thoughtbot

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a startup social networking company, and our product is a knowledge-sharing platform for pet owners. I’m the co-founder and CEO of the organization. Right now, we’re in sort of a pre-launch stage.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We hired thoughtbot to help us redesign and rebuild our app. We had another development company take a first cut at the app, and we just needed a bit more firepower to get it over the finish line. thoughtbot was brought on to rework what was already there, both from a development functionality perspective and a design perspective.

Our project was unique to them because they were inheriting a codebase that wasn’t theirs to begin with. Diana (Managing Director, thoughtbot) told us before the engagement started that they don’t usually take on clients like us. There were a lot more unknowns compared to a project where they would be building the product from scratch.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started with a design sprint, which was a week-long brainstorming process to come up with a design based on extensive user testing and feedback gathering. thoughtbot set out to identify which functionalities were the most important to our users. They took a platform that felt like a traditional social networking app and redesigned it to be more focused on knowledge sharing. 

We retained the social networking elements, but the goal was to build a community of pet owners who can easily share knowledge with each other. They delivered a set of features that you would expect with a social network—feed, profile creation, onboarding, search functionality—and kept those as the key pieces of functionality. Everything was built and designed for iOS.

What is the team composition?

We started with a team of three individuals from thoughtbot—two designers and one programmer. After the design sprint, we transitioned to having just a head designer and a lead programmer. 

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

We wanted to work with a company that had an office close to us. Since we’re a Connecticut-based organization, we started looking for New York City-based development firms. We were referred to thoughtbot by a friend of my business partner, who had interviewed with them and thought that they were an exceptionally strong development company.

After interviewing a handful of other development companies, we felt that thoughtbot was the best fit for us, from many different perspectives. One is that they were incredibly professional and well-organized, both in terms of their organizational structure and their ability to produce materials quickly. We felt comfort in the fact that they had a well-thought-out process in place.

I care greatly about efficiency and structure, and that was important for my business partner as well. I also appreciated how their thought process was clear and how they were able to articulate their plans well. That gave us confidence in their abilities from the outset.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent close to $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with thoughtbot in early July 2019 and finished with them in October 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve only worked with a couple of other development firms, but, from our perspective, the thing that worked well for this engagement was how dedicated they were. We had both a designer and a developer from thoughtbot that were singularly focused on our project. This brought a level of focus that was critical to making our time with them successful. The designer and developer were also both incredibly talented and diligent in their workflow. 

For example, our developer was excellent at documenting every single change that was made. As a result, we now have a codebase that any other developer could step in and quickly understand because it’s so well documented and organized. That level of professionalism was extremely refreshing and distinguishes thoughtbot from other providers.

The other element of the engagement that helped a lot was the level of collaboration between the designer and developer. There was a constant flow of communication, and every time the designer worked on a deliverable, they confirmed the feasibility with the developer. If there was ever a moment when the design was a bit off, they could make adjustments very quickly. It was amazing how in-sync they were.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

We had an exceptional working relationship with them. thoughtbot follows an iterative design and development process, meaning that they didn’t lay out a schedule for the whole engagement at the very beginning. It’s a week-by-week process.
    
We used different tools, like Slack and Trello, to stay in constant communication. We were tracking progress with them all day, every day. Because we were always on the same page, we were able to test out features that they had developed in real-time. Having a small team also helped with this.

There was a tight feedback loop that we maintained throughout the engagement. Every morning, we’d have a standup meeting to plan out the day, and, at the end of the week, we’d have what they called a “retro” meeting. This was typically 45 minutes of discussing the successes and challenges of the week with some planning to improve the following week. Those meetings always brought the week together in a thoughtful, organized way, and we always felt prepared going into the next week as a result.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The standups and retro meetings were helpful because they provided an open forum for us to look critically at our performance. They also gave us the chance to make adjustments as needed, relative to our timeline and budget. Whenever we were falling short in an area, we were able to make the best decision to get us back on track.

Working with thoughtbot was, overall, a wonderful experience. I can’t say enough great things about the entire team, their process, their workflow, and the quality of the code. They have an excellent team of developers working there.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were a lot of unknowns coming into the project that ended up delaying our timeline. I don’t know if these could have been avoided; I think that’s just the nature of working with an existing codebase.

