Spiral Scout

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product owner of technology at an online marketplace that connects users with deals from local merchants.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Spiral Scout?

We needed more in-house resources to develop an iOS app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We originally brought Spiral Scout on board to design a UX optimized interface for our iOS app, but their scope eventually grew to include designing our website and Android app as well. Their primary focus was on the web design, but they also spent a significant amount of time creating two unique profile experiences for advertisers and consumers on the mobile apps.

Before we send their work to another company for development, Spiral Scout completes a final review and troubleshoots existing bugs. Since we’re working with multiple vendors, they put together a technical specification document that explains our platforms in full-detail and includes instructions on how to build them.

What is the team composition?

We mostly work with the project manager and design lead.

How did you come to work with Spiral Scout?

They came highly recommended by two trusted sources, so we decided to reach out to them. We knew that they would be a perfect fit for the project after the first phone call.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership began in January 2018 and is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

After years of listening to the false promises of our previous web vendors, we’re pleasantly surprised to witness Spiral Scout transform our vision into a gorgeous and functional design. We already have a sense of how smooth the navigation will be from the models they’ve presented us.

How did Spiral Scout perform from a project management standpoint?

The project manager is very responsive to our needs. Overall, working with Spiral Scout has been a great experience.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re amazed at how consistent their designs have been for all five projects. Their attention to detail was a helpful asset in optimizing their high-quality designs for the end user. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’ve been exceptional in every area so far.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO and co-founder of Wagfield. We offer force-free dog training solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with the engagement?

Our website featured a significant amount of multimedia content. We asked Spiral Scout to perform simple development work, notably managing our content and working to improve the user experience.

SOLUTION

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

Spiral Scout offered a highly collaborative team at relatively competitive price. Their team designed, built, and launched our website using an intuitive content management system (CMS).

What was the team composition?

We worked with five to ten contacts around the globe.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The co-founder was very responsive and resourceful. All members were kept up to date on the project’s development through a variety of communication channels.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Spiral Scout took the time to understand our individual needs and goals. They developed a solution specific to Wagfield and our needs.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am one of three partners at a small financial services firm. We not only manage our own capital, but other families' as well.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Spiral Scout?

We hired Spiral Scout, who had originally designed our website, to streamline our web content, improve our site design, and make the site more mobile-responsive.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to standardize and improve the user experience across multiple platforms within a reasonable timeframe.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

One of our trusted technology partners in the financial services industry referred Spiral to us years ago. We worked with them on our original website development and design and chose to work with them again in order to vertically integrate our platforms and, consequently, reduce costs.

Describe the project in detail.

Before starting the project, we conducted a series of discussions with Spiral Scout outlining project goals and determining which webpages could be improved upon, added, or eliminated. Despite delays on our end, the Spiral team kept everything on track. They attentively corrected and improved on any issues that arose.

What was the team composition?

John (Co-founder, Spiral Scout) did an excellent job of coordinating his team's efforts.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The platforms consistently function 24/7; if there are hiccups, John and his team are never more than an email away.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Workflow between our team and theirs is both extraordinarily responsive and collegial.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

John and his team over deliver, pay close attention to detail, listen more than speak and care more than expected.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We'll keep trying to break things to help Spiral Scout find ways to improve. Thus far, we're very pleased with our relationship.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a corporate marketing manager at The Business Journals, the parent company of the Charlotte Business Journal.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Spiral Scout?

Our marketing department needed help to create games for our national sales representatives. Our sales team wanted to use these games during meetings to introduce our company to potential advertisers.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted the games to be engaging.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We worked with them on a separate project with another vendor. We hired them for this engagement the following year.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

They helped us select the game type; we wanted two-team and multiple-choice format that would be hosted locally for PC, Mac, and iPad. Next, the team helped us with functionality preferences, design, development, packing, and delivery.

What was the team composition?

I worked with the co-founder and a developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Our sales reps loved the game and look forward to new ones each year. We’ve gotten positive feedback from clients; they find them more engaging and fun than traditional data-based presentations.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The team communicated timelines and budgets clearly at each step of the process.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They were friendly, helpful, intelligent, and professional. They were great to work with and we plan to use them again.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

No, I can’t think of anything.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a new direct-to-consumer kitchen company selling premium products online.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Spiral Scout?

Spiral Scout provided web development and web support and built email templates for our business.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed a pixel-perfect implementation within a strict deadline. We also wanted to minimize bugs and receive support when inevitable bugs did come up. (Thankfully, very few bugs happened.) 

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We heard about Spiral Scout through a friend. We started with a small trial project and really enjoyed working with them.

