Web Dev, UX/UI Design & Systems Engineering for IoT Company
- Web Development
- Confidential
- Aug. 2019 - Ongoing
- Quality
- 5.0
- Schedule
- 5.0
- Cost
- 5.0
- Willing to Refer
- 5.0
“This is the third time I’ve gone back to them; every time, I’ve had a pleasant experience with them.”
- Other industries
- Boston, Massachusetts
- 51-200 Employees
- Phone Interview
- Verified
JetRuby Agency is helping an industrial IoT company build their web app. Their services have spanned front- and backend development, UX/UI design, systems engineering, and architecture decomposition.
JetRuby Agency has facilitated a positive customer experience, remaining flexible to change requests and delivering quality work. The team manages the project effectively by deploying various tools and providing a business analyst to streamline the process. They offer great value for cost.
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
BACKGROUND
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m a product owner. Right now, I’m tasked with standing up a new, fairly complex software product that layers on top of our existing solutions. We’re a small company, and I do everything from systems engineering to customer engagement, B2B marketing, and product development.
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What challenge were you trying to address with JetRuby Agency?
JetRuby Agency helps us with design and development.
SOLUTION
What was the scope of their involvement?
We’ve developed some core microservices that sit on the backend and do data analysis. Jetruby Agency is taking the outputs of those, combining them with the user stories, and developing the whole web application for us. They’re also doing the systems engineering, so going from user story decomposition to UX/UI design prototypes to walkthroughs and then to the actual implementation.
They do front- and backend development. On the frontend, we use Vue.js, which was a legacy holdover from our company. I know JetRuby Agency’s core is React, but they were good about jumping into Vue.js and bringing in some people who could help with Vue.js. We plan to transition to React.js in the next couple of weeks. The backend is Ruby on Rails. They’re integrating with our microservices that are natively written in Python that are being wrapped up in BLAS containers and deployed in Docker Kubernetes containers.
They’re also working on the architecture, which comes in several different layers, and doing decompositions. They’re doing a lot of the drilling down and refining the architecture based on user interactions; for instance, they’ll point out if a user story requires a more complex architecture. They have a business analyst on their team who has gone through and really designed a lot of the workflow at a detailed level.
They’re going into a final staging server. Our team will be taking the codebase from the server and deploying it live on our operational site going forward. We plan to keep them on to continue maintenance and application development.
What is the team composition?
The current team is around eight people. We have a program manager, who is great; they coordinate the hand-ins we give them and then plan the sprints out and do a lot of the communication. We have frontend developers, three backend developers, a UX/UI artist, and a business analyst. We also have a part-time QA person.
How did you come to work with JetRuby Agency?
Years ago, I had a startup, and a friend of mine at a different startup recommended JetRuby Agency after we were using a single local resource here in the US. We reached out in 2016 and started working with them.
I used them again at another company in 2018 or 2019. Then, when I started with this new company – which actually bought my startup – I recommended we used JetRuby Agency. They knew what they were doing and could move fast.
What is the status of this engagement?
My current company started working with JetRuby Agency in August 2019, and we’ve been working continuously since then.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
They’re currently working on the core flow through the application, which involves about five different user personas. We’re tracking them in terms of their ability to complete each of these steps of the user flow process, and each one has been assigned a point value. They’ve been doing very well with that. Obviously, it’s always going to be slower than what I wish they could do, but they’ve been good at communicating what they can accomplish during each sprint, given the resources they have.
When I push them and ask for a little bit more, they’ve been pretty good, and they complete things well. When they finish something and we look at it from the user point of view, they’re open to our change requests. We’re on the cusp of getting user feedback, which I’m sure will cause more changes. They’re friendly about our change requests and very upfront about letting us know when those changes will happen.
How did JetRuby Agency perform from a project management standpoint?
It always takes a little bit of time to find that rhythm between two teams on a project. One of the things I found with JetRuby Agency is that when they added a business analyst to come in, take the stories, and really start decomposing, we went from moving a bit slowly to hitting lightspeed. The interactions just clicked between our teams. They definitely brought in the right people at the right time to help us go through the inputs we were giving them and translating them into something they could build, and then coming back and showing us. They’ve been very good at helping to complete that loop.
We’re using Azure DevOps for all of the project management. We can track what stories we have handed them, and we can see when they’ve allocated that in the sprint. We’re using a variety of different tools as they decompose what we give them in Azure DevOps. For instance, we use Miro Boards for a lot of the business analyst flows so that we can look at the detail of the design. We do first-stage mockups, so more conceptual designs, in Sigma. Then, we do a lot of final UX/UI workflow in InVision, and everything from there goes into the queue for front- and backend development and then gets deployed to staging. It’s a very nice flow for us of requirements and stories we give them into these levels of fidelity that deliver the product.
What did you find most impressive about them?
This is the third time I’ve gone back to them; every time, I’ve had a pleasant experience with them. They’ve not only always kept me happy but have also given me the tools to keep my management happy and the investments going as we build these tools. They’re easy to work with. I’m sure if I end up going to another company in the future and need to develop something similar, I’d go right back to them.
Are there any areas they could improve?
I’ve given them feedback over time. Getting that project management just the way we wanted was important for us, and it took some time to get that going. We’ve developed a lot of templates that took us through our iterative design. Some feedback I gave them on this project in particular is that it would be helpful to have a repository of similar templates that they could provide new clients. They probably don’t do that because it potentially contains a lot of sensitive customer information; however, if they could provide some templates of how to communicate with us, it would be helpful.
Any advice for potential customers?
Spend a little bit of time planning and don’t jump right into development. Map out your plan into something that they understand how to execute against. The first time I worked with them, we went right into development, but the second and third times, we started slower and added staff as we felt confident that we had sufficiently documented what we were trying to do.
I’d also say to bring on their business analyst from day one; we waited a little bit to do that. That particular set of resources that they have at JetRuby Agency is worth every penny. They’re the most useful way to translate requirements from our lingo and lexicon into something that they understand how to develop.
RATINGS
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Quality
5.0Service & Deliverables
"Our customer loves what we’ve been showing them."
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Schedule
5.0On time / deadlines
"They’re very good. They do what they say they’re going to get done."
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Cost
5.0Value / within estimates
"There are some lower cost providers out there, but they provide great value for dollar."
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Willing to Refer
5.0NPS
"I’ve referred them to several friends who have done work with them.