STX Next

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I run an organization called SuttaCentral, a small nonprofit that hosts Buddhist scriptures. We have analytic and translation tools to help present and convey the texts in a straightforward and dignified way that makes them available to everyone.

What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?

We’ve had a website since 2005, and our internal dev team recently began rebuilding it. We created all the templates and details, but we realized we needed more help.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We explained our goals and plans to STX then they did the backend in Python and database in ArangoDB. We keep basic data in JSON files to feed into ArangoDB and use a translation software for the texts.

We built the site in Polymer, which is relatively unknown, but it lets us leverage the web components and build our Progressive Web App (PWA). That was one of our most important criteria because a PWA means we don’t have to build independent apps. It also allows our users, who are mostly in developing countries and use mobile devices, to run the site while offline.

What is the team composition?

STX provided two programmers, a tester, and a project manager.

How did you come to work with STX Next?

We found them on Clutch. STX dealt with the kinds of technologies we use, and they seemed to be a reasonable price, so we got in touch. From the beginning, they were friendly, welcoming, and willing to listen to us. A lot of companies just want to do things their way, but STX was happy to personalize the project according to our needs and plans.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from October 2017–March 2018.

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

People like the site—it’s received a lot of positive feedback. As with every large project that uses cutting-edge technology, it has a few bugs, but we’ve worked closely with customers to fix them.

How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?

They implemented an agile methodology, which was helpful. They listened to what we wanted and developed a plan accordingly. We modified the process as the project proceeded, which showed that they were paying attention to our progress. We used Jira and Slack to communicate and had daily meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re highly professional and talented. Their process for reviewing code and team management were much better than any other firm we’ve worked with. We learned a lot from STX; we’d never done a project like this, so they taught us useful techniques and methodologies.

We could tell that STX cared about our project and wanted to do their best—it wasn’t like working with a big, faceless corporation. They weren’t afraid to make suggestions to improve the product, so it really felt like we were a team. We got along well and looked forward to our daily meetings.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can't think of anything.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder of a cryptocurrency exchange platform.

What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?

We were looking to outsource our IT development. We had been using an in-house team for the past four years, but we needed to scale up our efforts.

The cryptocurrency market fluctuates highly, making it hard to guess what will happen next. We saw such a period near the end of 2017, and increased our team size dramatically to keep up with demand.

What was the scope of their involvement?

STX Next is our company’s outsourced IT department. They specialize exclusively in Python, which is the language we use for our platform. They’ve also provided cloud-infrastructure DevOps services, frontend development services, and quality assurance.

What is the team composition?

They have provided resources for all aspects of the software development lifecycle, including developers, project managers, and QA testers. We started with a team of 5 people, and increased to 15 after three months. We now have 10 developers, two QA testers, a project manager, a Scrum Master, and a DevOps specialist. We also have a key account representative on their side.

How did you come to work with STX Next?

I was overwhelmed by our lack of resources and the amount of work to be done. I found STX Next after looking for software houses on Google. They were close to my location, so I visited their office. I found that their senior- and junior-level developers had good experience in Python. After a few meetings, we started working together.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on their work.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with STX Next in September 2017. The project is ongoing.

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

Previously, our system could only serve 300 concurrent users. STX Next did extensive work that increased that number to 5,000. This was immediately reflected in our revenue, increasing it tenfold.

How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?

They always responded quickly to our scaling needs, and provided us the correct resources. They’ve managed the project internally using Jira and other tracking tools. They also utilize some state-of-the-art software development tools outside of infrastructural components. We use Telegram for communication, which is my choice. We usually call each other with WhatsApp, but we use Google Hangouts and email as well. We have also visited them in Poland.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We had worked with a local company before, but their quality of service and responsiveness were nowhere near what we’ve gotten from STX Next. It’s been a completely different experience.

They behave as a part of our company. They own projects, show responsibility over the work, and deliver the best possible results. STX Next stands out by acting as an internal IT department.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The cost could be lower.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Software development is an open-ended task, so the customer needs to focus on maximizing the benefits of a partnership. STX Next also offers this kind of involvement. I didn’t have the time to give them a lot of information about our project in the beginning. I simply gave them the code, and they constantly pushed me for more information after that.

