In search of the best project management software for outsourcing: SolidWay's journey to if.team

What do web development teams want most of all? To spend time on project implementation rather than project management. Because in project management, especially in outsourcing companies, time is the most valuable resource that affects both the cost and quality of IT products. That’s why if.team’s main principle from the beginning has been the unprecedented simplicity of project management on a single screen. It was precisely this simplicity that the SolidWay team preferred when migrating from the well-known Jira system. What other benefits made if.team the best project management software for outsourcing for SolidWay? Read our case study.

About SolidWay, a company that was looking for the best project management software for outsourcing and found if.team

Company size: 2-10 people

Niche: outsourcing of software solutions development for business

Start of ERP implementation: November 2024

SolidWay is an IT outsourcing company that has been developing software for small and medium-sized businesses in the EU since 2023. Back then, the young team understood that it was impossible to deliver high-quality IT solutions to customers without optimising development processes. After all, in outsourcing, each project can vary in size and involve many iterations and tasks: from developing the interface design and logic to testing and deploying the finished software.

Initially, the team used the Jira system, which is familiar to every developer. Although it is tailored to different development methodologies, it does not cover all aspects of project management: teams, finance and sales. As time and development progressed, SolidWay faced operational and financial challenges that went beyond the functionality of the Jira system. The team decided to change their approach to managing outsourced software development and came up with a comprehensive solution – the if.team ERP system.

From Jira to if.team: the evolution of outsourced software development management

In the development world, where Jira has become synonymous with project management, outsourcing company SolidWay took a bold step – to change the familiar Australian platform in favor of the Ukrainian if.team system. And while there is no better task manager for developers than Jira, the team really lacked financial control over projects.

Transformation of outsourcing company finances

Financial management and calculation are definitely in the first place.
— This is how SolidWay founder Mikhail Pavlov explains the company's transition from Jira to if.team.

In a project-based business, time is money. That’s why if.team cares not only about operational efficiency but also about financial optimisation.

Like most IT companies, SolidWay actively uses a time tracker when working on tasks. The system not only tracks the progress of tasks based on timesheet data, but also automatically calculates costs and generates reports in real time. All this is available for a project, its iteration or even a single task.

The system also takes into account employee ratings to automate salary calculation and accurately plan project budgets.

The financial capabilities of managing outsourced software development are not limited to projects. The system provides powerful tools for financial management of the entire company. For example, the interactive Cash Flow report shows up-to-date information on cash flow based on actual receipts and payments. In addition, the histogram is enhanced with data on planned expenditure and income, allowing cash flows to be not only controlled but also predicted. For example, to predict cash gaps and take action to prevent liquidity problems.

The P&L (Profit and loss statement) provides a complete picture of SolidWay’s financial position. It is formed on the basis of income and expenses regardless of the actual receipt or payment of funds. Usually, the P&L tool is used to assess the company’s profitability, but with if.team, such reports can be generated even for large projects.

The P&L financial report has simple filtering by period and 2 modes of data display — a colourful chart for quick perception and a classic table for diving into the details.

The best project management software for outsourcing should not only provide control but also simplify financial accounting. For example, the if.team system automatically allocates income and expenses to periods and categories. This frees management from unnecessary actions and allows them to focus on analysing financial performance.

All the incoming and outgoing transactions on which the reports of an IT outsourcing company are based are conveniently located in the Financial tab of the module of the same name. This is a table with flexible settings, equipped with search and filter functions for quick access to the necessary data. In turn, SolidWay employees see only those transactions that relate to their salaries.

How if.team's HR tools are changing managing outsourced software development

The HR module of the if.team ERP system was an unexpected discovery for SolidWay:

The HR part was something we didn't pay attention to until we started testing it. But it made us want to switch and stay here. The ability to create a request for a day off or a holiday is an irreplaceable thing.
— says Mikhail Pavlov, the company's founder.

We are talking about the employee workload calendar in the HR section of the if.team system. It is a convenient tool for instantly reviewing employee workloads by schedules and statuses of working and non-working days.

The workload calendar allows you not only to control the workload of your team, but also to easily keep track of holidays or business trips. The calendar screen has a quick search and filtering by date, department, and day type (day off, sick leave, holiday, etc.).

An employee sees the calendar as their own work schedule and can request a day off or a holiday with just a few clicks. The benefits of the calendar do not end there – its functionality allows you to plan your working hours according to the workload forecast, which is generated on the basis of active tasks with clear deadlines.

Day-to-day managing outsourced software development

Although there is no solution on the ERP market that can compete with Jira in the development space, if.team has a different goal – to comprehensively cover all aspects of project activities, especially for IT companies that want to organise complex projects in a simple way.

All-in-one is a complete success. Makes your software unbeatable.
— this is how the founder of outsourcing company SolidWay sums up his new project management experience.

Thanks to numerous SolidWay offers, the ERP system has been enriched with useful features for daily project work, including:

1. Creating a task without assigning performers is an important if.team upgrade for Scrum teams that work on a product backlog and don’t always know who will actually perform the sprint tasks. To prevent the task from getting lost, the system automatically assigns a responsible person to the task.
2. Entering working time for completed tasks is a feature that simplifies the accounting of extraordinary corrections and allows you to add time spent without changing the task status to active.

Together with the outsourcing company SolidWay, if.team continues to expand opportunities for comfortable work of development teams, in particular:

• Severity attributes of tasks to prioritise bug fixes,
• Epic, Story, Task, Sub-task and Defect task types for flexible managing outsourced software development,
• unique task identifiers for quick search, efficient tracking and avoiding duplicates,
• creating a product backlog for planning work using Scrum and Kanban methodologies.

Results of if.team ERP implementation

Досвід компанії SolidWay демонструє, що ефективне керування аутсорсинговою розробкою ПЗ вимагає комплексного рішення. Перехід з Jira на if.team дозволив команді не тільки зручно працювати над проєктами, а й управляти всією компанією. Вирішальними для SolidWay виявилися можливості фінансового модуля, зокрема графік згоряння бюджету проєкту, автоматизований облік заробітних плат, а також інтерактивні звіти Cash Flow і P&L, які надають повну картину фінансового здоров’я компанії. Календар для планування та обліку робочого часу суттєво спростив HR-процеси, а таск-менеджер if.team став новим комфортним середовищем для спільної роботи розробників, які допомагають зробити його функціонал ще кращим. Адаптація системи під унікальні потреби команди на окремому сервері робить if.team ідеальним вибором для IT-компаній, які шукають специфічне рішення на базі готової ERP.