trying it.

We agreed to have a one-month trial with one developer, so there was almost no risk for us.

How much have you invested with them?

We paid them an average of €8,000 (approximately $9,000 USD) a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with The Software House in the second quarter of 2020, and we finished about a month ago.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The flexibility that The Software House gave us was a big plus in terms of scaling up. We were able to do more frontend work one month and more backend the next. They have all the capacity to grow with us.

We worked in two-week sprints, meaning that we determined the scope of the work every two weeks. We made sure that everything was clear for the developers, including specifications and responsibilities. After everyone was in agreement, they’d make a commitment on what they thought they could do in those two weeks. After those two weeks, we’d review and measure what was and wasn’t done.

We had a lot of things worked out and prepared when we started working with them. We just needed some extra hands to fulfill the job and reach our internal targets. We reached all goals 50% of the time. When we didn’t, it usually was because of external factors unrelated to The Software House.

How did The Software House perform from a project management standpoint?

I give them an 8/10. They performed well enough. I found that it was important to put a lot of work into preparing all the work. They’d get nervous if there were a lot of question marks, which is something we had to get used to. We used Azure DevOps, Slack, and Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It’s the speed they have in adding new members to the team. For example, the last frontend developer got some important things done the day he started. They’re agile, and it doesn’t take them a lot of time to get the project up and running. The knowledge transfer from their colleagues is done very well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They need to be more direct when there’s an issue. There were times when they need to ring the bell a bit quicker when they didn’t have answers for certain questions. It’s something I’d like to see improved for our next collaboration.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Clients need to put a lot of thought into specifying everything that needs to be done and make sure that all the designs are done and validated. That way, their team can be as productive as possible.

If they start working on day one, there should be almost no questions. They like to keep on going and have a list of things that need to be done. If all of that is clear, they can go really high.

If they get stuck with something, it can cost a lot of money and create delays. We ran into that, and we learned from it to put way more effort into preparing the work.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of FIBR, an SME lender based in the UK. We lend to small and medium companies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Software House?

We were looking to grow our software development team quickly, but we couldn’t find people fast enough, and we decided to outsource.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Software House provides software development services. They allocate software developers to our project to meet our specifications, which they work in collaboration with our in-house team. We went through multiple project scoping sessions; It took us 2–3 weeks to get all set up, and then they allocated a small group to our project.

What is the team composition?

We now have 15 people from their team, and my main point of contact is the project manager and a managing director.

How did you come to work with The Software House?

We found them through an online search. We chose them because they provided dedicated teams for specific needs.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend £50,000 (approximately $68,800 USD) with them every month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2020, and the project is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They brought in the right talent at the right time with the right expertise. We’ve been happy with the quality of their work.

How did The Software House perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management is good – I can always reach my points of contact at any time. We communicate via WhatsApp, Slack, and email, and we use Jira to keep track of the project.

They’re responsive when we have issues or suggestions for improvements — they’ve helped us out when we needed it. There’s always an excellent collaboration because they accommodate when we need a change with invoicing or other related aspects.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very flexible and adapt to our processes and tools.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Talk to them a lot; the more you talk to them, the more responsive they are. Communication is always key.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am CEO at Blue Coin, Katowice-based company that develops a range of web portals that provide individuals and businesses with expert knowledge on topics such as personal finance and economics.

Blue Coin wants to equip users with the information they need to make the best decisions in their everyday lives – when choosing accounts and deposits, learning about innovative fintech products and many more.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Software House, and what were your goals?

TSH’s assistance was required in the ongoing development and maintenance of our most important web products: najlepszekonto.pl and najlepszelokaty.pl. As their popularity grew, a bigger and more flexible team was needed to meet all of our objectives.

Ever since 2015, the objectives gradually changed. They included frontend work with React and backend development with Symfony. An important part was the implementation of the Bolt Content Management System. As the portals grew in popularity, more work was needed on maintenance, optimization as well as development of new features.

SOLUTION

How did you select The Software House and what were the deciding factors?

We have used both recommendations and online research in our preliminary selection and then went on to consult our project with a number of pre-selected vendors. The team at TSH impressed us with a highly personalized approach to our project and lots of interesting suggestions, as well as the ability to handle almost all aspects of the projects, including design and project management.