Introduce your business and what you do there

I’m the CTO and co-founder of a software product firm. We make compliance software for the financial industry to handle a number of functions: know your customer, anti-money laundering, and enhanced due diligence.

What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?

We were looking to expand our technical capacity quickly to handle client demands, to avoid the lead time the typical hiring process has. We initially outsourced the integration of several data providers and the build-out of the Python framework used to do so. This lent itself to outsourcing as we could provide clear specifications for the integrations. Later in our engagement, the team worked on the core product, working on features with our on-site development team.

What was the scope of their involvement?

STX Next worked on various data integration and other projects relating to our software products. We would provide specifications for data integrations, including how these sources were to be queried and how the resulting data should be displayed and then send. When disparity was found between what the external providers produced and what specifications stated they would identify possible alterations and verify it with our PM team. We worked with them to establish the types of data we wanted to use to ensure that we were working towards the same expectations.

Some of the more complicated integrations included writing non-trivial data processing pipelines, data cleansing, full-text indexing for which STX build a framework for handling integrations consistently, which highlighted some good product and architectural understanding from the dev team and some great management from the more senior developers.

After trialling them with the integrations project we included them in development of other aspects of the product including frontend work with AngularJS and ReactJS, adding new functionality or updating existing work.

We have a tech and QA team here, so we tried to include STX as much as possible in meetings when appropriate. It’s difficult to come up with a perfect specification, but what really helped was making communication as easy as possible and including them in our normal communication channels.

What is the team composition?

We worked with around six developers and one QA in total. We started off with two developers (one senior and one junior) to integrate them with our team, who both ended up being really effective. We then increased this to four developers and one QA. We didn’t have any STX Project/Product Managers/Owners but rather kept that in-house.

How did you come to work with STX Next?

We did quite a lot of research searching various outsourcing sites such as Upwork among others eventually we found STX.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in February 2017 and finished our work this past Wednesday.

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

I don’t have any specific metrics on hand but the STX developers were integral to the success of projects we have had with two of our biggest clients.

How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?

In-house product managers and developers interacted directly with the STX developers on a daily basis, they were included in our internal Slack channel, we communicated with them via Google Hangouts, included them in our GitHub organization from which we were handling task management. This seemed to work well and didn’t require much change to the standard in-house approach.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality and experience of some of the developers were invaluable. I was impressed how much they can act as a force multiplier to both the STX and the in-house development teams.

Are there any areas they could improve?

As mentioned above, it was impressive how much team composition in terms of senior and junior developers can change the dynamics and productivity, there is probably some efficiency gains to be made there.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you are considering a team consisting of more than 2/3 of developers consider a manager as well. We choose not to which required non-trivial organization on our side which will be exacerbated by for instance timezone differences.

Initially, we got the team over for a week which really helped build the relationship so I’d suggest doing this if you're going to be working with them for any length of time.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO at a small agency called Fluid within the global firm Wunderman. We do all the digital and marketing work for South Africa’s largest telecommunications company.

What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?

We needed to rebuild a website that was built by another agency using Python and Django. We don’t offer Python ourselves. Our long-term plan is to redevelop the site in a technology we work in and we needed Python development specialists.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’re developing the entire website taking over existing sites. They have full control over the source code, developing new features and fixing bugs. They do continuous deployments every second week to release those fixes and new enhancements.

The website is a beast. They’ve dealt with various tricky challenges, including things that go wrong on the live side that they have to debug. They aim to have the new website done by September of this year but I foresee at least another 12 months of work.

What is the team composition?

We work with two account managers, a scrum master, a lead developer, and other developers including a QA.

How did you come to work with STX Next?

Someone else at Wunderman referred me to them. He may have gotten their details from another office of ours because I believe they work for Wunderman in other countries. We work with a few other companies who know technologies that we don’t do. They were likely indexed or listed as the supplier of choice when he referred them to me.

How much have you invested with them?

We're paying roughly $25,000 a month so we’ve spent about $100,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2017 and it's ongoing.

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

I’ve heard feedback from the client that these guys are better programmers than the previous company. From my personal perspective, they’re very thorough. This client is high pressure. Everything is urgent. They’ll be on vacation but asking when they can see something. Even with that pressure, STX won’t pass something if they haven't quality assured it and are happy with the output themselves. I really appreciate that.