They struggled to make accurate predictions at times, despite their best efforts to review and dissect the code at the beginning. In that regard, the timeline did slip, but it wasn't due to a lack of effort or a lack of programming knowledge.

In general, they had a great sense of what could be accomplished in a given week. They were also very helpful in guiding us through pivots that we had to make because of new content or information that we encountered along the way.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Getting the most out of working with thoughtbot will come from having a tight feedback loop between your company and their team. That’s one of the things that we did well, and I’ve been told that it doesn’t always happen with their clients. Usually, clients take more of a hands-off approach, whereas we—my business partner and I—were working alongside them all day long.

That created a strong working relationship and allowed us to maximize the output during the time we had with them. I would highly recommend maintaining that level of engagement when working with thoughtbot.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Joydrive is the first online marketplace where customers can buy both new and pre-owned vehicles without visiting a dealership. Customers can complete the entire car-buying process online, on their own time and at their own pace.

Dealers interact with customers through a platform that provides the tools and features needed to complete the transaction, all the while being consistent, transparent, and fair to consumers. It's like Amazon, but for cars!

My role is leading our technical team, including any thoughtbotters who are currently engaged with us. My responsibilities range from product design to project management. I have been involved with the project since the technical inception.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire thoughtbot?

We went to thoughtbot to help build and provide a solid foundation for our website and marketplace platform. Being in the Automotive industry, there are quite a lot of challenges when it comes to interfacing with fragments vehicle data and descriptions, so ingesting and presenting all that information to consumers in an accurate, easy to understand way was difficult.

There is also a need for consumers to have an easy and intuitive purchasing experience and a need for dealers to be able to interact and fulfill consumer's purchases. Car purchases are quite complicated and almost always situational, so our system needed to be flexible and adaptive.

thoughtbot teamed up with Joydrive to help build a well-structured codebase and system using best practices and modern languages in order to scale as needed and be as performant as possible. Between design and development, there was a large opportunity to make a unique product that was special in the industry.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed a resilient and reliable website that used modern practices to provide a truly online ecommerce marketplace. This meant responsive & component-based design for optimum UI and UX that at all times considers accessibility. We needed a system that would scale as we grew and a codebase that was clean, well-tested, and maintainable.

We were largely flexible on the technologies used and consulted extensively with thoughtbot to find the correct fit. We ultimately settled on Elixir and the Phoenix framework, which has served us extremely well. This project was our entire business, as this was the first technical step in our journey. The stakes were extremely high for us to create a dependable foundation and an actually viable first iteration.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We utilized a ton of research and referral reviews as we considered many companies. Over several months we revewied many different companies to find the right fit. Several factors were critical in this selection:

1. the company must work as a partner in our journey, we wanted collaboration and growth-mindset
2. we needed nimbleness and technical excellence
3. we wanted consultative approach in addition to technical implementation
4. we wanted a vendor that can help us grow our technical team as we grew. Our President and CEO, myself, and others were involved in the selection process.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

thoughtbot started with a deep-dive design sprint to fully understand the business and to figure out the initial structure of the product itself. We started with no codebase, and they established not only the structure and a growing product, but also the approach and strategy to develop and design.

The process, from inception, was very collaborative and the thoughtbot team was deeply involved to understand the core needs and next steps. Since this was a multi-sided marketplace platform, there were many needed features, not only in the base functionality but also in design and branding.

Technical requirements were broad but necessary--a consumer would need to be able to browse, select, and actually purchase a vehicle, 100% online. At the same time, a dealer would need to be able to interact and complete the purchase. thoughtbot helped design and develop a product that would do all of this.

What was the team composition?

Our interaction with thoughtbot and their team members engaged with us have always been very lean and nimble. We started with a team of 2-3 and have ranged in size up to 6 members.

Throughout the entire process, there has been flexibility to scale up or down depending on needed bandwidth, current backlog, time to market, etc. thoughtbot has been a valuable partner in their flexibility and expertise.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

thoughtbot has not only helped build our initial project but aided in continued development throughout our multiple year engagement. They have hep improve and refactor features along that way that significantly help grow our results, not only in direct transactions but also in added efficiencies, new technologies, and even additional services offered to consumers via the marketplace.

