Success Story: Paul Alston on his experience of Nearshoring with WaveAccess
Syncronology is a company specialising in software solutions that enables and promotes process excellence and enhanced business performance through innovation, user engagement and smooth implementation. In this story, Paul Alston, Director of Syncronology, tells about their projects and the role of the WaveAccess team.
Founded in 2005, Syncronology has established itself as a company specialising in software solutions that enables and promotes process excellence and enhanced business performance through innovation, user engagement and smooth implementation.
Paul Alston started the company with his business partner Andrew Holland about 15 years ago. Here we give a transcript of a success story with WaveAccess which Mr. Alston shared with us.
Why have you chosen WaveAccess?
Syncronology is a company that mostly started out in a quality management systems space, and we really wanted our own product. And that's why we initially engaged with WaveAccess to start developing a QMS product (quality management system product).
Singlepoint is the main project that we’ve commissioned with WaveAccess, probably about 12 years ago. We’ve had a long relationship with them and a very successful one, I think.
Tell us about your projects and the role of the WaveAccess team.
The core products that WaveAccess developed for us were Singlepoint which is a workflow-based tool, and Draggon which is a subsidiary of Singlepoint and a big development in terms of mobile apps. WaveAccess’ role was to develop the code for the product, and that’s not only writing the code, but also managing the process of gathering requirements. We use a methodology called Agile with Scrum which they manage, and I take part in.
The team we work with have a very keen interest in product and business requirements, and are very proactive at suggesting further enhancements to improve the product from a usability point of view and from a business-object model point of view. I really value their expertise and capability. I must say they have been very good at scaling up the team and finding resources for technologies that we are not always using.
We are very happy with the work they do. I find the quality of end results exceptional. The coding practices that they implement — I find them excellent.
The WaveAccess team managed the risks very well. So when we have a business requirement or a new feature in terms of usability or something like that, they would do a complete risk assessment in terms of the current code base. We have a very good reporting hierarchy with them, and in terms of the development process and requirements and delivery schedules — the reporting of all that is very good and very transparent.
What do you appreciate in the way the WaveAccess team works?
They very often fed ideas into the product, improving the usability and base technology architecture. To be honest, we really rely on the team to continuously improve things in terms of the architecture. Very often we come in with the business requirements, ‘cause we know that very well, and in collaboration they know the underlying architecture of the technology very well, and so those two meet - I kind of sit in the middle translating the two back and forwards to business requirements and architecture.
It’s been very beneficial for the product and our company to have WaveAccess and the team feeding improvement ideas into the product from an architectural point of view and sometimes from business requirements as well, improving the business requirements we come up with.
In terms of methodology we use to engage with WaveAccess as a Nearshoring solution, we use Agile with Scrum, so we have a - what we call - two-week iteration of where we have a list of tasks which we call user stories, and user stories have tasks attached to them, and these user stories are broad requirements.
What benefits did Nearshoring with WaveAccess bring you?
Nearshoring improved our time-to-market tremendously. The benefits of Nearshoring with WaveAccess are definitely the cost reduction, the ability to scale up and scale down the team as required by the business requirements, and certainly the ability of WaveAccess to acquire rare expertise that these business requirements need to be addressed.
Were there any problems in communication within the project?
In terms of communication and feedback, we have a very good relationship with WaveAccess. And we constantly have meetings, stand-ups every day, and every week we have planned meetings. We at Syncronology value the team’s expertise and rich experience, and the way they have a very keen interest in our business requirements, and approach, the suggestions for improving the product from a usability point of view and from a business-object model point of view.
As you can imagine, working on such a big project for many many years causes many challenges, and these challenges were tackled in a collaborative way. Sometimes solutions found are temporary, sometimes permanent as well, but all of them are acceptable solutions which can be refactored later on when newer technologies arrive that addresses the issues in a more acceptable way.
Are you satisfied with the results of the work?
To measure the success of our project with WaveAccess, the best way is to look at some of the successes with customers that we’ve had and some very very big customers. I consider some of the main achievements from the WaveAccess team the development of the workflow designer, data modeller and forms designer in our product.
One thing we were always very impressed with WaveAccess was that they really approached things from a business-object model point of view. It really takes a lot of trouble to understand the business requirements first before implementing them in the product. However, we end up with getting what we require very quickly.
How do you see the projects with WaveAccess continue to develop in the future?
I see a very exciting future with them, and developing further technologies in Singlepoint. Potentially expanding the team and various things like that coming in the future
Some of the major goals have been reached, but it’s never finished — a product is an ongoing evolution, and it reinvents itself in many different ways. Аnd there are some new exciting features that we are going to be implementing in the product.
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