How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?

Communication is good and frequent. We meet with the entire development team every day. We have a daily stand-up using Google Hangouts, Skype, or another video technology. We speak to the scrum master every other day. I also have a weekly call with the account managers to check on the status and health of the relationship. We talk about any issues or improvements he can suggest. We always know where we stand with them.

We use Atlassian tools including Jira, Hipchat, and Bitbucket. All bugs and announcements get assigned a ticket through Jira. We use Hipchat to communicate and that is linked to the tickets. Everything is managed and we all have access to the same systems.

Working and enforcing the agile way has worked really well. We're not working with a project manager per se but, with the scrum master and just the general communication, I think they're very thorough.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The way of working. Everybody tends to be agile, have scrum masters, and those kinds of things. But they're the first company I've worked with to actually enforce the process. They’re working via the proper agile methodology. They insisted that we have a scrum master on the project. We have someone who checks in every week on the relationship and wants to know if there are any problems they need to solve. They really maintain the relationship and work professionally.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only negative that's come out from a client perspective is that we’d like to see better turnaround time. We tend to spend a lot of time on certain issues. That being said, we also know that this website is very complicated in the way that it was built. When they got the code to begin with, they did a review. The quality of the code that they received was a -13.8 of 10. The website is in really bad shape. As they develop, they continuously try to improve, stabilize, and reflect the code. In their defense, that’s why it takes time. But if they could deliver a little bit faster, that would always be appreciated.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

No real advice. They were very good, easily on-boarded, and really just a pleasure to work with.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a global network of studios providing visual effects for movies. We have locations in Los Angeles, Toronto, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Vancouver, Beijing, and Shanghai where we produce visual effects for feature films, commercials, and visual effects. I’m the global head of pipeline, which is a specific type of software development department in the visual effects realm.

What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?

We are a small team of 5–10 developers, and sometimes have needs which we can’t provide. We were looking to outsource some development work, and needed experienced Python developers who could help us build a tool. This was our first experience with outsourcing.

What was the scope of their involvement?

STX Next worked on an in-house, proprietary tool. We provided them with user stories, mockups, and some specific technical requirements in regards to style and the highly-flexible architecture of the underlying framework. They came up with a well-structured plan, made suggestions around our architecture, and provided extensive user testing.

They utilized the PySide framework to build a UI based on our requirements, which were specific to visual effects. The entire tool was written in Python.

The first iteration didn’t take very long to complete, and consisted of recoding existing functionalities as well as adding new ones. This included the UI that STX Next built, which is something we haven’t had before. We’ve discussed undertaking a second phase and extending the functionalities.

What is the team composition?

We had a 5-week project for which we used 3 resources from their team, including a lead developer and a tester.

How did you come to work with STX Next?

I approached the problem looking for reliable groups who could deliver more than just freelance developers. We wanted to build an ongoing relationship with a company so that we could go to them regularly with issues. I asked a couple of ex-colleagues in the industry, but information about outsourcing work is not very open, since the software we build has to be highly-integrated into proprietary tools.

I researched numerous places on the internet and came across Clutch, which proved to be very helpful. We approached 3 companies from that site, got a couple quotes, and had some discussions regarding scope. We took some time figuring out who we wanted to hire, and eventually found STX Next to be the best fit.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost of the project was between €16,000–€25,000 [U.S. $19,000–$30,000].

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in mid-July 2017, and concluded the project in the third week of August.

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

We previously had a command-line interface, but the new one is nicer to use because the user experience is much better. The important factor for us was that the architecture be flexible, and the plug-in-based system STX Next came up with has helped extend functionalities even further in the future. In our work, we have quite high demand around the application systems used for different shows. We’ve used the platform in very different ways, and have been able to dispose of the old tool.

We’ve used the tool for some high-level shows across different locations, including Los Angeles, Toronto, and Frankfurt. The tool does the job much better than the one we had before, and has saved us a lot of time.

We found the architecture to be so good that we’ve started extracting it into libraries which we can use with other in-house tools. This ultimately means we’re getting more worth for our money due to STX Next’s contribution. We’ve had a couple of technical requirements which called for the tool to be highly flexible, but I hadn’t really thought of reusing the code. It was a pleasant surprise.  