We are now the largest true marketplace in the industry and the only place where a consumer can buy, sell, trade, or lease New, Certified, and Pre-Owned vehicles, all 100% online.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was well structured yet flexible throughout the entire process. They helped introduce Agile processes and build out a management system that we still use today. For all work, they helped set expectations for timelines, were always responsive, and deeply involved.

In the beginning, they led project management but helped to grow our team to lead the management of the product and project. Many tools were used on the project to assist in communication and management, including GitHub, Slack, Google Hangouts, and Trello.

Over time, the technical team became 100% remote and thoughtbot's leadership in this area (along with the tools and practices they helped introduce) has led to a very successful team.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

thoughtbot is very innovative and knowledgable about not only the technologies that are widely adopted but also emerging or younger technologies. They quickly become experts in the tools and languages they use and have a network on employees they can rely upon to fill in any knowledge gaps.

They constantly work to "level up" their knowledge and are big contributors to the design/development communities and to open source. They are very consultative and thorough with their approach, doing the appropriate amount of user research and due diligence in order to properly identify what is viable and actually worth implementing. They communicate extraodinarily well and continue to help improve our processes.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We have only had difficulty once when we had a thoughtbotter in a European timezone when that person was the only one who's schedule didn't really overlap with the rest of the team. While this usually was not a problem, occassionally the timezone difference did prove challenging.

By the end of that person's engagement, we had discovered some additional strategies to deal with the time differences but unfortunately, it did take a bit of time to optimize. This is not thoughtbot's fault but just the circumstances.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product manager at an education company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We needed a partner to design our online courses. We wanted a company to help us finder where to start and position us well for our development work. We needed help to focus our vision.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

thoughtbot facilitated a design sprint for us. We shared the feedback received during our previous two design sprints with thoughtbot. Then, they came into our office and worked to understand our company including processes, challenges, and previous research. Their team helped us define the assumptions we wanted to test and the results we wanted from the design sprint. We worked on a storyboard for the prototype and discussed various different solutions. Their team built a prototype product using Sketch and InVision, integrating the content I produced. After, their team managed user tests.

What is the team composition?

Two thoughtbot employees worked directly on the project. In the run-up to the project, we had meetings with their team when they tried to understand our business and needs. Through that process, I communicated with three or four additional staff members.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

Our colleague had met a thoughtbot employee at a conference. I spent a lot of time researching agencies to decide which would be the best partner. I looked at about 30 different companies and contractors both onshore and offshore. What made thoughtbot stand out was that they really took time to understand our needs. Their team asked good questions and challenged us, which is what we needed. We didn’t want a partner to only execute a provided brief. Rather, we wanted a collaborator to challenge us, question our assumptions, and maintain a rigorous focus on the user. Even though they weren’t the cheapest offering, we felt like thoughtbot would provide us with the most value.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost about £16,000 (approximately $20,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We began the design work in September 2019. We began talking to them in May, but it was quite a long process because we weren’t sure when this project would start. Our work with them has concluded but it’s possible that we will work with them again.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Their designs were impressive. They had listened to everything we discussed in the collaborative design sprint as well as any feedback we provided.

Their team also facilitated the user test well. As a result, we have valuable feedback and constructive criticism that can guide our development efforts. That’s what we wanted: a clear picture of what we needed to build for users. Our work with thoughtbot will save us time during development as we won't be creating a platform that isn't focused on user needs. Their team has enabled us to be more efficient.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated well via Slack. I was impressed with how quickly they responded. We also did a lot of co-location work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re relentless in their focus on user needs and outcomes. Their team's not afraid to ask challenging questions, making sure the project hones in on one question or outcome that will shape the product. They were more collaborative than any other provider, listening and acting on any feedback. thoughtbot were creative thinkers. Their team approaches challenges with creativity.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think so.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have frank conversations and give thoughtbot a call. Before we started the work, they came to our office to understand the cultural fit and work styles. The experience was incredibly valuable.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a product company that also delivers digital marketing services. We make tools that help nonprofits, political organizations, and other altruistic groups solve digital marketing problems.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We were hearing signals from the market about a need for a conversion tool, but we didn’t have the engineering resources to spin that out fast enough. Most of our engineering resources were tied up with our flagship platform.

