hedgehog lab

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the COO of Yoono, an automated intelligence service.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Netsells Group?

We hired them to develop our web platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We went through an extensive discovery phase, during which we briefed Netsells Group about the requirements of our project. From there, they proceeded with the development process, handling most of the technical work that we needed to do in order to make our website scalable and stable. They used .NET for development.

We’ve already given them a task that focuses on UI/UX design, which is the next stage of the project. We’re planning to have them do maintenance work after we finish this part.

What is the team composition?

We work with their developers and a project manager.

How did you come to work with Netsells Group?

We found out about them through a recommendation.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we've spent about £50,000 (approximately $60,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Netsells Group around November 2022, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We haven’t gone live with the website yet, so there are no metrics to share at this point. From a qualitative standpoint, Netsells Group is great to work with — they’re open-minded and adaptive, and they have a great leader in Rob (Commercial Director). He’s very insightful and knowledgeable, which gives us a sense of security around what we’re doing.

How did Netsells Group perform from a project management standpoint?

We manage tasks using Trello. For communication, we interact through Zoom, email, phone calls, email, and Slack. For managing tasks, we use Trello.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re most impressed with Rob’s creativity.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything that Netsells Group could improve on.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO for an InsurTech business. We provide telematics technology to predominantly insurance companies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with hedgehog lab?

We’re building a leading-edge technology to enable telematics, driving, and heavy monitoring using a mobile app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We work with hedgehog lab on a couple of projects; fundamentally, they work on mobile development for Android and iOS. We initially provided documentation for the project, and they’ve helped us build and architect a software development kit that sits in the middle of our mobile technology, providing the telematics capabilities that we communicate with our services. The team has used JavaScript, Kotlin, Swift, and Objective-C.

The app captures the movements of the mobile device; it uses sensors or GPS motion to effectively monitor the acceleration, braking, cornering, location, and speed data of the driver. It detects the starting point of the driving journey and collects the telemetry data to send it to our backend system, where we can analyze it and come up with a score and risk profile for the user to understand the driver’s risk profile accurately.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with 4–6 team members. They all have mobile development or architecture backgrounds, so they’re senior software engineers, software architects, or other technical roles. Additionally, we deal directly with the leadership and commercial people.

How did you come to work with hedgehog lab?

I knew Sarat (CEO & Co-Founder), and their reputation was world-renowned. They were known as good employers and skilled engineers, and I had a good relationship with their leadership.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve probably invested around £250,000 (approximately $298,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in May 2021, and our collaboration is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our working relationship is great, so we continue to work with hedgehog lab in several capabilities. Moreover, their work is high-standard, and the end result is always what we’re looking for. We also have a lot of customer feedback, so we’re able to measure the effectiveness of their work.

How did hedgehog lab perform from a project management standpoint?

We work together with an agile framework. They’ve generally met the timelines, so it’s been a positive experience. Communication is also excellent; we keep constant contact, and they keep everybody in the loop. Additionally, we use Jira to manage and monitor the workloads.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They stand out for their ability to move quickly, flexibility, high standard for technology, and strategic approach. hedgehog lab invests time and effort into our products and creates greater opportunities for us to explore together; we wouldn’t get that from a traditional software house.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing specific comes to mind.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Work with them as closely as possible and consider any opportunities for engagement. They can create new opportunities and deliver on specific and immediate objectives.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of engineering at a retail bank.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with the hedgehog lab?

We needed help with mobile app development and staff augmentation. We had an old mobile application and needed them to help us build a service improvement roadmap over the next two years.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

First, we provided hedgehog lab with the profiles of the types of resources we needed, including the seniority levels and software skills. They then sat down with our product team to discuss the project brief, and what success looked like for this project. We had them develop a Native application for iOS and Android with a backend in Kotlin and Java.

Then, their team worked with us to develop an improvement roadmap for our services. The roadmap included the technologies that could be used for future development, the scope of work, and a benefits case analysis. 

The final strategic roadmap has been handed over to us, along with the mobile application development work, but we’re still utilizing hedgehog lab’s expertise. Their team is embedded in our workflow.  

What is the team composition?

I didn’t interact with the software engineers from hedgehog lab; I primarily worked with Catherine (Head of Client Engagement), Ben (Head of Product), and Sarat (CEO & Co-Founder). 

How did you come to work with hedgehog lab?

We hired hedgehog lab for several reasons. One was that they were mobile development specialists; they had the resources to augment our team and a good portfolio. We needed a flex partner that could meet our requirements. 

How much have you invested with them?

We invested £1 million (approximately $1.2 million USD). 

What is the status of this engagement?

This project with ​​hedgehog lab was from March 2021–March 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

There are several ways to measure hedgehog lab’s successes. First, there is resource augmentation — we had to let two of their consultants go because they weren’t a good fit. However, hedgehog lab was good at taking those changes in stride. I’d say we had a great relationship with them when it came to the resources they provided to augment our team. 