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

The cooperation has been ongoing since 2015 and involved comprehensive custom web development of our web portals with React and Symfony. At various stages, the Bolt CMS, Redis and the Twig template engine were used. The TSH team also had a PM specialist on its own. The development and maintenance of all services is still ongoing.

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

Up until recently it included two PHP developers and one frontend developer. Now, we are working with one PHP dev and one frontend dev (React), a designer and a Project Manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The work done by the TSH team made it possible for us to keep with the increasing traffic and demands that resulted from it. They helped build a scalable and easy-to-manage content-heavy portal that grows with its user base.

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

We’ve worked with a few Project Managers during the course of the cooperation. All of them managed to meet our needs, despite having different approaches to the project. We use industry-standard communication tools (email, Slack, Jira) and SCRUM/Kanban approach to development.

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

Their flexibility makes it possible to increase and decrease their involvement based on our needs. Their overall ability to deliver is also impressive.

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

During the project, any issues we raised were solved efficiently and there is nothing major I can think of.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm co-founder and CEO of Uberchord, maker of the eponymous mobile app. Uberchord Guitar is one of the world's three interactive guitar teaching platforms. Uberchord was founded 2014, uses a patented technology for acoustic chord recognition and raised 2.5M of VC funding.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Software House?

We've set out to develop the entire learning platform from scratch. This includes all parts of the platform. Frontend, backend, CI/CD, devops.

What were your goals for this project?

Until now, Uberchord has only been available for iOS. The new version were to designed be available on iOS and Android, with Mac and Windows coming later.

SOLUTION

How did you select The Software House?

I've had a long standing friendship with one of the business executives and had developed a trusting relationship through small projects over the years. My experience with the previous projects, our overall communication, and the growing size and quality of the development team made TSH a clear choice.

Describe the project in detail.

Uberchord had been developed in Swift native to iOS. To be platform independent we needed to move to a new technology, deciding for Unity. In addition, the backend had to be migrated from Meteor to Node JS, and massively extended. Also, we needed to ramp up operation, deciding for Kubernetes and seamless CI/CD.

What was the team composition?

While TSH does not have Unity developers of their, within days they identified the right team from their own backend team and the frontend team from their network. The team consisted of two backend engineers, devops and two frontend engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Both mobile application and backend are running smooth with tens of thousands of users, with a surprisingly small amount of bugs along the way, which were with few exception easy and fast to fix.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The collaboration and the workflow has always been smooth. The onboarded us in their Slack, organized a few channels. We invited them to Jira, Figma and our cloud systems and off we went. One standup in the morning, spontaneous Zoom calls when needed and that's about it.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They know what they are doing, they do their best (which is very good), and they are all super friendly, reliable, communicative people. 

Are there any areas for improvement?

We had a little bit of a shuffling of resources, partly due to our changing needs. Not sure if that can be improved, especially since TSH had to stretch themselves to always accomodate us.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the former CTO of MaaS Global.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Software House?

The company was scaling rapidly. We needed to augment our staff in order to meet the demands of the market.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Software House works as an extension of our team, working mainly on software development. They also do some QA and DevOps.

What is the team composition?

We started with 2–3 teammates initially, but the team has grown.

How did you come to work with The Software House?

I had a list of potential partners who I vetted as I would an internal hire. We felt like we connected well with this team and would work well together.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $400,000–$500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together around November 2019, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We measure quality in terms of productivity versus bugs. They produce quality code and are effective in their use of time. The Software House is also proactive, pointing out when something isn’t right so it can get fixed. That was a pleasant surprise. Overall, I’m very happy with them.

How did The Software House perform from a project management standpoint?

Most of the project management is done internally. They are responsible for their daily activities and their team composition, and they do well in both of those areas. Communication is very good.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team is focused and specialized in their technology stack. They also engage well with their customer to build long-lasting relationships.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could consider adding to their technology stack.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make personal connections, work closely with them, and treat them like your own employees. That is the most rewarding for all parties involved.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We’re a leading software provider for educational institutions in Poland. We help schools and institutions in digitalizing their traditional processes and products. One of our core products is a digital school diary. I’m a CTO and the director of the IT department.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Software House, and what were your goals?