We hired thoughtbot to not only bring that product idea to fruition, but also to level up our own development practices and methodologies. Our goal was to build a more engaging and personalized form that could handle video and other rich forms of media.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Thoughtbot developed a tool that can handle a variety of use cases. One of the early ones they implemented was collecting video stories for crowdsourcing campaigns.

Another feature provides an easier method for accepting payments and donations. The product itself is a web app, which they built using Ruby on Rails and JavaScript.

What is the team composition?

We had two full-time engineers on the team from thoughtbot. One was a frontend guy who was also a designer. The other focused on backend development.

Throughout the engagement, we had plenty of opportunities to work with other designers and developers as well. Also, during vacation times, they assigned one or two additional developers to the project.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

We’d borrowed some things from thoughtbot in our own development methodologies and practices. They’re not only consultants but also practitioners. This made thoughtbot stand out from other development teams.

When it came to choosing a partner, we thought it would be useful to engage with a company that wrote the book on a lot of development best practices. We searched around for other development shops, but ultimately thoughtbot seemed to be the best fit, both in terms of culture and skillset.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost of the engagement was between $90,000–$110,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started at the beginning of June 2019, and we were done by the end of July 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We recently started launching the product, and people seem to be very impressed with it. It’s much easier to use than other leading forms tools, and that was one of our goals.

We learned a lot from thoughtbot during the engagement, mainly because of their agile expertise. They also built an amazing product; something that few people have seen before. Overall, the experience was extremely positive.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

The project management was excellent. thoughtbot was very good at understanding our needs and goals, and they planned each week of work to meet those requirements. We were also embedded in their offices; they were very gracious to let our team members sit in with them. We were able to talk through processes, as well as our clients and users, which made for a very collaborative environment.

We had a Slack channel that we used and a Trello board to track tasks. We also communicated through a DevOps platform. They guided us throughout the project, and they were always receptive to adjustments. Sometimes we would go to them with things that we learned during the week, and they would respond with ideas for how to make our new vision happen. It was a warm partnership.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Aside from their technical proficiency, they were able to listen well and understand our perspective. They were very customer-focused. I always felt comfortable talking with them because they held our needs in the highest regard.

They didn’t push things on us, but they did offer suggestions based on their past experiences. I was impressed with how they were able to adhere to our needs and deliver an awesome product.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Maybe the handoff of the work at the end could have been smoother. Even so, I felt like that transition was pretty fluid. It was honestly more on us to be more receptive.

It’s hard for me to come up with things that could’ve been improved. We gave them a two-month timeline, so we didn’t expect them to help us set long term goals or anything like that. There’s some room for improvement with the UI/UX of the tool, but we knew that would be the case with a quickly-launched web app. Overall, they did a great job.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Research what you want to build. thoughtbot can spend plenty of time problem solving, but if you don’t know what you want, you may not get the right product. We did tons of user research and planning, and I think that allowed us to maximize the time that we spent with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of engineering for a digital advertising firm. We specialize in creating digital advertising for the real estate industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We were looking for expert developers who specialize in the same language that we used on our codebase which was Ruby on Rails.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We originally intended to get some help on some really difficult software that we were writing. We found out that the best way to use thoughtbot at the time was to help level up our current development staff to make them better engineers and help them solve these problems. That went fantastically and really set the stage for all the other engagements that we’d have after that.

In our first engagement, we used them primarily for teaching and pairing with our developers. After that experience, we used thoughtbot to augment our team. We were going through a transition in our organization; instead of immediately hiring the next engineer, we were able to be a bit pickier. We needed thoughtbot to give us the right amount of staffing to execute on our projects that we were looking for.

We found that the best projects for them to be a part of were new ideas. For short-term engagements, because we have a pretty complex business model, and it didn’t make sense for them to get in the weeds on some challenging business logic. It takes our developers months to learn those things.

They were exclusively on the development side, mostly Ruby on Rails but did some frontend work for us, too. They worked with our designers and product managers and they brought their backend skills.

They were embedded alongside our team and worked on our whole platform. They didn’t work on any one big project on their own but worked alongside the existing set of product developers for our existing application. They were also working on some experimental applications that we were prototyping at the time.

Their services included building custom software with us, providing in-depth training, and implementing developer best practices that we hadn’t been following yet on our team. They also did feature development and architectural review help.

What is the team composition?

