How One Client was Surprised by Outsourcing to Ukraine

This past week I had a chance to sit down with Oleg Pun, a software engineer from Ukraine who we recruited for our client in the travel and hospitality industry.

Who is Oleg Pun?

With a Masters in Science and Mathematics, Oleg is the Team Lead and has been working for our client for nearly 4 years out of our Captive Center in Kiev.  This past month he flew into town to visit the client in their Las Vegas location, and then traveled here to the Intego Group Headquarters in Orlando, before heading back to Ukraine.  I sat down with him, because Oleg’s story is one of the many reasons companies choose Ukraine to build their offshore teams.

Why Businesses Choose Ukraine for their Offshore Solutions

While Ukraine is much smaller than other outsourcing countries, such as India, it is a country widely known for their focus on education, specifically in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).  Businesses who leverage outsourcing as a part of their business strategy find the developers in Ukraine to be more collaborative and not afraid to speak up when a potential problem is seen.

Client Catches a Surprise

In a recent visit to Ukraine, by our client’s CIO and VP of IT, the offshore team put together a detailed presentation to share the efforts and accomplishments made by the team.  It was in the presentation that our client noticed something very interesting.

While the direction of the offshore team is given by the client, Oleg (Team Lead) recognized an opportunity to improve the efficiency of the development and drive best-in-class results.  The process he put in place focused on 3 areas of improvement:

• Team Performance
• Tracking Productivity and Workloads
• Improved Pre-Existing Code Quality

Olegs Process Leveraged the Use of 3 Free Tools

With the use of free tools, the process implemented didn’t cost the client anything.  Below are the 3 tools used, along with what was gained by using them.

1. Jenkins
   1. Decreased time of manual operations from each developer
   2. Saved 1-2 hours per day
   3. Decreased human mistakes
2. Redmine (Tracking System)
   1. Estimated time and resources for tickets and tasks
   2. Helped plan activities for 1-2 months
   3. Helped track experience and resources
3. Phabricator (Tool for hosting repository and code review)
   1. Helped build processes that deliver code from developers to QA’s to Customers
   2. Prevents sending code to QA without going to lead first
   3. Prevents potential mistakes which would cost the customer a loss on sales on their site
   4. Tracks review history allowing anyone in the process to see who is responsible for what

Client implements Oleg’s Processes in their U.S. Office

The client was so impressed with the results that they have since decided to implement them corporate wide.  Oleg’s recent visit to the U.S. was to facilitate this effort.

Intego Group prides itself in delivering best-in-class offshore solutions.  While our services are built around the software engineering industry, it’s the people we recruit and the culture of our company and the region that continue to be our driving success.