Elite Crew

Please describe your company and your position there.

Sonder Design is a collective committed to using design to foster meaningful change. Together, we’re working towards a more equitable future.

We work in union with NGOs, local health practitioners, IT systems engineers, and humanitarian organisations, combining the best of our expertise to design and implement the most relevant solutions.

For what projects/services did your company hire Elite Crew, and what were your goals?

Having spent a full year researching and prototyping a concept for a ratings platform the Humanitarian sector, we came to Elite Crew with a proposal to build out an MVP of the platform we had been designing and testing.

How did you select Elite Crew and what were the deciding factors?

Marek and his team at Elite Crew were involved in scoping the project from the beginning. They played a key role demonstrating to the project donor the data protection protocols we would be incorporating into building the platform, and how potentially sensitive information would be handled.

I have seen the quality of work Elite Crew have produced in the past. This combined with their flexibility, attention to design detail, and competitive rates, meant that they were immediately chosen as the preferred partner for this project.

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

The project last approximately 12 weeks in total. Elite Crew worked in parallel with the Sonder Design team. Once the wireframes were produced, Elite Crew began working in week-long sprints to get much of the backend functionality in place, while the design team tested the designs, and created more hi-fidelity mock-ups.

With the designs tested and iterated, Elite Crew spent the remaining time on the project building out thee flows necessary for the MVP. A particular requirement for this project was that the website should load quickly for users with internet connectivity of 2G or less in Zambia and The Philippines.

Elite Crew were extremely diligent in ensuring this was delivered upon.

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

Over the course of the project we worked with a project manager, 2 full-stack developers, a DevOps Engineer and a QA Engineer. In each case, I found the team to be friendly, professional and diligent.

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

In just 12 weeks we built a fully functional and scalable MVP of the platform. It is currently being piloted in The Philippines and Zambia where users with very limited access to data can access the website and leave a review outlining their experience with humanitarian organisations in their area.

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

For this project, we had a Slack channel allowing the Design and Development team to communicate asynchronously. We also had a weekly check-in call to discuss any blockers and update on progress.

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

The quality of the work Elite Crew produce is unrivalled. They are extremely flexible and dependable. They're also very friendly, and pleasant to work with.

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

No, I am already looking forward to working together with Elite Crew again.