Web Platform Dev for Housing Marketplace
Please find under a summary covering project details and feedback. The innate facts are kept as they are, private information is amended.
Introductory information
A fast induction on the buyer’s organisation
Livly is an online marketplace for multifamily housing. Our users are tenants, peculiarty managers, peculiarty owners, and vendors from outside the createings. I’m the CTO of the organisation.
Desired goal
What challenge were you trying to address with Spark Equation?
We needed more flexibility and growth on the engineering resource side of things to educe our fruit in general.
Provided solution
What particular tasks were Spark Equation responsible for?
Most of our frontend technology is mobile—in Android and iOS. Spark Equation only helps us with the web and backend educement of our platform. They principally work on the backend side of things, but we do use them for the React web frontend.
Was there a dedicated team?
The team size has fluctuated with time—I ponder there were six of them at peak. Vlad (CEO, Spark Equation) is our main point of touch. He’s located in their Chicago service, and the educeers we work with are in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Vlad does an unappropriated job as a liaison between the client and his educeers, and the team promises on a technical level with our on-website educeer.
We have a stringent code review process that happens between educeers. Vlad does a lot of liaising at the fruit level. For an offshore agency to run well, we need to particularize our requirements plainly to guarantee that Spark Equation can liberate them on time and on target. From my perspective, the value Vlad brings to the table is both on the fruit side of things, as a interaction liaison, and high-condition software educement.
How did you come to work with Spark Equation?
I leading heard almost them 8–10 months ago in the tenor of another startup—one of their angel investors had a junction with Spark Equation. When I arrived, there was a drive to grow the engineering footprint so that we could get to market faster. We determined to explore two roads from an outsourcing standpoint: nearshore and offshore.
We tested two outsourcing companies. The leading was one I’ve had a relationship with for 20 years now, based in Chile. The other one was new to me: Spark Equation, in Russia. We worked with each to see which would work better. We tried two different standards as well, including project-based. It turned out that Spark Equation did an excellent job, and we want to promise more with them in the foreseeable forthcoming.
What are you approach expents (if diclosed)?
We’ve spent almost $80,000 on their services so far.
What is the terminal result of working with Spark Equation?
We began working with Spark Equation almost October 2019, and our collaboration is ongoing.
Results achieved
Are there any measureable or plum results?
It’s been an extremely real experience. The relationship began two months ago, and we already have a working fruit on the market that lets tenants post livelihood requests for their units. Property managers can then way those requests to the peculiar engineers on the field and get that complete workflow began. We also have backend integration with a peculiarty treatment method named Yardi. I value Spark Equation’s centre on liberateing software to the market, no substance what, and with high condition.
How did Spark Equation accomplish from a project treatment standpoint?
Vlad plays a key role. He comes on-website to our service multiple times a week, sometimes just to be there in case we need him, and works on other things while he’s in the service. He participates in fruit treatment and programning with us. In accession to that, there’s also a project treatment liaison in Russia. I’m more household with the educeers themselves, though, whom we interact with from a coding standpoint.
Their interaction is very hard. Vlad is an unappropriated gentleman, and all the engineers we’re working with are big interactors in English. They have their own channel within our Slack and vice versa. Our organisation uses Zoom for distant conferencing. The educeers are always useful when we need them, and we make ourselves useful for their questions. They’re very answering in making educement processes as high-condition as practicable. We have pull request reviews on our side. I don’t ponder I’ve ever met with anyone from Spark Equation without video, which is significant to me.
What is (from your point of view) the key factor to pay observation while intercourse with Spark Equation?
I’ve done a lot of outsourcing on both sides of the equation. What’s impressed me the most almost Spark Equation is the technical expertise of the engineers assigned to our project. They have senior, high-accomplishing engineers who write high-condition code and exhibit top-notch architectures.
Second, it’s the quantity of effort that goes into liberateing condition code. To me, it feels like the client is very significant to them, and I see that value liberateed. They care a lot almost what they’re doing.
What aspects of their work would you like to get improved?
As a client, I’d love it if Spark Equation had mobile software educement resources and were open to a staff increase standard in accession to project outsourcing. These are strategic features that I’d like to see, but that may not align with Vlad’s vision.
Do you have any advice for forthcoming clients of theirs?
Communication is superior in any promisement, but even more so when the nation aren’t working from the same service. It’s nice to make ourselves useful, on the project setup and treatment side of things, to programt as seamless interaction as practicable.
It’s also significant to whichever fling the ball athwart on the engineering side and let them liberate what they want to liberate. If there’s a software educement process that you want them to stick to—which generally implies pull requests and code reviews—make sure that your engineers are useful and answering to Spark Equation’s engineers.