Agile Fuel

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Curio Courses is a company providing educational online platform with video lessons and assignments for children between 4 and 6 years old. It is used throughout the world and has been especially useful during the times of pandemic. I've founded the company and am currently its CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Agile Fuel?

We came to Agile Fuel as we needed a strong and proactive partner to augment our development efforts and build a strong engineering team. Agile Fuel provided us with great engineers that were not only very skillful but also fit very well with our company culture.

We were able to interview and make decision on every candidate that was selected for our team. They gave us a lot of help and attention. As soon as the project started, Agile Fuel took on all the HR and administrative questions, so our team could focus on technical management of the project.

We have expanded our team during the course of our work together and plan additional growth together in the coming months.

What were your goals for this project?

Goals of the project were to build a very intuitive platform for parents and children that can be used for learning online. The platform needed to allow posting of prerecorded lessons, assignments, and allow communication with parents and teachers.

This was a core platform for our business model and it was critical for us to have it well and securely done in a timely manner. It also had to have a great UI/UX and marketing optimizations.

SOLUTION

How did you select Agile Fuel?

We looked at a number of companies in Ukraine. I wanted to optimize value and find a partner who would truly care about our needs and be able to provide us with a high quality and tailored approach.

Recruiting capabilities were also very important to us. After numerous conversations we understood that Agile Fuel fully understood our pain points and was willing to provide us with desired time and attention to build the team exactly the way we wanted to.

I really liked their focus on culture, where they try to understand our culture and prescreen people to make sure that they fit in. They definitely take a long term view for their customers and engineers.

Once we started working together, in less than two weeks they provided us with first prescreened highly qualified candidates and we were able to find our first engineer very quickly.

Describe the project in detail.

The project included building a very intuitive platform for parents and children that can be used for learning online. The platform needed to allow posting of prerecorded video lessons, assignments and allow communication with parents and teachers.

This was a core platform for our business model and it was critical for us to have it well and securely done in a timely manner. It also had to have a great UI/UX and marketing optimizations.

What was the team composition?

We started with one FE engineer and expanded the team to 3 BE developers, 3 FE developers and one UI/UX design. One of BE developers became a Team Lead ensuring an efficient communication channel between our Product Manager and the engineering team.

Such a team composition has been working for us very well. Agile Fuel has done an amazing work keeping its employees engaged and productive and we haven't lost any developers. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The platform was produced very quickly and we were able to engage with customers in an effective way. The team demonstrated an outstanding level of ownership contributing recommendations on the platform improvement.

As we've been receiving a lot of feedback from customers, we had to implement a number of enhancements and the team has been very responsive in following up with such improvements. 

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our product manager has been providing technical management to the team and Agile Fuel took on all recruiting, HR and administrative tasks. The workflow has been very efficient. 

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I was impressed with the following: 

1.  Agile Fuel really cares about our specific needs and has ensured getting the best talent for our roles rather than providing the generic pool of candidates; 
2. They really care about cultural fit and making sure that engineers are engaged and excited about their work. 

Are there any areas for improvement?

I was happy with everything that was provided by Agile Fuel and don't see any particular areas of concern.