How have the last 15 years of ProofIT been?
Zsolt Varga: ProofIT's path leading up to this point was extremely varied. Over the years, the portfolio has been consolidated, thanks to which we can present truly successful projects and great professional results to our clients: services and products supporting the automatic testing of critical, complex IT systems.
What are you most proud of?
Attila Mészáros: Few companies are able to change their profile during operation, get off the downward wave and transfer to another wave. We did this, we transformed our company from a pure development company into a pure testing company. Ten years ago, we changed from a stable operation to a start-up-like operation with our own product. We are all particularly proud of this.
Attila Borzák: We managed to take a direction that was comfortable for us, where we dared to develop our own product, supplementing it with all the experience we had as a development company.
How did you start? Tell us about your beginnings, personal motivations, and effective collaborations.
Zs.V.: The MOL project brought us together. Although we were characterized by significant differences in approach, this helped us to make good use of our different abilities in our joint work.
A.B.: We started as an enthusiastic professional team, we were formed from that, then refined and transformed, and we are currently working on the test automation profile. In the beginning, it was difficult that we were pioneers. The unfamiliarity of the automated testing industry, in a certain sense the lack of knowledge of the customers, caused a problem for a long time. Ten or fifteen years ago, customers in Hungary did not yet have a clear picture of what exactly they could do with it, what the real measurability and benefit of test automation was.
A.M.: We were able to successfully cultivate this evangelism in our existing clientele. Wherever a problem arose and there was a real need to solve the problem, we were able to support it everywhere.
To what extent do you feel that the company's vision and mission have been realized?
Zs.V.: We started as a project company, without a particularly realistic vision. Every project brought something new, there was always a challenge, our vision was to jump them. Our mission has crystallized since then, obviously in addition to striving to create value for our partners, our main mission is creative problem solving.
A.M.: We don't sell graphs, but a sense of security. We want to be the technical experts who provide quality guarantees to their customers and who try to reduce operational risks that can be assessed for the business. We deliver accurate numbers and deep insights to IT stakeholders, and we can deliver the interpretation of all this to business stakeholders.
A.B.: Classically, IT is not our customer in the organization, because our activities typically support the line between IT and business. Therefore, we are not just a technology supplier, but actually contribute to a balanced relationship between business and IT within the organization. We are a supplier of both areas at the same time.
What strengths has ProofIT built over the past 15 years?
A.B.: Our strength lies in the fact that, since we operate on the border between business and IT, we must simultaneously mobilize skills and resources that cover the given problem both from a business perspective and from a technical expert perspective. In general, our clients lack practice in this regard. These areas are not used to cooperating in this form either, the project brings them together.
A.M.: We often tread the path that should have existed within the organization a long time ago. Our techie and business competencies are assembled in such a way that if there is a gap in the skills required for the project anywhere on the client side, we help to fill these gaps. The dozens of competencies that we can bring, from network experts and firewalls, through database optimization to the generation of business test data, these tend to be lacking in various combinations among clients. We bring them all into the project so that we can deliver results.
Let us know the secret of ProofIT's success.
Zs.V.: We have an extremely experienced team of seniors and designers who have been able to solve everything, even seemingly impossible tasks.
A.B.: We are not specialists in one industry, our portfolio is quite colorful. Based on our existing experience, we develop products and technologies to solve the technical issues behind the projects.
A.M.: We have not only become banking and aviation experts, but we have filled those niches within the industries that are inaccessible even to large equipment manufacturers. We are good at technically complex, high-risk niche markets. No one but us can test the entire bank at once. We did it many times, one after the other. No one else can test an air traffic control system, we did it too.
Do you also undertake the impossible?
A.M.: We are good in high-risk and high-complexity industries and typically in niche IT areas, which large suppliers cannot handle because they are too small for them. We specialize in complicated, complex problems that others would be reluctant to tackle or have already burned themselves out on. There were also examples where, after the supplier, we solved what their own developer could not solve.