In Poland, every child aged 6-18 is obliged to attend school. As part of our portfolio, we have the Compulsory Schooling and Learning System. Its task is to enable officials to verify that all children from their region meet the education obligation. Our current system required refreshment and functional add-ons. Therefore, we decided it had to be rewritten and supplemented with new functionalities and modules.

SOLUTION

How did you select The Software House and what were the deciding factors?

I contacted The Software House’s management board about cooperation and product development. We were looking for a company with proficient skills in Symfony on the backend and React on the frontend.

Our developers attended a few tech meetups organized by The Software House in their office. They were extremely knowledgeable and our development team thought they would be a great addition to our project, so we recommended them to our board.

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

The primary services The Software House provided were backend development (Symfony), frontend development (ReactJS), and testing. Since our platform is one of the elements of a much larger system, there was a lot of integration with our other services included as well.

Apart from refreshing the tech stack, The Software House introduced brand new functionalities like databases of educational institutions, student registers, school districts, statistics, and other features supporting the work of end-users. An additional element created was the TERYT service. It’s a link between the state-owned location database and a few other systems of ours that downloads and updates necessary data to all systems directly.

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

Project manager, two frontend developers, two backend developers, and a Quality Assurance specialist. When we needed more resources, we were temporarily provided with additional developers and DevOps engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The Software House delivered a robust solution with high-quality code and improved security. The latter is immensely important because our portfolio is used by the public sector in educational institutions across the country and deals with loads of sensitive personal data.

Thanks to their help, our platform is 100% ready for the next school year. What is more, TSH worked so well on this project that our core-system developers could focus fully on developing our main product. That was especially important during the COVID- 19 pandemic.

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

As is often the case with this type of project, the beginnings were challenging. Luckily, our dedicated Project Manager was very supportive and quickly responded to all our messages.

He was responsible for communication and carrying out tasks smoothly and timely. The project had daily updates, sprints after each stage. It was always our team and TSH team planning the next stages together. We used popular communication tools: Slack, Jira, Google Drive, Confluence

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

We are impressed by how quickly The Software House understood our business. Unique was the quick adaptation of the team to the needs of the project.

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

Everything was OK

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a startup. We built a pension platform for employers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Software House?

We needed a comprehensive software agency that understood the needs of a startup and could handle various tasks. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We actually had a half-built platform that The Software House picked up. They fixed problems and expanded the platform by implementing designs and a financial dashboard. 

The product evaluates portfolios through APIs with real-time stock pricing. It then aggregates users’ pensions and provides a calculated score based on our proprietary algorithm. The platform also forecasts pensions using separate APIs.

What is the team composition?

We work with four people from The Software House. The team includes a project manager, a front-end developer, a front-end designer, and a DevOps person.

How did you come to work with The Software House?

We received a referral but we’re not sure how. I called them to talk through the project and then flew out to their office to get a feel for their team and the quality of the firm. We needed someone with a good eye for detail and summarizing complicated financial information. The Software House pleasantly confirmed my expectations. Their team was proactive and focused on quality software development.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about £75,000 pounds (approximately $94, 000 USD) on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started our partnership in June 2019, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The Software House delivers quality work. There are few tickets assigned to them because a feature didn’t pass a test. If a product fails, they take it seriously and fix it quickly. Their velocity’s also good. They’re client-driven and reduced my AWS bills through clever DevOps work.

How did The Software House perform from a project management standpoint?

My touch pints with them are Slack, Jira, and Bitbucket. I have limited communication with them by design. If we set up a solid weekly sprint with clear objectives, there shouldn’t be too much back and forth with the developers throughout the week.

At the end of the week, we look at their completed work and discuss any problems. And then the next day, we spend an hour talking about the next sprint.

Their team normally hit their targets. If they don’t, there’s usually a good reason why.

Their project manager makes sure that the developer knows what’s going on. He also provides additional resources within their group when I need them.

They have good communication skills. If I'm slacking on my responsibilities, their team asks that I adjust, which is appreciated. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team's deliveries are smooth and efficient. When we assign a ticket, their team understands the issue and fixes it without needing lots of explanation. That may sound boring, but I’ve worked with many software agencies that don’t do that. The Software House reads a ticket, estimates it, and asks questions upfront. Their team then implements the solution, making the product work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing comes to mind.