Andrew Marcinkevičius
Web Developer & Consultant
Focus on solving business problems through product and process innovation.
"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which shouldn't be done at all" — Peter Drucker
You come in the morning full of energy, ready to work on your business, and then the problems run you over.
Your application is down.
The clients complaining that a new feature is not working and you could swear this is being fixed fifth time this month.
While trying to get your application back up the hosting provider tells that the basement where they had the server is flooded and can't help you.
The only thing left is to close yourself in the closet with a bucket of ice cream and wish for the day to end.
Or we work together so that when you start your work day all you see is increasing sales and clients thanking for what you do.
Do you want to be the hero for your clients? Yes, I do
Certifications
Courses
"Created MVP allowed us to get the first few high paying clients."
— Steve Parrett <Sports application / project manager>
My values
Personally I have strong values which I believe make me a better version of myself. I strongly believe in daily incremental personal improvement — make sure you're a better person day by day — never stop learning!
Some of those values are:
- transparency and sincerity (don't lie, don't hide things, don't be afraid of the truth);
- learning / self-improvement (you learn most outside of your comfort zone); [ 1, 2, 3 ]
- well-being ("Mens sana in corpore sano" - you produce the best work with a healthy mind and body); [ 1, 2, 3 ]
- servitude (helping others provides more happiness than helping yourself);
- gratitude (to appreciate what you have);
- empathy (learn to understand others, and that everyone is having as rich a human experience as you. This helps in doing good and feeling good. I feel travel is important in cultivating my empathy); [ 1, 2 ]
- minimalism / frugality (focus on what is important); [ 1 ]
Real world examples of my values
Here are a few real world examples there these values helped my customers:
Using a video course to teach many people on how to convert the ideas in their heads to web applications that solve problems.
Client had a never ending list of features that an application should have. Using my knowledge and expertise of the web, we focused and prioritized most valuable tasks. This allowed client to achieve high ROI and reach profitability faster due to lower development overhead/expenses.
I'm also concerned with helping my clients to develop applications that users love using. Once, I even spent an entire day battle testing an application on a number of Wi-Fi networks across the city to ensure that performance was constant, no matter how slow the network.
Moving fast is important for making a mark in the market share. Unfortunately, each step increases technical depth which starts to slow you down. By optimizing the infrastructure we were able to achieve savings of over $10,000 per year. This allowed the client to move fast again and achieve higher profitability.
You can read more about my personal experiences, thoughts, values and my technical thoughts on my blog.
"Our client can provide better support for more than 4000 small business owners."
— Shane Gibson
Road-mapping session
With each project, before we start coding, we do an extensive road-mapping session in which we define S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound) goals for the project.
It is important to define these goals beforehand and to do so based on user behavior and data, as it is more costly in terms of time and money to change the specs once defined.
We continuously and automatically test the developed features to make sure the application behaves properly, and to catch any bugs early. We operate as a lean team, this way we minimize delays and cost.
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away" — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
My focus is on solving your problems in the most resource and time efficient manner, with special attention to scalability, security and performance.
"Our client increased sales and minimized costs for inventory management."
— Rytis Tirevičius <CEO at ZET>
Projects
I help my clients solve process and product problems in a scalable way.
Developing software and business processes with fundamental flaws is costly in terms of time and money, and highly de-motivating for everyone involved.
By clearly communicating and looking at root-causes as well as user behavior and data, we make a roadmap of what exactly is needed to bring the business to the next level.
In terms of programming, most of the work I do is on the back-end, making sure all parts of an application communicate correctly with each other and with external applications, and to make sure data moves and is stored correctly. I use a variety of frameworks, no one size fits all - when planning a project we will determine the best tools for the job on a case by case basis.
Most of the projects I work on are non-public and/or under NDA, so I cannot share all details, although I am happy to share contact information of previous clients for references on request.
"Implemented coding standards, and new features allowed us to add over 500 new users right away."