A.B.: We are also capable of solving abstract problems, we do more than a general supplier. Many times we are involved in a case that others have tried to solve before, but failed. We are also successful in this field simply because we can dig deep enough with our technology and expertise to provide good answers to the problem.
What makes you a good solution in niche areas such as air traffic control, banking or gambling testing?
A.M.: From the fact that we have the following at the same time: (1) strong analytical and modeling skills, which comes from our scientific background; (2) with a strong technological ability, which results from the 30 years of IT experience of the senior and architect team; and (3) with a self-developed test automation platform, which was prepared from the first moment to be able to prototype unknown areas well and to be easily expanded in the necessary directions with plugins.
A.B.: We are very strong in rapid prototyping, agile/lean, Proof of Concept and Minimum Viable Product methodologies. After all, difficult and/or niche problems cannot typically be solved with routine procedures, but the entire theoretical arsenal must be deployed, as well as quick reactions and quick prototypes. We break down the project into successive graduation levels, assign an evaluable result to each stage, and then deepen the task solution, specification, and methodology accordingly. Each stage has an expected result criterion. Through graduation, it becomes possible to take on as many tasks and obligations at the same time as can be reliably jumped and be effective. In this way, we do not create expectations in the client that we cannot simultaneously exceed. We use this approach to find solutions to difficult problems at the R&D level. This kind of approach allows us to solve problems that no one else has been able to solve before.
ZS.V.: In the last 15 years, we only trained ourselves on serious problems. The team's quick response, adaptability, high degree of flexibility and innovative approach also help us to give technologically complex problems a technological packaging. So what we can show to testing or the business is, in the end, no longer a technological problem.
To what extent do your self-developed products play a role in the fact that you are so successful in the automatic testing of niche areas?
A.M.: With the help of our automatic functional tester ACE and performance tester PeACE products, during testing we show the problem to the client's experts at a conceptual level that is already understandable and manageable for them. All other technological issues are covered by our products.
What was the biggest difficulty, crisis you had to deal with?
A.B.: The Covid epidemic. To switch to home office mode, to reorganize work processes, contact and all forms of fulfillment, we experienced this as a serious crisis. Although we have since become completely accustomed to this operation, the home office has remained, and we even moved our office to the cloud this year.
How do colleagues contribute to the success of ProofIT?
A.B.: Due to the complicated and complex professional issues, the company is also diverse. The composition of the team leans more towards seniority, we usually supplement and update this by bringing up junior colleagues. A lot of training activities and mentoring takes place within the company, we are constantly building our skills.
A.M.: We can only do this type of intensive activity with dedicated colleagues.
Zs.V.: The development of our PeACE product, which supports the latest performance measurement projects, would not have been possible without the cooperation of our colleagues. PeACE was created based on the experience of our 6-8 year expert projects and has already received very positive feedback from customers.
What motivates you at work, what still drives you forward?
Zs.V.: Varied, always unique tasks give me constant inspiration. No two testing projects are ever the same, which encourages me and the team to constantly improve.
A.B.: What we do is not the repetition of something, since we do not sell a license and install it, but the fulfillment always takes place through the solution of exciting tasks. Every assignment has that intellectual excitement that appears only there and only then. That keeps me interested.
A.M.: When I identified as a teenager that I actually wanted to work in R&D, and after my background in physics, this also has a valid boundary in IT, then I guessed that as IT develops and becomes more and more complex, it can be done well with more and more ideas handle. So this area will be a constant challenge for me.
In what direction do you plan to develop ProofIT in the near future?
Zs.V.: We have serious plans to expand on foreign markets. In recent years, our foreign customers have also confirmed that our products and services are marketable internationally.
A.M.: We are also strengthening our R&D capabilities and looking for even more niche areas where boxed solutions are not enough, but our specialized capabilities are needed. Furthermore, we will further strengthen our performance measurement service and the PeACE product that supports it, because we find that this is the fastest way to reduce risk and generate value for customers.
A.B.: I can only say this about our future plans: Keep it up, guys!