We worked with four thoughtbot developers. I worked directly with their Raleigh managing partner. There were a couple of people who helped with weekly project status meetings as well.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

They’re a national company, but they also have a Raleigh/Durham office and that made them a really great potential partner to work closely with. Their engineers were well-known in our development community as very knowledgeable. We had a lot of trust in thoughtbot.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $250,000–$280,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from November 2017–November 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

thoughtbot gave us all the tools and guides to be able to overhaul our whole test suites. We had more accurate tests that ran less time and were more dependable. We found the evergreen projects and the new development that was outside of our core business regular path to be a really fantastic way to leverage thoughtbot's value. They could deliver on a lot of things in that regard.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management was highly effective. We had weekly retros to get us all on the same page. We’d talk about the progress we were making and they would talk about any tension that might have existed. There were times when we needed to pivot based on the level of difficulty on our end. We learned that we can’t just throw any developer, regardless of how much of an expert they are, at our hardest business problems and expect them to solve it in a few weeks.

We also had video calls. Most of the time, everybody was remote with the exception of a few in-person arrangements. We communicated on Slack and Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We already trusted them due to the fairly public persona of the standards and styles that their team works with. We already were getting inspiration from them. From the beginning, we were aligned from a philosophical perspective of how to build software. That gave them a level of sway that may have been more challenging for another agency.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We learned the best way they could help our team was providing assistance to our existing developers, who had a lot more knowledge than thoughtbot did on how the business works and the business use cases. Short term engagements on systems with complicated business logic wasn't as impactful.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

thoughtbot does really well if you have a team of engineers who are transitioning away from that small, scrappy startup model and are starting to take on a more standard approach to engineering. They’re great in leveling up an engineering team.

If that’s not a concern, thoughtbot can really own the whole development in building a new application. They have excellent strategies for how to start a project and deliver when something doesn’t exist. If some company is trying to use thoughtbot and has a very complex app, I’d advocate that you’d never want to do a short engagement for six weeks because it wouldn’t be helpful for anyone. The ramp-up time in a complex app is such that you can only deliver so much value in a short period of time, and thoughtbot needs a month or so to really start delivering.

They’re really talented developers, but they’re not magicians and it’s easy to forget that sometimes.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the VP of technology for a venture capital and private equity firm. I oversee anything technology-related, including IT management, custom software development, and company evaluation.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We wanted our own deal sourcing application to give us a competitive advantage in the VC market. We hoped such an app would incorporate different data sources and utilize internal algorithms to automate the process of finding the best companies to invest in.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They created a deal sourcing application in Ruby on Rails and hosted on Heroku with some AWS-supported functionalities. They started with a design sprint to collaborate on ideas and created some wireframes before moving into development.

What is the team composition?

thoughtbot provided a project manager, but for the most part, I worked directly with their developers. Their resource commitment was anywhere from one to four people depending on our needs at the time. They provided a designer at times as well.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

I conducted online research and asked my peers about the best development shops in the Bay Area. I interviewed about 10 local firms, including phone calls and in-person visits. At the end of the day, thoughtbot impressed me the most.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $1,024,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

They developed the app from Nov. 2015–Feb. 2016 and they continue to provide ongoing support.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The app has been adopted across our firm, and everyone uses it religiously. It’s been widely praised. I periodically send out user surveys looking for improvements, but the feedback I’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

I have no problem getting in touch with the developers or one of their managing directors, who has served as a project manager. We manage the project through Trello and communicated through Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their developers have been great across the board. We’ve worked with a lot of developers over the past few years, and in most situations, we’ve had to get people up to speed as they learned what was going on. However, all the developers from thoughtbot have been top-notch. They’ve picked things up easily and gotten the job done, which I think is a rare skill.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could do a little better with estimates. I know that tough, but improving their estimates for cost and delivery schedule would make a difference. As long as they understand that, it’s not that big of a deal.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that you have someone dedicated to the project who can commit to daily stand-up meetings, weekly retro, and constant communication on Slack. Your dedicated resources need to be reliable communicators with thoughtbot’s team.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of product for a network for public policy professionals.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We needed a company to develop our iOS app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

thoughtbot took the concept and idea of our product and guided it through the whole development process. We now have a working beta and are anticipating a native iOS app launch this fall.