How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?

The project length was 5 weeks, and we kept it short because it was our first time working with an outsourced company. We wanted to work through an Agile process in order to come up with something we could hopefully use. Requirements in the visual effects area can be quite specific, and we wanted to make sure we didn’t spend too much money on the first try. We were ultimately happy with STX Next, and plan to do more work with them in the future.

Communication was one of the things they handled specifically well. They were always quick to respond, even when we didn’t communicate everything we wanted very well. They always reached out to ask questions, and then went back to work.

There was a time difference between us of about 6 hours, but it worked out well. We had a 2-hour overlap, and we also have a German office, which made it a bit easier.

We had a main communication tool in order to keep the process formal, but they also reached out to us on Skype for quick questions or decisions.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was surprised with how well the collaboration worked.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We demanded a couple of things, but not everything we should have, which was a problem on our side.

For example, we should’ve tried to integrate it into our existing in-house environment earlier in the process. The testing was done in week 4, and it should have been done in weeks 2 or 3. We should’ve used STX Next more as an in-house team instead of giving them small bits of work, and then waiting for the results. Again, this has more to do with how I approached the process. Their team asked for information and showed us their progress on a weekly basis, but we should've actually attempted to get the code into our system, given the small issues which came up later.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Everything depends on the kind of relationship the client is looking for. In our case, it wasn’t a matter of the internal team being completely clueless on the technical end. We actually have developers who know what they’re doing. Generally, we know programming, and only used STX Next as an extended workforce. The model worked quite well, but I’m unsure how it would work for someone with no technical personnel in-house.  

We were able to write down user stories and create a mockup for the UI. Much of the conceptual work was done on our end. If there is an in-house technical department on the client’s end, they should definitely be more involved from the beginning. It helps a lot.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re an agency that mainly converts traffic from retail stores online for purposes of lead generation and branding. I’m the CEO and one of three founders.

What challenge were you trying to address with STX?

We have an in-house development team that works exclusively in Python. We wanted to build a  new product—an auction platform where manufacturers or retailers sell products for purposes of market research—and release it quickly. We didn’t have the in-house capacity to make it work in the timeframe we wanted to. We decided to outsource the project fully to get an MVP out.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We provided functional specifications and mockups to our designer. Over the course of 5–6 weeks, STX did the whole frontend and backend development up to the MVP.

It’s a B2C product with an admin panel in the back where we steer and control the whole thing. There’s user registration and sign-up, Stripe integration, and a complex algorithm that chooses the auction winner and calculates the current price in the auction. The backend technology was Django and Python and the frontend is Angular 2.

We continued working with them until one week after launch, at which point we took the project completely in-house for further development and maintenance.

What is the team composition?

We had a stable team of six: two backend, two frontend, one QA, and one proxy product owner.

How did you come to work with STX?

I searched online for Python development houses. I used Clutch to compare agencies and narrowed it down to four companies. In the end, we selected STX to do the project for us.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from October–November 2017.

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

It has good traction. In terms of users and stability of the platform, we’re happy with how things are going. The productivity was equal compared to what we do in-house.

How did STX perform from a project management standpoint?

We used JIRA and they shared the source code with us through our systems. We use Bitbucket to host source code that the team directly developed in our repository. We were always able to see what was happening as they progressed.

Some milestones were missed, but it wasn’t clear how realistic those targets were given the quick turnaround time. Everyone involved was aware that the target was definitely moving and it was about getting an MVP ready with as much functionality as possible.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The whole team was interested in getting the product out. They weren’t some nameless people developing some software, but rather an extension of the team. They were very self-contained. They did most of the things themselves and contacted me if there was a need or they were blocked.

I was also pleasantly surprised how proficient they were in English and how easy it was to communicate.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You don’t just get an extra team member; you buy a whole team. That’s what works best. You need a whole team working remotely as well. There’s a spirit that develops, people work together there, and it’s not just somebody in another country that expands your team. That would be the best format to have the whole team.