— Gabriel Perez <CEO at Peer Feedback>
Sports Coaching application (SaaS)
This was an application to automate many of the manual tasks teams were doing with pen and paper — including tracking performance statistics for individual athletes and team health tracking.
This saved the team significant amounts of time and money, and boosted performance through superior analytics and insights from data over time, which previously were hard to extract from the paper-based data forms.
The performance of teams improved greatly, enabling them to win more games.
Keenjar - On-line learning platform
The owners of the project used on-line video courses for learning.
What they found frustrating was that after buying the course you feel like being left in the desert — alone.
Their vision of the education was one where you learn as much from the community as you do from the materials.
The focus of the project was on building the community and 1-on-1 training.
If you had any questions or needed feedback on your progress you could get it from your peers or the teacher.
CRM for small business owners
Due to a slow, badly designed application the client was having problems providing good service for more than 4000 small businesses.
The new application allowed to achieve better results with less time & effort.
Added integrations makes up-selling to clients easier, increasing the revenues.
Document submission application
This was a project for a government agency.
It allowed the clients of the agency to submit documents without having to queue, thus saving them time.
The application checked automatically if submissions were correct (saving everyone weeks of delay).
Agency workers didn't need to do time consuming form validation anymore (saving hours of time a day).
Inventory system integration
I created an integration between the custom inventory system & on-line shop for a multi-million dollar company.
After the integration the on-line shop was taking care of inventory, orders and reservations automatically, without requiring any human interaction - thus saving the company a lot of money by automating manual workflow.
It also increased sales by allowing customers to see which products were available in real time.
Warehouse management application
Managers don't have to spend time on-site to overview the status of their orders. They are able to check & update their orders from any place where they have internet connection by using the application.
Transport companies can pre-book and schedule loading/unloading, minimizing the queuing of trucks.
This application saved more than 750 man-hours per month, saving the business €6500+ monthly.
Education assistance application
The application allows students to provide feedback on the course assignments submitted by peers. Students can learn from each other, and teaching assistants can grade papers much faster. The application had changed owners, and the current state was a big mess.
The initial changes were to set up coding standards, testing practices, development environment, fix security vulnerabilities, document inner workings of an application. Those changes put down the foundation that allowed to better understand the application, decrease the time for implementing new features, and make it easier to include new developers.
After that new features were implemented (Single Sign On, cloud hosting, direct upload to AWS S3, secure file download) that allowed to add over 500 new users right away, with expected double increase in next few months.
... more ...
Contact me for details about other projects.
"Our vision of education became tangible."
— Audrius Ringaila <CEO & Co-Founder of Keenjar Inc.>
Skills & technologies
For each problem the best tool for solving it is used (it can be as simple as pen & paper). Below are some of the skills & technologies used to solve my client problems.
"Helped us to clear our backlog to be in a better position for an application launch."
— Jacob Budin <Development Manager at Kettle>
Reasons you might need my help
No Backups
Would your business survive the loss of all your users data due to a bug or breach?
This is the risk you take without having secure backups - both of user data and of code.
I can help you create an automated backup system which safely stores your users' data.
Non-Optimized Infrastructure
Are you spending more on developers and hosting each and every month, without measurable improvements?
Chances are you might be suffering from non-optimized infrastructure in the foundation of your application.
Optimization will speed up your application and can save you tens of thousands of dollars over time.
Manual Tasks
Are you repeating the same tasks over and over again?
Automate your workflow to save time and money for your business.
Go have a cup of tea & relax. Most manual tasks can be automated with software - but don't automate before you have experienced the need for automation (validate before you build)!
Feature Creep
Are you adding new features and still not getting customers (or their money)?
You might be building something no one needs, or for which no market exists.
Focus on features which will bring revenue and users, and validate continuously.
I can help identify "feature creep" and help you implement a routine of human centered design and behavior driven development so you won't build before validation again.