Commit Studio

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Erithmitic is a tech-enabled commercial real estate (CRE) lender. We are an early-stage startup looking to apply data and technology to the space in new and improved ways. I lead Product and Engineering for the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Commit Studio, and what were your goals?

We hired Commit Studio to help us with the design and development of our website. We previously had a slim site from a Wordpress template but needed a new identity after a rebranding. Our initial goals were to design and build a public facing site that showed off who we are and what we're about to any interested third-parties, be they potential customers (brokers and borrowers), or investors.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Commit Studio was referred to us by a trusted contact. We met with them for an initial meet & greet to get an understanding of how an engagement with them would look like. The team was friendly and had the experience of doing similar projects before. Their pricing was competitive, which was helpful in making a decision as well.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We started with an initial Design phase where we went through various design options in Figma. During this initial phase we were meeting semiweekly. Then we moved on to Development, where a page was being constructed using React, Next.js, and Tailwind.

As the cadence became more steady-state, we moved to once-a-week meetings, since communication was ongoing using Slack as well. We used Github as our source control system. Once we started needed to track all the efforts in flight (and any issues discovered), we brought in the use of JIRA to keep everything organized.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Three (3):

• Project Manager (double duty as Developer)
• Developer
• Designer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The outcome/deliverable was our site, which did not truly exist prior to the engagement. We've gotten great feedback on how it looks, and it definitely stands out compared to other competitive sites out there.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We started the project off with two meetings a week, but transitioned to once a week after development began. Communication was mostly via Slack with some email. Other tools to track progress were Figma, JIRA, and Github.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Commit was very flexible in how we wanted to work together. As a developer myself, I wanted to be very much involved in the entire process and providing feedback, but also getting my hands dirty in the details every step of the way. They were most accommodating with feedback, no matter how inane. I really enjoyed this engagement.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

We had some bumps to start in figuring out the best way to work together and track outstanding issues. At first everything was in Slack prior to bringing JIRA in the mix, which really helped. As mentioned above, I also wanted to be "in the code" changing things, which caused some confusion initially, so I was a bit more careful in announcing changes I had made or was about to make.

Generally with teams across timezones and countries like this, communication can always be improved and more transparent. Daily standups are always an option but in my opinion too much process--perhaps a quick sentence or two EOD Slack message would've been useful, which just caters more to my own work style. Regardless, the engagement went better than I had initially expected.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Communications & Marketing Specialist of Hack Academy, the first Coding Bootcamp in Uruguay. HA was born to give opportunities to people with determination, discipline and ambition to succeed in the world of technology.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Commit Studio, and what were your goals?

We were looking for a company to help us develop our website.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We know Commit's level of experience firsthand. The main selection criteria were the possibility of flexible step-by-step development and qualification of the company team and projects previously made by the company.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We had a Figma design as a deliverable and technical requirements to follow. They were coding the Front-End with all our requirements and specifics in mind.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

There were two frontend developers working with us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We had designs/mockups in place and Commit was responsible for implementing the project end to end. We had weekly meetings with the Commit team with more frequent updates daily via Slack chat. The Front-End was built in Next.js (technology based on React.js), using TypeScript and Tailwind CSS.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Excellent communication and management throughout. We were using an agile development style. All the important points were discussed in weekly meetings and the small matters were resolved over Slack.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They were very professional and knowledgeable, and we had an outstanding relationship with them. They're not the type of developers who implement what we tell them. They know what will fail and what will work, so they make recommendations and come up with their own ideas in order to find the best answer together.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Commit has been able to meet all our expectations.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

CEO at ABYA Corp. ABYA Corp specializes in developing cloud gaming technologies that maximize efficiency behind the scenes yet deliver a seamless, quality experience for gamers. ABYA's cloud gaming platform makes it easy for the casual gamer to pick from a catalogue of leading titles and play on any device.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Commit Studio, and what were your goals?

We had to rapidly develop a commercial landing site for one of our products and get it validated with several partners. The landing had to be attractive to a hardcore audience and that meant high use of multimedia items. The challenge was to develop all of this while still maintaining a quick loading and responsive page.

Secondly, we had a great solution to create a first-class cloud-gaming solution. We needed someone to update our existing Electron Desktop App to a newer technology (React) and to implement several missing components for a commercial launch.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We met part of the team from past jobs. After reaching out to them and our initial conversations to understand both their process and technical acumen, it was an easy decision to move with Commit as even at the outset they felt as a natural extension of our company.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Commit Studio created a Desktop and Web application using Electron, Node and React that currently works on every OS and every Web Browser.  We went from a client side fat app to a lightweight maintainable web app that runs everywhere.