Describe the project in detail.

Our top-tier branding agency handed over their UI/UX designs to Spiral Scout for the development work. Spiral Scout had the really tough task of building out a fully functioning, modern e-commerce site in less than a month. Since then, we’ve also engaged them in many follow-up projects.

Explain how the solution addressed your business challenge.

To compete in the e-commerce sphere, our site needs to act as the representation of our brand. Spiral Scout efficiently helped us launch a leading e-commerce site in under a month.

What was the team composition?

John [Co-Founder & CEO, Spiral Scout] made sure that the work met our standards. The whole team—including Anton [Project Manager & QA Engineer, Spiral Scout], Yahueni [Frontend Engineer, Spiral Scout], and Maxim [Frontend Engineer, Spiral Scout]—was focused on our entire project. They’re responsive and easy to work with for every task. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What outcomes or results can you share that demonstrate progress and/or success?

Our site is live and growing 20% month to month.

How effective was the project management?

We hit all of our initial deadlines, which is rare in the development world.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I really appreciate their efficiency. After working with a ton of agencies, I can say that Spiral Scout really keeps their promises regarding the project’s scope and speed.

What tips or recommendations do you have?

Outlining projects and having a clear idea of your goals beforehand will produce the deliverables you want. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the Vice President of Operations at Consensus, a demo automation platform for large companies. We provide personalized demos of client products or services on demand, solving buyer enablement and reducing the amount of time in a sales cycle when repeat demos are required to close a deal.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Spiral Scout?

We needed to outsource some of our development work to help refine our platform more quickly, while cutting costs.

We have been moving upstream and targeting a lot more enterprise-level clients like Oracle, IBM and HP; our main focus is on customers with 250 or more employers. The needs of these clients differ from our smaller customers, which may call for services like single sign-on, a higher level of security procedures, and compliance with European laws.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Spiral Scout manages our entire development process. We needed to continue development and support of our already built platform and make improvements on it. Spiral Scout was brought in to work on some of the new features for larger clients to meet their specific needs.

What is the team dynamic?

We work with a team of 8, including the Technical Director, JD, a project manager, a frontend and backend lead, additional developers and a QA team.

How did you come to work with Spiral Scout?

We recognized the quality of work that Spiral Scout had been doing through their work with another local company, eLearning Brothers, who highly recommended them.

I had spoken to at least a half-dozen other similar companies before ultimately choosing to work with Spiral Scout.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked with the for about 6 months, since July or August of 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We've kept the same team size, while reducing costs by about a fifth of what our previous local full-time team had been operating at. The rate of development and quality of work has been consistent, if not better, with Spiral Scout.

How did Spiral Scout perform from a project management standpoint?

Their performance has been top-notch despite the challenge of taking over legacy code written by someone else. The time difference has not been a problem; while their hours don’t mirror ours, we have significant overlap.

What did you find most impressive about Spiral Scout?

It doesn't feel like a normal vendor relationship, because they really take ownership, collaborate closely with us and take pride in their work. I’ve spent time in their office in Belarus, working with them personally for a week. JD also visited our office in the US and requested swag. It was good to see that they valued our partnership and were happy to receive sweatshirts, t-shirts and logo stickers from us.

Oftentimes, developers don’t have that emotional connection with the company, product or service. But with Spiral Scout, they were more invested and concerned with creating solutions and delivering the best products for the customer.

Are there any areas Spiral Scout could improve?

Over the last couple weeks, we've had some bugs, which is no fault of Spiral Scout. However, sometimes I’ll receive multiple emails that each include a simple task, so I may ask them to summarize the communication in to one email. So, I would suggest tightening up communications, specifically on action items.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Drew Altizer Photography is a photo agency that shoots parties for magazines. I am the owner of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Spiral Scout?

We needed a new website to be able to organize photographs and distribute them to the press, guests at parties, and clients.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They ran the project by helping us to articulate in a scope document what we wanted to do and then they built the website on a proprietary platform of their own. The website has an e-commerce component allowing clients to purchase photos as downloads and also to print through a third party.

They had to figure out some difficult features around metadata. Every developer we’ve used has struggled with it, but Spiral Scout made it look easy. They essentially built four websites in one website. The first one was a digital asset manager for our internal use as well as a distribution system to the media outlets we service. Then we have a website just for guests which is the e-commerce component. Then we have a system of delivery for our clients.

How did you come to work with Spiral Scout?

I found the Cutcaster website and found out that John Griffin had developed that. I contacted them because I knew they would understand metadata.

How much have you invested with Spiral Scout?

