Grappus

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Virgil Careers is a career navigation and recruiting platform. I’m the CEO and founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Grappus Technologies?

We wanted to create an engaging user experience that can help people better navigate their career process.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, we had them help design and develop the first iteration of the iOS app for our platform. Grappus helped design and develop an assessment tool which allows people to assess their competitiveness for over 500 different career roles in less than two minutes.

It’s a really slick interface that’s easy to navigate and has virtually no user falloff. On the frontend of the project, we have design and UI/UX needs. Then we move onto development where we focus on iOS development. They are currently building the Android version of the application.

They also helped us with the web application of the platform. For the web application, they built the backend in MySQL, Python, Angular, JavaScript, Django, etc.

What is the team dynamic?

We’ve had six people assigned to the project.

How did you come to work with Grappus Technologies?

They were recommended to me by another entrepreneur. I’ve worked with remote teams for many years. We were looking at four other agencies and we chose Grappus because of their design capabilities. I had an extended conversation with their lead engineer, and I thought he was extremely thoughtful in how he articulated the development of the architecture.

How much have you invested with them?

We have spent between $50,000 and $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in April 2015, and the project is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve won at least eight awards for the platform and we signed up Fortune 500 clients and some of the largest trade associations in the world. We’ve generated a fair amount of revenue from it.

How did Grappus Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed well. We have four-week sprints and they have delivered on time. There are a consistent feedback loop and a strong attention to detail. We didn’t have any communication problems.

We’ve used Asana, Slack, Pivotal Tracker, InDesign, and Bugzilla as tools throughout the development.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are by far the best design-oriented offshore development firm that I have worked with in 10 years. It’s proven in the responses that I get from clients and customers and even from other technology companies in the space. They really like our design and user experience. They built a very thoughtful initial architecture that we’ve been able to build on top of. We’ve never had to break that or reconstruct it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could have a more formalized QA process

Do you have any advice for potential clients?

I would be structured in your project management approach.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a music streaming app.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Grappus Technologies?

I’m a first-time founder with no tech background. I’ve been affiliated with the tech industry but have no development or design experience, so I needed a team to design and develop an iOS app from scratch for both iPhone and iPad.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

This music app is meant for businesses that generally use playlists for background music. We’ve created a platform that has continuous 1-hour or more DJ mixes, with no silence between tracks and a very intuitive daily calendar for scheduling. Grappus needed to figure out how to slot the mixes into the daily calendar in order to facilitate planning and make certain mixes recurring either daily, weekly, or only by certain days. Another feature involves data sync between the iPhone and the iPad. We also needed the ability to save plans and modify them on the fly.

One of the requirements for business music streaming is that we need to report all the music that is played to various agencies so they can pay off the original artist of the track. Since we work with continuous 1-hour mixes, it’s hard to deconstruct them, which was a big challenge for us. It’s really easy to do with playlists because when a song is over it’s reported. In our case, we’ve had to parse out each track per mix in order to report everything.

What is the team dynamic?

We’ve set up weekly or bi-weekly calls with the main developer, the designer, and the frontend and backend developers. In the beginning, there were 4 of us on a call at any given time, but now it’s just me, the project lead, and another person on the calls. After the call, they send a follow-up email of what we discussed and what they’re working on. It’s pretty seamless.

How did you come to work with Grappus Technologies?

I got 10 different proposals and references of U.S.-based vendors that manage offshore teams. The last thing I thought I would do was go with a completely offshore team, especially one from India. The criticism is that they’re not as thoughtful regarding product and design as U.S. teams are.

I ended up getting a referral for Grappus from someone who I trust that is a product manager herself. They had the right mix of expertise and cost, and since I’m funding this business myself, the cost was a major issue. I probably would’ve spent at least three times as much if I went with a U.S.-based team.

How much have you invested with them?

I’ve spent $30,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

I found them about 3 years ago but I wasn’t ready to start yet. We started working under contract in January 2017 and the project is ongoing. We’ve got one more round of development to go.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re about 4 weeks away from launch, but everyone I’ve shown the product to is very happy with it. They talk about how well designed it is and that the user interface is easy to navigate. My experience has been really positive.

The product is functional and has never been very buggy. I was expecting things to be worse, especially during development, but things have gone well. We haven’t put in any venues yet or played it for days on end, so we don’t have any feedback yet.

How did Grappus Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

The project has been a little delayed, but we had an aggressive timeline to start with. I’m partially at fault for the delay because they rely on me for feedback, but they’re also working on other projects at the same time. I’m not in a rush anymore because there’s a lot of work I need to do on the backend before launching, so I’ve allowed a looser timeline.

They’ve been very communicative and responsive. We mostly use Slack, Google Hangouts, and email for communicating and document sharing. We also used Pivotal Tracker. There was a point where the designer had some personal issues and was hard to get in touch with, but he’s back on it again now. There haven’t been any issues regarding cultural differences either.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a thoughtful team and when they saw that some of my scope was incomplete, they filled in the gaps, which made the product better. They’ve tried to look at things from a user experience perspective and I really appreciate how invested they are in the project. The quality of the product speaks for itself and they even extended some courtesy for some features that I needed developed where other companies would have charged me more for.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would say their timeliness could improve, but overall, I’ve been pretty happy with them.

Do you have any advice for potential clients?

As a client, you have to know your product. If my scope of work wasn’t as thorough as it was, this would have been a much more difficult project. I did a lot of work up front to make sure they had what they needed to understand the product. Things come up as you go through it, but there needs to be an understanding between you and the developers.

If your project involves an entire remodel, a lot of work needs to be done up front in order to make sure that the team knows what the product is. You could spend more money and leave it to someone else, but if you’re going to use an offshore team and get it done under a tight budget, the onus is on you to do that work.