Tintash

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the vice president of engineering at an online interior design company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Tintash?

The business problem that we're tackling is, essentially, creating a 3D modeling application for online interior design. We want to facilitate the interaction between our clients and our designers with an app that has an excellent UX. Our goal is to have a product that empowers our end users to create and share designs easily.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Tintash is developing the product from scratch. It’s a Unity app that runs on both Mac and Windows. Although we have an in-house product and design team, Tintash has, on occasion, provided UX expertise that has contributed to the overall functionality of the app.

As of right now, the product is certainly a power-user app for our vendors that have a background in design. It serves as a powerful tool for communicating ideas to clients. Our plan is to expand the functionality of the application to include more users.

What is the team composition?

We have one–if not two–project leads. I say that because we’ve had one project lead for a long time, and there’s been another who has facilitated in an associate capacity.

How did you come to work with Tintash?

I inherited the Tintash team from a predecessor, so I don’t know the details surrounding the initial decision to hire them. We’ve chosen to stick with them because they’re a fantastic partner.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent somewhere between $200,000–$999,999.

What is the status of this engagement?

I’m not sure exactly, but I believe that we started in March 2017. It’s been at least two years now.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They are instrumental—critical, even—for the success of our business. Their work has contributed to some initial versions that were essential towards proving out our idea.

If not for this partnership, we most likely would not have been able to pursue the ideas that are now central to our experience. At the very least, we would not have been able to accomplish this in such a cost-effective or strategic fashion without Tintash.

The usage of the product has been primarily internal at this point, and there’s certainly a feeling of delight amongst the handful of designers who have interacted with version one.

How did Tintash perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re a fantastic partner. Given the array of ideas, inputs, and requirements that they’ve had to manage, the team has done a terrific job of organizing their work to hit deadlines consistently. Both of our project leads have been phenomenal.

We use email fairly often and do a weekly check-in over Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Execution is the first word that comes to mind. They organize themselves well and communicate effectively. Also, they’re routinely able to understand our intent and reflect it back to use to make sure that we’re in agreement. They’re also always able to implement our ideas.

We’ve continued to partner with them because they’re responsive and produce great work. They’ve also reacted in such a professional capacity throughout various challenging situations. Even with tight deadlines and limited resources, the team delivered exactly what we’ve asked. All of us here are very enthusiastic about our relationship with Tintash.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There is some room for improvement in terms of their communication skills. This is certainly a challenge with any remote, distributed team, especially one whose native language is not English. That’s the one thing that I can think of.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Tintash has proved to be a great partner. They execute and take direction very well. If the scope of the work is well understood, and the statement of work is well defined, then the relationship is likely to be a very fruitful one, for both sides.

Tintash does well when given general ideas, but you can’t expect them to deliver to your expectations if you provide them with a vision that is too broad and doesn’t include any details. I think that’s true for any distributed team.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a creative agency that builds custom software for enterprise and startup clients.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Tintash?

We work with offshore development teams in a hybrid development capacity to augment our internal team. Our lead in-house engineers architect appropriate solutions and work with developers to fulfill software designs.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve done iOS and Android development for a few of our projects. The bulk of the work we do with them is for a large U.S. healthcare company. We worked together to write the code, and they did all the development. We complete the design specifications and API requirements on our side, as provided by our clients.

These apps act as portals for users to take actions or see information related to their healthcare or provider. They can schedule appointments, change primary care physicians, or see lab results. We leverage mapping features, keychain functionality, and biometric security to ease user authentication. The app has to be HIPAA compliant, since it touches on a lot of personal health information. We also worked with a team of three on a smaller Unity software project that has since ended.

What is the team composition?

We work with six to eight people. The Unity project was a smaller team of about three.

How did you come to work with Tintash?

The search process was completed before I joined the company. My colleagues were impressed by their communication skills. We keep in close contact with their COO, who travels to meet with us at least once a year. They also have competitive rates and offer good quality for those rates.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent somewhere between $250,000–$500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The partnership started around September 2014 and is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They continuously do software development for this larger project. Their partnership has helped us cultivate and substantially expand the account with this healthcare provider.

How did Tintash perform from a project management standpoint?

We generally manage the projects internally and work directly with their developers. They send daily scrum updates and diligently stick to the schedule and update us whenever something is blocking them. They’re on top of the process and we’re happy with their operations.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Resourcing with them is great, especially compared to some of our other development teams. They have a very predictable resource capacity, which is helpful for our planning purposes. Their development matches the rates we pay them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve had positive and negative experiences with the development quality. We recently took them off of Android development to focus solely on iOS. We’re very happy with their Unity and iOS developers, but their Android developers gave us mixed results.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They can execute any task that is well-defined and straightforward. Be very explicit when explaining your design and avoid excessive complexity if you can. Our projects have been relatively successful because we take a hands-on project management approach. It’s helpful to get on the phone with them. Their English is good and they make themselves available for weekly calls.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO of Stick Sports Ltd., a mobile-games developer and publisher focusing on sports games across mobile platforms.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Tintash?

In 2010, we needed someone to produce a mobile version of our game, since we lacked the internal skills. We wanted help with the codebase, rather than design considerations.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Tintash has worked on multiple projects for us over many years, for the same core group of products. Most recently, they’ve also provided some graphics work and design concepts, as well as handling the core technology—building the games’ codebase. We’ve been limited in terms of what we’ve asked of Tintash, only asking for Cocos2d-x development at the moment, not due to a lack in their capabilities, but because of our requirements.

They’ve been integral in taking games from codebase to delivery in stores, and have also performed ongoing management. They’ve been responsible for the bug- and beta-testing programs we have in place. Tintash built the initial games based on our designs, which we then publish to a beta market. This is a rapid process that involves making changes and fixing bugs.

What is the team dynamic? 

We’ve worked on several projects, ranging from 3 to 7 person teams. They tend to be code-heavy, utilizing a project manager with a lead developer, and 1-2 junior developers. Additionally, Tintash will involve a graphics person, and overlay this with a couple of QA people.

How did you come to work with Tintash?

They approached us. We had started a project with another third-party company in the UK and it had stalled. We decided to cancel that contract and heard pitches from Tintash and one other company. We chose them based on their understanding of project requirements and ability to deliver.

More recently, we’ve retained them to do work because of their understanding of our needs going forward, which has been developed over the years. Tintash has been responsive to this, and we haven’t found anyone comparable, even though we’re approached regularly by other contractors. None have given us the confidence Tintash has.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost has been in the hundreds of thousands range. They are quite reasonable in terms of pricing, and we haven’t found Tintash to be either ridiculously cheap or overly expensive.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Tintash in 2010.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Tintash has been working on a particular piece of IT for about 2 years, which has generated around 25 million downloads in that time. It’s reached the number 1 position in various country app stores, and has dominated in the core countries it was marketed towards for a number of years. There’s no denying their team’s involvement and impact in helping us deliver this result.

How did Tintash perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re good at project timelines. We employ our own project manager (or managers) to control the outsourced relationship. Inevitably, this is a tough relationship to have, but Tintash’s people have always shown themselves to be responsive, sometimes under difficult circumstances.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a good management team, are realistic in what they can do, and don’t oversell themselves. This is quite important in an outsourced partner.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could improve in terms of the types of technologies offered, and platforms used for development. Overall, Tintash has been responsive and I have little to fault them on.