The app is built around a directory of congressional staffers and registered lobbyists in Washington D.C. over the past 10 years. thoughtbot took these data solutions and united them. They plugged legacy data into our live data streams that we update weekly. The database serves as a directory and a social networking site. Staffers can find and claim their profile and then participate in the network.  

When the project started, I met thoughtbot in their office in New York. We ran a five-day design sprint to create a prototype that we began testing and building the product towards. We’ve just finished up another design sprint with them last week where we focused on the lead generation, getting users, and the initial marketing page and user onboarding flows. We went through the same type of sprint procedure and ended up with a clickable design prototype. 

thoughtbot has become a part of our team in their way of thinking and advising. They took our concepts and helped shape them into actual prototypes and products. They’ve also helped to change the way that we think about our business plan and how to build out the product in a way that mitigates risk, challenges, or assumptions, and helps us go forward. They really forced us to examine our value proposition and our business goals.

Product owners and clients like us can often have very strong biases towards features, objectives, or items that they think are going to work. thoughbot has helped us to label them as assumptions and challenge them in a very healthy way. We’ve reconceptualized the way we look at our product priorities and opportunities. They have had a monumental impact on how our business functions.

What is the team composition?

There are two full-time people and a project advisor who runs retrospectives every week and works with the managing director there. We’re soon going to be bringing on a fourth person.  

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

They were working for the company before I started working here. One of the original partners with the firm had worked with them previously, and he recommended that we use them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $1 million–$5 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2015, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have great feedback from our beta users. Several power users have really taken to it and use it for their jobs every day, finding the right people in Congress to talk to in order to move their legislation or gain support for their offices’ initiatives. We haven’t done much marketing at all other than in-person, grassroots-style outreach to individual offices. We’re focusing now on testing the user onboarding and marketing page experience and validating our work based on past user interviews. We’re very excited about how this polished experience will essentially sell itself.

We’re scaling up our thoughtbot team to launch our iOS app in the next few months, and then we will lean on thoughtbot to help us build our internal team. They allow me to focus on hiring people into an existing system, with an existing culture and robust practices and workflows. They way they built the app and maintained the code makes everything very transferrable to the next person who will work on the project. thoughtbot is increasing the breadth of knowledge across our organization about our project. They’re doing internal code reviews with the rest of their team before they deploy it to our QA site. Whenever we shift or move to a new developer or designer, it’s a seamless transition. Everything is done in a way that makes me feel very confident in the way they’re building the application and preparing for an internal tech team in the future. The last person we’ll need to hire is a CTO. thoughtbot plays the part of a really experienced, seasoned CTO and an entire technology team.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

Communication is excellent and highly constructive. We have daily morning standups and retrospectives at the end of every week with thoughtbot. Even when there are tough decisions we have to talk about, we’re able to have those conversations with them in a very structured and beneficial. It’s never a drag to have to speak to them.

thoughtbot uses Trello and GitHub for project management and code management. We use monday.com internally, and the team joined our tool and could integrate nicely. They can view things that we’re working on and contribute when needed. The way they have set up their Trello boards is amazing. I’ve never seen a system so meticulously created and maintained. It’s extremely simple but incredibly developed. It’s seamless to use the tools they’ve set up. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The way that thoughtbot treats each other and treats us is something I want to emulate in our organization. The way they hire and develop their talent also stands out to me. For their typical hiring phase, they bring a new developer and a new designer onto their team and put them through an apprenticeship phase. I’m very impressed with the high level at which they are thinking about and producing their work. Everything—from the way they run their company to the way they organize their office—is set up in such a mindful, intentional way. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would be fantastic if they had an office in Washington D.C. Working remotely with them has been seamless though. I don’t have any complaints.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Evaluate your project idea by doing a product design sprint with them. It’s a five-day process where you are in a room together and go through the process of structured brainstorming, assumption listing, mind mapping, and storyboarding. You start with these relatively amorphous ideas and assumptions, but those first 3–4 days are truly paradigm-shifting. thoughtbot then builds an actual design prototype that you can test with users during that week.  

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I support our parent education and support program at the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We engaged thoughtbot to help us develop a website for our educational program that parents could easily access on their phones.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Thoughtbot walked us through a design sprint process and helped us hone in on what our goals were for the website before going into development. In the process, they helped us conduct user testing, interviews, and hosted a parent education workshop, so we could incorporate additional feedback into the build.