We pay them based on time and materials. We’ve spent over $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them for a couple of years. The work has been ongoing with maintenance and updates.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

People like it but I don’t know that it’s tied directly to them. They were able to solve some tough problems. The end user will either like the design or user experience but won’t be able to know exactly what Spiral Scout did.

How did Spiral Scout perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been very good, and it’s gotten better the longer we’ve worked with them. Spiral Scout has grown and expanded their process which has made things run better.

What did you find most impressive about Spiral Scout?

Their strength is in understanding and realizing solutions to problems. They’re very smart and curious about problem solving. They find the best solution for the problem instead of just finding the easiest way to solve the problem. My experience with three other developers has been that they’ve said they could solve our problems but couldn’t deliver on their promise. Spiral Scout is honest, and if they can’t do it, they will tell me.

Are there any areas Spiral Scout could improve?

The biggest area of improvement was at the beginning of the project with issues around communication. I now have a project manager who seems to make that much easier.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an educational publishing company and we focus on teaching children to read. I am the director of technology.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Spiral Scout?

We had a tight timeline to meet and we needed additional resources to get certain software products developed and out to market.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They work collaboratively with our internal software development team as well as several of our product owners that aren’t part of the software team but play a role in providing direction on the products. They come onsite to work with us, but the majority of their work is done remotely. They’ve also helped us write specification documents that we share with other departments internally. Everything we ask for, they can do pretty quickly. They make it so that we can evaluate their work in both a technical and non-technical manner. They’ve learned our business pretty quickly, which includes not just developing the software but actually understanding what we do as a company.

We have worked with Spiral Scout on four or five large-scale projects, but they’ve worked on smaller scale projects as well. We work with them every day on changes or improvements, and they do a lot of the maintenance on the projects as well. We had one full stack and two front-end resources. Now that the main part of the project has been completed, the two front-end resources are on-call. A lot of it is now being done by a junior resource which has worked out good so far. They have their own proprietary framework they like to use, but we opted out of that because of operational reasons. We use Laravel, and they were happy to accommodate that. They’re familiar with all of the languages that we use. They’re also happy to learn new things as well.

How did you come to work with Spiral Scout?

We were doing game development with somebody who had used them on a different project, and they introduced us.

How much have you invested with Spiral Scout?

The total cost over the course of our relationship is more than $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them since November 2012.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Anything they create is being used by students in classrooms all over the US.

How did Spiral Scout perform from a project management standpoint?

The communication has been phenomenal. You can reach their engineers at any hour of the day, any day of the week. Usually, if there’s a delay it’s because of something that we didn’t figure out as a company first. I don’t recall having to wait or being frustrated with an end result. If something gets delayed on their end, they let us know right away. Depending on the scale of the project their turnaround time is a couple of weeks to six months. They are also willing to meet in person when we need that.

What did you find most impressive about Spiral Scout?

We’ve worked with a number of different outsourced companies in different parts of the world, and their team was the best. They don’t build something and disappear. They take a lot of pride in what they do and I think that’s been reflected in why we’ve been together for the last several years, and why we’ll continue working with them in the future.

Are there any areas Spiral Scout could improve?

No. Software development is not a smooth process especially when you’re an outside team. It’s been a great relationship. We’re happy with their work.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

MaharaniWeddings is an Indian wedding website. We feature 20 to 25 pieces of content every day on Indian weddings. I run the engineering side of the house.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Spiral Scout?

We needed site redesign and a way to speed up the site.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a preexisting site before we started with Spiral Scout. We added a gallery component to the site probably four or five years ago that significantly slowed down the site. Spiral Scout came in and tried to make it faster. We ultimately did a full redesign. They created a custom CMS [content management system]. I don’t remember the exact technologies used under the hood, but we’ve been using their custom CMS for the last two to three years.

Our need was publishing content and having it auto distribute to social media. We paid vendors to have content attributed to a specific vendor. The vendor doesn’t have to manage this, but they have articles that are tagged to them so they can see all the places where they’re featured and more importantly a bride can see all their published work. They built that component, and they’ve also been flexible regarding adding new components, scaling and making the site mobile friendly or speeding pages up or other things like AMP [Accelerated Mobile Pages].

How did you come to work with Spiral Scout?

They came recommended from somebody else, and then we interviewed a bunch of people, and they stood out. So we decided to move forward with them.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

Weve spent $50,000 to $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started May 2013, and it was completed that same year. We still speak frequently. They handle maintenance and new projects. We’re in touch all the time. More recently we’ve been talking about a new technology called AMP to get your site very fast for mobile. That’s something they’ve been working on.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We continue to use them. There're lots of other people out there. We continue to use them, and they continue to do a good job. The site’s faster and traffic is up 50%.