Don’t go into it expecting low prices. Costs are going up, but not at the same levels as in the West—especially in Switzerland—but they’re approaching costs here. Nevertheless, you have a lot of capacity available and it’s very good capacity.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the former operations manager at TBSeen, and currently act as the managing director. We are a retail platform for shoppers that provides curated deals from over 650 U.K. retailers. Our team searches for the best available discounts, vouchers, and cash-back incentives for our users to save money. Kate Thornton directs our outsourced team of two celebrity providers in the U.K. who provide fashion and style content.

What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?

Our initial website development took place in London, which isn’t the cheapest place to build a completely new platform that has many technical requirements. I decided to look at different offshore options after the MVP was developed.

We were looking for development teams that had the right qualifications and experience with both Python and Agile methodologies. Effective product ownership was an area in which previous providers were lacking, so it was important that the new team have this quality as well.

We needed to save money, maintain quality, and increase productivity.

What was the scope of their involvement?

STX Next used the previous MVP build along with Python, Django, and SQL to build our platform on Amazon Web Services.

They brilliantly worked to understand and take ownership of the platform in order to maintain it. We ended up having a productive 30-day process of exchange and knowledge gathering. They used prior knowledge and support from others to find an effective solution for every issue. 

Once they were running it, we set out to improve the product, gather data, and further understand how users were engaging with the first iteration. We developed a product road map for enhancement, then STX Next used strategic thinking to help push the product into a better proposition for customers.

We’ve also been working on improving the backend technology to make the process smoother and more reliable. We added new features to the site during this development.

We built a series of six fairly complicated APIs on the platform. Each API is plugged into a network that’s running marketing transactions for U.K. brands trying to generate leads. We then pool all this data into one central standardization on our site to present to our customers. We are able to track these purchases all the way to the final sale, which required a fairly complex tracking and interpretation system that works with every affiliate network.

We also have a CMS that allows us to run a magazine and blog on our site. We have a management system that we use to publish our deals, as well as a system to curate and manage deals we think are suitable for customers.

We also have a browser extension that acts as a reminder to pick up a voucher during checkout.

What is the team dynamic?

There were two backend Python developers that also helped with the data side of things. We have one content person, one QA, and a part-time UX specialist who we use to update user experience features. We also have a full-time proxy product owner and a partially full-time scrum master. It’s a comprehensive team.

How did you come to work with STX Next?

An agency recommended them to us, so we flew out to see how they operate. It was refreshing to see an Agile team in separate units working on different projects. Depending on the requirement, they always had a scrum master and either a product owner or a proxy product owner. They had the Python skill sets we needed, as well as the right staff size.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent £300,000 [$392,499].

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them since January 2016, and the relationship is ongoing.

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

Data from insights we've tracked with our customers, along with feature performance before and after implementation, are what drives our development. We understand what the engagement levels are of any specific feature before we launch a new one. We’re very user sensitive. We use Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics, and we also have all the sales tracking going on in the background.

Everything we do is to improve business, efficiency, and to increase the number of users on the platform. The team is very goal-oriented and makes sure to track all changes. We run a series of weekly charts that monitor everything to ensure understanding of functionality so we can react appropriately.

We run analysis on our efficiencies, including how many front and backend features we’re working on every week, how many have been released, and what type they are. Sometimes it can be misleading depending on the size of the feature, but for the most part, we have a good grasp of maintained speed, work, and velocity.

We have to be a little obsessed about making sure we’re doing everything from a data perspective so that improvements are accurate. We work to find solutions to failures, but also to make successful areas even better.

How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re done remarkably well, and the development pace has been excellent. We’ve been able to release features basically every week, which is great. We’ve been successful in starting with smaller items then working up to larger ones during very fast one-week sprint cycles.

We started off with a full-time scrum master, but we’ve reduced their time since the team became self-sufficient. The scrum master also runs the backlog to make sure the team is communicating correctly and planning efficiently. Their role is very important, and the team thrives by having someone who rigorously drives their thinking and is constantly looking at ways to improve our workflow.

The project management role is completely intertwined with the product owner. STX Next is the only agency I’ve worked with that actually has any sense of product ownership. We have a full-time proxy product owner that concentrates purely on product and researches how it can be better. They work directly with our team and the scrum master to make sure everything we’re achieving is heading in the right direction.