They worked with the Frontend and backend of Abya's website, and also in the optimization of assets on our products websites. Digital asset management was implemented to facilitate asset optimization.

We had a series of meetings to understand the needs and requirements of the product.  Most of our conversations happened on video calls, and the deliverables were the scope of the product, key user understandings, key stakeholder analysis, key technology mapping.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

It is a work in progress contract that includes a full stack developer working with our team and the intervention of the technical lead in more complex tasks.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The key result is we were able to present consumer facing products in time and with great performance.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

The team is easy to work with and provided frequent updates. The team has adapted very well to our work methodology, we meet daily on video calls and are always available for follow ups and questions.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The people who work at the company are very impressive. This is not a regular agency that will execute what you say to them, they will take ownership and treat your product like its their product. The most unique thing about the company is that they genuinely care.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

What I valued the most was the close relationship with them and how they were always ready to go above and beyond in order to help us succeed.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Lead Customer Success Engineer at Piio. We are automating web performance & delivery, allowing websites to efficiently deliver fast and scalable experiences to their users, combining front-end technology, with networking and infrastructure solutions in one service. Piio can reduce 20x the data transfer to end users and increase page speed by 3x.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Commit Studio, and what were your goals?

We needed an experienced and reliable agency to built an interactive multimedia gallery made in vanilla JavaScript with shells that enabled its use in frameworks like React or Vue.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We searched for many vendors and after interviewing them, it was clear Commit studio had the necessary skills and competence to deliver our project.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We started presenting them our needs. From there, they elaborated a work plan and through weekly meetings, they presented us the progress they had achieved on the product development and together we outlined all the following features to be developed. They committed themselves and carried out the product development in a very satisfactory manner.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Commit team consisted of a developer and a project manager, and on our side we had our lead customer engineer involved.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We had to create this product gallery from scratch. The team attentively listens to all ideas and tries to implement all of them to the project. Even if these ideas are different from the start-point agreement. Commit studio always tries to delve deeply into my business needs and suggests ways to achieve them.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We have a great Project Manager. She is responsible for communication and carrying out tasks smoothly and timely. The project has weekly updates, sprints after each stage. Commit team were always planning the next steps. We use popular communication tools: Slack and Github.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Clear communication of opportunities and issues. Their greatest strength has been their attitude when faced with challenges — they always move forward. And they are as concerned about quality as we are. As a result, we had significant delivery results.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I don't think so. They are technically well-versed and always ready to manage team composition according to the client’s needs. They are committed to doing an outstanding job.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a product manager at Uncommon Goods, and I lead our site speed efforts.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Commit Studio, and what were your goals?

I hired commit to help us improve our Core Web Vitals (site speed metrics)

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We started working with Commit as they came highly recommended by a trusted friend.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Commit audited our home page, category pages, product pages, and created an thorough document with many optimization ideas. We worked on some of the ideas ourselves, and gave them ownership over some of the updates as well. They were very flexible and willing to let us cover the code we wanted to and happy to dive in on any updates we felt comfortable with them handling.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Commit always had two people working with us- the CEO and a developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We are very happy with the impact. We went from failing 3/4 web vitals to passing 3/4. We still have room to improve on CLS, but they have been actively helping us improve. Our mobile home page just now passed for the first time ever, and I expect other pages to follow once the field data averages out.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We communicate over slack. They are very responsive and easy to communicate with.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their deep knowledge of site speed tactics is impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

No.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the engineering lead for Divi.AI. We are bringing an artificial intelligence platform to market for the investment industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Commit Studio?

We hired one of their developers to help us build the User Interface

SOLUTION

How did you select this agency and what were the deciding factors?

I had done a podcast with their CEO and I was impressed with the quality of their talent

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

The project is about to go live. We brought on the front-end developer once we had scoped out the UI

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

I engaged with their CEO and asked her to share some resumes. We interviewed 2 of them and chose 1 to join the team

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project is about to go live so all-in-all it was a successful engagement

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow was very effective. One of the reasons we chose Commit Studio was their ability to work in the US time zones

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They had good talents with a commitment to help the customer.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

No, their representative was very professional