How did Spiral Scout perform from a project management standpoint?

They did great. I work mostly with John Griffin, but I speak with multiple people. I think they have Redmine, so we use that for bugs and issues. The communication is great.

What did you find most impressive about Spiral Scout?

Spiral Scout has been great to work with. They’re really intelligent. They’re very efficient.

Are there any areas Spiral Scout could improve?

No.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Snapwire is a platform that connects the new generation of photographers with businesses and brands around the world. We give photo buyers the ability to post a photo brief at a price that they can afford. These creative briefs are called requests on our platform. Over 300,000 photographers in 180 countries respond in real-time with their best shots. Buyers get unique photos that match their vision and earn up to 70% when the buyer chooses their photo.

There’s some gamification involved with the company, as we have points and a leveling system. It has an iOS, Android, and web app. All photos that are submitted have a chance to earn a spot in our growing stock photo library. I am the CEO and co-founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Spiral Scout?

The business challenge for us at the time was to replace our in-house dev team. Our internal dev team became unavailable and we had to lay them off. We were looking to move quickly and we needed to find somebody who could quickly understand the space that we operate in.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

It’s quite extensive. Spiral Scout didn’t develop something from scratch, they just came in to do a triage. We had an initial dev team that built the foundation of the product, so they came in with an existing product. Spiral Scout came in to support and stabilize the existing codebase and platforms. They did so with success. Now they’re involved with re-architecting the existing codebase to support the company’s growth. Their involvement fluxes and changes depending on a sprint. We practice an Agile Scrum workflow development process with them, running in 2-week sprints. Right now, I believe the team is anywhere from 4 to 5 individuals. 

How did you come to work with Spiral Scout?

Spiral Scout and I have worked in the past on other projects. They had built platforms that are comparable or complementary to ours.

How much have you invested with Spiral Scout?

We’ve paid $50,000 to $100,000 for their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Spiral Scout in April 2016. Our engagement is ongoing and it will certainly be long-term. We hope to be business partners with them in the future for another development and other projects that we’re building.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I suppose I am the Scrum master and the project manager on the product, so I can say with certainty that they have been meeting their targets, deadlines, and goals. They meet our deadlines, needs, and objectives on time. They’ve successfully launched several major features for us. As you probably have heard from other interviews, the development product management workflow is an ongoing iterative cycle. There are milestones and accomplishments every day. Every time they push deployment code to the protection environment, we do micro celebrations.

We get accolades and compliments on our product and the platforms that we’ve built with Spiral Scout. However, the customer-interfacing comments that we receive are about our product and are not directly related to their work. Other than our internalization of how they’ve helped us achieve those goals, we don’t have feedback that directly reflects on Spiral Scout.

How did Spiral Scout perform from a project management standpoint?

We do a Scrum meeting every other week and a sprint planning meeting. The communication with them is exceptional. They’ve very attentive. Initially, we didn’t have a project manager from Spiral Scout. Since we’ve added that headcount to our team, everything has greatly improved. Things like communication, workflows, and the ability for us to measure cadence in speed and velocity in our development cycles. We can clearly see where they are in the development cycles. That’s very helpful for me as the administrator and the project lead.

From a financial modeling forecast, they’ve worked with us on sprint pricing. A lot of companies want to have a fixed price or a fixed budget for pricing, or sprint planning and sprint development. It’s nice that they do that. It’s not just an hourly rate and giving us sprint pricing is a more integrated approach. In some ways, it’s a fixed cost, but they are flexible and can do hourly as well.

What did you find most impressive about Spiral Scout?

Out of every developer I’ve worked with, the Spiral Scout team is probably the most skilled. For an offshore company—partly as they also have an office in San Francisco—their team is highly skilled. I appreciate their ability to work with a company given our budget constraints. At the same time, they still do a high-quality job.

Given our growth constraints, I’m impressed by their flexibility since our company doesn’t always have funding cycles. They’ve been flexible with payment terms and other things like that. They have been a really good choice.

Are there any areas Spiral Scout could improve?

The relationship is relatively early and we haven’t been working with them for years. Of course, we would love to have more developers assigned to our project. Any new development team coming into an existing codebase has to learn the existing codebase—it can take up to 3, 4 or 6 months  to really master the codebase—and we’ve just arrived at that since we’ve started working with them. There really isn’t a fix for that other than just digging in and having more individuals work on the platform. Then again, that’s constrained by my budget, so they can only afford to send so many people. I really don’t have anything negative to say about Spiral Scout at the moment. What I just mentioned is a reflection of our own limitations, not theirs.