Jared Vishney founded Arctrieval in 2009 and hired a local developer recommended by a trusted advisor as its CTO. After six months, the CTO and the development team delivered no tangible results, could not provide a project schedule when a minimum viable product would be available, and were, therefore, terminated.
Arctrieval had a detailed product requirement document, a minimal infrastructure, and poorly written code. Jared had to decide how to find a reliable development team to realize his vision and, in February 2010, turned to Elance (the precursor to UpWork) to outsource the development work. Jared posted a development project to create Arctrieval’s first minimum viable product for medical providers. The project's first phase was to review the product requirement document, review the existing code, and provide an estimate of what it would take to deliver the initial product.
Due to Jared’s time living in Europe while working for a German computer company, he worked with many Eastern European engineers, had tremendous respect for their technical abilities, understood some of their cultures, and knew he wanted them to work on the development project.
After two weeks of vetting over 100 development firms that responded to the project, three firms were hired to complete a document and code review and provide their recommendation and plan to complete the minimum viable product. The first firm explained that the existing code and database structure were completely unusable; everything must start from scratch, and their cost estimate was the most expensive. The second firm explained the existing code was not useable, the database structure was okay, and they had exceeded the fixed bid for the code review but would not charge Arctrieval any extra hours if they were awarded the project. The second firm’s bid was the least expensive. The third firm was ITCraft. The ITCraft team said the database structure was okay but would need minor improvements, and the code looked like a junior programmer wrote it. The code could be saved, but recommended to start over on the front-end code. The project cost was between the other two estimates. Arctrieval decided to move forward with IT Craft, which was the best decision we could have made because we found an outstanding technical business partner.
Since February 2010, Arctrieval has undergone multiple versions and iterations of our software, a significant pivot to our business model in July 2019. IT Craft has worked with Arctrieval every step of the way. The team consistently invested substantial time and effort in learning about Arctrieval’s business, always maintaining honesty and upfront communication and never shying away from addressing any aspect of our projects.
The development team's proficiency in a wide range of programming languages and frameworks is evident in the code quality they deliver. Whether it's frontend development using modern frameworks like Java (initial product) or Angular (current product), backend development using languages and technologies like C, .NET Core, and Microsoft SQL Server, or integrating with 3rd party platforms, such as payment processing, fax solutions, email delivery and SMS platforms, they consistently demonstrate skill and proficiency.
In addition, the IT Craft DevOps team also set up and managed a robust and efficient continuous integration and delivery environment, automated quality assurance and testing platform, and code monitoring infrastructure for Arctrieval’s projects and code releases.