Knowing that progress is being made without having to constantly supervise it helps us as a business, and also boosts our confidence in their team. It’s very reassuring to know there are people driving the team and making sure they’re as efficient as they can be.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We quickly developed a real sense of partnership instead of a vendor-type relationship. I’m very open about our business goals and transparent about how I want this to perform. We give them all that information and work together to try and reach the same target, which has been really beneficial. They’ve really enjoyed the process of being a part of our team.

I massively value their opinion because of their insight and talent. They really listen to us so they can understand our business.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We knew the handover process was going to be challenging, but they’ve handled it really well. They’re very open minded. It’s vital that both teams communicate as often as possible, but sometimes, we fall short on our side. This ultimately causes us to lose sight of communication. However, we recently started increasing the frequency of our communication, and we also take trips to Poland for face-to-face contact.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an innovative tech solutions company which mainly deals in the area of digitalization in the financial service sector. I am the innovations manager. I’m responsible for dealing with the customer, asking for the requirements, and conforming those requirements into software or into code.

What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?

We needed our application to be rebuilt from start to finish.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We did a whole restart of the project because the code which was written by the former supplier was not usable. STX Next started with a code review and the result was not satisfying; they were forced to write the application from scratch.

In the last 4-5 months, STX did a fantastic job. It’s an application for the corporate banking sector, and we worked very hard to deliver it in August. In Germany, we supply to some of the top banks. Their corporate clients are forced to go to the bank branch and hand in a number of documents in order to ask for an offer for a credit to finance their vehicle, machinery, and so on. Our challenge was to create a way for this process to be fully online, where their corporate clients could upload all necessary documents, type in all necessary data, and the bank could make an offer based on the inquiry. One of the critical parts of the application is the overall processing of the inquiry, because there are several parts involved. It was very important to consider various user roles.

The team with STX Next consisted of 1 automatic tester and 1 manual tester. There were 2-3 backend developers, 2-3 frontend developers, a scrum master, and the product owner. Łukasz Marcinczak [Scrum Master, STX Next] was acting as product owner and scrum master. On our company’s side, I also had the role of product owner and acted as the face to the customer, the resource between STX’s work and our end customers.

How did you come to work with STX Next?

We did some market research and found STX Next. In the past, we’ve worked with some providers offshore. We had collaborated with one based in South America, but we weren’t satisfied, so we were looking for a new supplier.

On the shortlist, there were 5 companies we were looking at. We had some interviews and asked for references. We narrowed it down to 2 suppliers at the end. After the first contact with Matthew Harris [Director of International Partnerships, STX Next] we got some references from them. We called some other clients of theirs and all of them confirmed that they are very satisfied with STX. After visiting and calling STX Next, we got to know them very well and had a good feeling about starting a collaboration. This was the right decision.

How much have you invested with STX Next?

[Confidential]

What is the status of this engagement?

The first meeting took place in February 2017, the start of the development was at the beginning of March 2017, and the work is ongoing. The “go live” already took place; the web application is available on the internet. This is our “friends and family” stage so that we are able to give feedback about the application to the banks before the full rollout. Some features will be added soon, and at the beginning of September, we will start the marketing campaign.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The number of visitors is not that big right now, but I think that is going to change at the beginning of September. I can’t provide any useful numbers to that end.

The app before STX started working on it was very bad quality, and there was no end in sight. STX Next had a lot of pressure on them, because there was a 3-5-month slowdown caused by the previous vendor, and banks were expecting the application at the end of July. We were forced to put as much scope or as many tasks into one sprint as we could, but STX got us where we needed to be.

Overall, STX delivered very high-quality. They were very dedicated in terms of meeting the deadline. They also worked on the weekends and sometimes during the night. I am very satisfied. Our client, which is one of the top 5 banks in Germany, is very satisfied with the application too.

How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?

There was no dedicated project manager on the STX Next side, but their team collaborated well, incorporated themselves efficiently into our project, and delivered with high quality, dedication, and diligence.

What did you find most impressive about STX Next?

The team spirit is very good. To work with those guys is a real pleasure for me. On the one hand, they are very professional, and on the other hand, they were fun too. I think the very intense communication between us is one success factor I would like to highlight.

Are there any areas STX Next could improve?