They then developed the site from scratch, using Ruby on Rails and other technologies, and helped us develop some of the interactive scripts and content we wanted to include.

What is the team composition?

We work with the owner, as well as a designer, developer, and a couple people managing the sprint process and project as a whole.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

They responded to our RFP and were also highly recommended by someone within the Planned Parenthood network. Their vision aligned with ours and we also liked that they were local, so we could spend a decent amount of time with them in person.

How much have you invested with them?

We've invested around $85,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We engaged them in March 2018 and conducted a design sprint week in June. The site launched in September, but we continue to work with them to make updates and small changes as needed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Even though we just recently launched, users are already very excited about the site and we've received a lot of positive feedback.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

They're very accessible and responsive by phone or email. We also track projects and make requests through Trello, which has made the whole process rather seamless.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They ask good questions and have a strong initial process to help clients hone in on goals before going into development. They've been patient with our lack of technical knowledge and are very accommodating overall.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't think so. Any issues we had initially were resolved very quickly.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Keep an open mind to their processes. We found their approach to be very valuable in the long run, despite some initially challenging tasks we had to walk through to figure out the best approach to designing our product.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the senior engineering manager for an online platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We needed to hire more senior staff with skill sets beyond a standard background in iOS and Android technology.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Most of the work we've given thoughtbot has involved cleaning up our existing code for both iOS and Android consumer-facing products. They've rewritten and updated much of the code in Android's Kotlin language.

What is the team composition?

We work with a project manager and about four developers on their team.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

I wanted to work with them at a previous company I worked for, because I was so impressed by their work. I had also been interested in working for their company in the past, because I really liked their business model and how they continue to develop their employees.

How much have you invested with them?

We've invested about $100,000 thus far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them for over six months and the relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We're 100% confident in the coding work thoughtbot has done thus far. The quality of their work has even helped boost the morale of our own engineers, who now feel more empowered to take ownership of their work and learn from thoughtbot's team. We've very much enjoyed having them work with us on site.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

They've been flexible and responsive throughout the engagement thus far. Despite the fact that many of them work remotely most of the time as consultants, we haven't had any communications issues.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their engineers are very enthusiastic and proactive when taking on new projects. They're also very autonomous; I don't have to micromanage anyone on their team. They even come up with lists of recommendations, which has been very helpful.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, but I'd like to see them expand their staff so we could work with them even more.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Trust their team from the start of the relationship, because they truly know what they're doing and will work hard to meet business goals.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the COO of a Boston-based startup. We're making personal training more accessible and more affordable to people by splitting the cost of personal training.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We wanted to develop a tool that allowed gyms to post their personal training availability and gave users the ability to book sessions with those personal trainers.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We approached them only with an idea and some research that showed there would be a market and interest for this app. They helped us translate what were simply ideas into an MVP. Once we had the basics of a product, we collaborated to get that into the hands of users to get feedback. Our app used Ruby on Rails, and we worked with UserTesting for the user acceptance testing and Marvel to manage mockups and wireframes.

What is the team composition?

We had one designer and anywhere from two to three developers.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

We sent out an initial RFP, and taking direction from our initial investors, we decided to search for firms that had a presence in Boston. We wanted to work with people we could sit across the table from. We put out our proposal and ultimately selected thoughtbot through that process.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We reached an agreement in August 2016, and we did our first design sprint in September 2016. Our MVP was available in the marketplace and in the hands of users in December 2016. We’ve made several rounds of changes over time. We still continue to use thoughtbot for maintenance and support, and they occasionally do some development work for us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I don’t have exact metrics, but the product has been very reliable since its launch.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

They were organized and easy to work with. I found all the members of their team to be personable and knowledgeable. We weren’t tech people so it was important to have guidance, and they were generally capable of explaining every step to us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The aspect of partnership with them was important to us. They were committed to understanding what we were trying to do and helping us be successful at all levels.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They prove their value by virtue of what they develop, but they’re a high-end firm. We knew it would be expensive to use them going into the project, so I can’t criticize them for that, but they’re a high-end firm.

Any advice for potential customers?

I should have spent a lot more time thinking about what I wanted. Considering those initial user requirements and specifications would have saved a lot of time and money. They were useful in getting us from a blank piece of paper to an MVP, but it would have been better to have that figured out internally.