There are no big improvements I would like to mention.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with STX Next?

You could be doing a great job, and the bank, or your client, could be doing a great job too. But if your supplier isn’t at that level, there’s the bottleneck. Selecting a good supplier and making the right decision at the beginning is the success factor which is most important.

Please describe your organization.

I am the product development manager at PrimarySite, Ltd., which is the leading provider of primary school websites in the U.K. We’ve got over 3,000 customers, heading towards 4,000. 

What business challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?

We’re very busy and we have a legacy application which needs rewriting. We couldn’t find the time to ever do it, so we decided to outsource. Python and Django are the main technologies we use. That’s what we wanted it written in.

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

It’s a blogging platform aimed at primary school kids. The teacher of a class is ultimately in control of that class’ blog. The children can post their own blogs, but the teachers have the ability to authorize every single blog to make sure it’s appropriate. There’s also a third party avatar-creating tool that we’re integrating with. So, the kids have the fun of creating their own avatar. It’s a child-friendly blogging platform and the reason we’re using this with kids is so that they can build their IT skills, and their reading and writing skills as well. Even though there’s still a couple of weeks’ worth of work, we agreed that it would be a launchable product for us upon delivery. Then we’ll take about a month for our own QA, and have our internal team do some migrations from the old platform. In that time, STX Next will just tidy up code as needed.

What was the team dynamic?

There are about 7 guys. There are 3 backend developers, 2 frontend developers, a product owner, and a QA tester. 

How did you come to work with STX Next?

We looked through several companies along with STX Next; they’re a Python powerhouse. It’s well recognized internally that they were a good match, especially because of how spot-on they were at sensing our needs, even after only a few meetings. They listened what we wanted and were very confident. Their price was very competitive. We knew of them in the industry. We found a couple of others on the internet researching, but we were aware of STX Next. Price and whether they understood our needs and fed it back to us in our conference calls is how we decided. It was also having the confidence that they were going to deliver. Whoever we picked, we would have the final say of code review, and STX Next was very happy with that.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

About $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them June 2017 and have been working together since.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The initial milestone was the launch date, and it was agreed between all of us that it would be about the beginning of July. That slipped by a couple of weeks, but it’s not business critical for us. As long as we’ve got it out for September, we’re happy with that. When it did slip, the guys were straight with us, saying, “Yeah, we’re not going to meet this deadline.” Part of that might have been our fault due to the technology stack that we wanted to use. They’ve even thrown in an extra frontend developer at their own cost just to try and speed the process up.

How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?

It’s been a stable team that hasn’t shifted at all throughout the process. There was a bit of miscommunication right at the very start because we weren't explicit enough with how much frontend work was needed. Initially, the backend Python developers were going to do the frontend, but it became quite clear that there’s a lot more frontend expertise needed.

They do their own in-house code reviews, but because we ultimately could end up maintaining ourselves, we wanted to make sure it was to our standards. They were more than happy to comply with that and included us in their daily stand-ups. We have a catch-up every fortnight to make sure we’re on track. We also communicate on a Slack channel. We’ve had many conference calls and we screen share and that sort of thing. Their communication has been extremely reliable throughout the process. They’ve also given us access to their JIRA board so we can monitor that as well.

Things have slipped slightly, but they’ve been happy to provide extra frontend developers when we requested them and they’ve given us a significant discount, which is quite nice. To ensure we make the latest deadline, they’ll even throw in another frontend developer, free of charge. When there’s been any slight slippage, the guys have been very quick to let us know, “We’re not going to be able to do this,” or “Can we change this?”

What distinguishes STX Next from other providers?

The last vendor we used was quite a few years ago. STX Next is definitely quicker than them. They’re on the ball. I would use these guys again, absolutely. Their communication has been really good. 

Is there anything STX Next could have improved or done differently?

The only issue we’ve had is the lack of understanding about our frontend needs, but I think in fairness to them, we probably weren’t clear enough about the technologies we required on this. As for areas of improvement, it’s probably on our shoulders and not theirs. When we had these issues, they were very proactive in trying to come up with solutions. With projects, there’s always slippage, and it was kind of expected.

Do you have any recommendations for others considering working with STX Next?

Just make sure when you’re writing out technical specifications, that you leave nothing for the developers to guess how you want to implement it. You have to be very explicit in every single detail about your requirements so that, when the developers come to work on your story, they have no questions to come back to you with.

Please describe your organization.

Our company is a government-owned business that has multiple business units. The one that I belong to employs business lending, and we have multiple types of products. I’m the head of product and technology. 

What business challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?

We needed a platform and web application built from scratch.

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

We started off pretty small with a couple of developers. We developed from scratch a platform and a web application that enabled us to automate a lot of the back office processes for allowing customers to apply, and then manage the application process and the disbursement and repayments of the loans.

After a few months, we decided to launch a few more products. As a result, we expanded the team by 2 more developers, a QA engineer, and a product owner. We’re developing a couple of products and looking forward to launching a few more.

The development is almost entirely outsourced to STX Next. Because we’re part of a bigger organization, the homepages and the corporate website are owned by an internal technology team. Up until the point where the application starts and the entire servicing of the customer starts, our corporate-owned website and from that point in, it’s entirely outsourced to STX Next.

The main complexity of this project was around multiple custom integrations. I would roughly divide the work that they’re doing for us into 2 parts. One will be the customer-facing website where they apply and service themselves, but the back office of everything is just multiple integrations with our lending platform and payment platform: Slack, payment systems, account creation, e-money accounts, and the various other integrations. In other words, the complexity is in how you orchestrate all of that in a seamless way so that we don’t interrupt the customer experience, and won’t fail entirely if one of the services fail. That’s the main complexity behind it. On the frontend side of things, there isn’t a huge challenge there.

How did you come to work with STX Next?

I worked with them in my previous company. They stopped working on that project and were available to me right when I needed them at this company. I was very happy with them, and so I hired them again.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

Around $130,000–$140,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them December 2016 and have been working together since.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The primary thing that I could talk about is the fact that we hired the first couple of developers in December 2016 and we were live with the first product before the end of January 2017. That says a lot about how quickly they turn around and how quickly they deliver things that actually work so that we can go live. That’s the best testament to the quality of their work.

Because it worked very incrementally, there aren’t huge things that we’ve done at once and given praise. We’re just incrementally improving everything. I would say the second thing worth mentioning is that the product we are launching right now is a peer-to-peer product, and as before, from a technology point of view, we are totally ready to go live. What’s stopping us now is mostly admin and legal work. The technology was always ahead of business and other admin stuff with everything we did.

How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?

I got most of the same team I had previously, in addition to another developer I didn’t know before. One of the things that I love about working with them is that they are very product- and customer-oriented. Unlike any other outsource team I’ve worked with and even some of the general teams I’ve worked with, they are not the type of developers you hand requirements to in isolation. They’re always asking questions. They’re always questioning my assumptions of how things are going to work. They always have brilliant ideas about how to improve the user experience, how to find exceptional cases. That part made my job and my decision to work with them again a lot easier.

We used Pivotal to track work and now we’re using Kanbanize. We moved from Scrum Sprints toward Workflow. We use Slack for day-to-day chats and messages, and Appear.in for video conferencing and screen sharing.

What distinguishes STX Next from other providers?

I’ve experienced working with a lot of outsourced companies. In terms of delivery, STX Next has never fallen from or dropped the ball with any companies I’ve ever worked for, even compared to internal teams, and not only outsourced teams. Whenever I recommend STX to others, my biggest selling point for these guys is that they are developing a product. They are not coding minions that get basic instructions, follow them, and don’t care about what they’re doing. They are always trying to understand what they’re doing, what the product is, what the end goal is, and what the future plans are. They’re immersed in the entire business process and the development, which is what distinguishes them from any other company I’ve ever worked with.

Is there anything STX Next could have improved or done differently?

Perhaps the only thing would be more flexibility around working hours, but that’s always an issue with near shore/offshore outsourcing; the time differences. Although in this case, it’s not a huge time difference because a lot of the developers there start working early, which in my time is way too early, which means they finish out very early. There are always a couple of hours at the end of the day where I have no one to talk to. Having more flexibility on that would make things a bit easier, but I can’t think of a case when things were needed after hours. In the couple of instances that I really needed them, they were there for me.