When it comes to the service improvement strategy, we have several KPIs. Most importantly, they could double our delivery speed, which meant getting more engineers on our project. 

How did hedgehog lab perform from a project management standpoint?

I got weekly updates from my three main points of contact. Their team put together the scope to follow; they pushed us to stick to our deadlines within our contracted engagement. We had an issue 1–2 weeks before the launch, but that was because we couldn’t get everyone set up from our team. They didn’t want to draw out the partnership artificially. 

We primarily communicated through Microsoft Team and Google Meet; we also had face-to-face meetings. Occasionally, they’d call or email me. hedgehog lab was very communicative — they communicated more than other vendors we’ve worked with, which sometimes was a little uncomfortable. However, I think they were coming from a good place and just wanted the engagement to be a success. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I have nothing but good things to say about hedgehog lab. They were a good organization with great principles and values. For the most part, they found good resources. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Like most organizations, there can always be issues with teammates. They crossed the line once to ensure teammates were happy, which made me uncomfortable. They pushed some responsibilities into my court that weren’t necessarily my problem. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You need to spend a lot of time with hedgehog lab upfront because their team is more boutique than other organizations. I’d recommend them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of Musto Management and Consulting.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with hedgehog lab?

We were looking to create an application and platform for construction safety management. There are a lot of archaic paper-based processes in the construction sector, and we needed to come up with a technology that would be flexible enough to apply to other subsections of the industry but is also easy to use for people who are not as computer savvy.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired hedgehog lab to develop a cross-platform construction safety management app. It's essentially three applications in one: there's an iOS component, an Android component, and a web component. They are managing the hosting for us, and we're in the process of working on ongoing maintenance.

hedgehog lab was involved in the scoping of the project, which we called the foundation scope. The original foundation was them working with us to scope out the project. They worked with us to figure out, design, and eventually build the user personas, wireframes, and UI elements for the app.

Additionally, hedgehog lab did branding work for us. They helped us with the app’s naming process, designed the app’s logo and color schemes, and created a brand guide. They even helped us register the name and make sure that the name was unique enough.

What is the team composition?

We’ve primarily worked with five people from hedgehog lab, including Patrick (Managing Director), two architecture product folks, and a project manager for each element architecture and for the design itself. We’ve also worked with three full-stack engineers, a designer, and a bunch of QA folks that came in in phases as required as different sprints were completed.

How did you come to work with hedgehog lab?

We vetted 4-5 businesses through Clutch and Google, and we ultimately went with hedgehog lab.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested $650,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our user adoption has been great — about 84% of the users that we’ve brought onto the system are doing their daily work within the app without issue. hedgehog lab also completed the project under budget and two weeks prior to the original timeline they provided despite a lot of scope changes and the things we requested along the way.

How did hedgehog lab perform from a project management standpoint?

hedgehog lab has performed well in terms of project management. We use Monday.com for project management, and we typically communicate through Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with hedgehog lab’s high technological capabilities. They are able to synthesize the business need before they start talking about technology. We found that in other design and development situations, people jump right into the tech and how they can achieve this or that without getting to the business problem first. 

hedgehog lab did a fantastic job of understanding our business perspective and bringing the needed technologies to the table to help us achieve what we needed today and what we want to achieve in the future.

They're also very easy to work with. They're not overly technical, and all of our conversations have been pleasant and collaborative.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would be great if we could have milestone check-ins along the way.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would suggest starting with the foundation scope and making sure that you do what they propose. We didn't augment the team that they put into the proposal — we kept the team, and each piece of that was mission-critical as we went forward. It’s also a good idea to make sure that they're involved as early as possible in the business scoping and foundation elements of your project.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the former interim CTO of Oxehealth, a MedTech business that delivers hardware and software products. Our product is a web-based app that enables healthcare providers to have computer vision-based patient monitoring in single-occupancy rooms. We have teams that install, run, and maintain hardware, and that operational service is in support of our product.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with hedgehog lab?

We were running a web app delivery project and had some scoping around an app that needed to be built. We needed to move away from legacy tooling and make in-house tools to better support our growth and teams as we scaled to existing geographies and international markets. We were struggling with resourcing for some new projects and decided to hire hedgehog lab to reduce the impact on our internal teams.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

hedgehog lab helped us with internal tooling. First, we identified some requirements and success metrics for the project, and we provided them with the wireframes. They helped build an internal customer requirements portal that helps capture complex customer needs through sales, contracting, and onboarding. 

The portal’s functionality is to help us through our contract live process, which involves engaging with the customer and getting them set up with our product and services. Then, the portal helps manage that engagement on an ongoing basis through appropriate change management processes and protocols. 

Our staff is the target audience: the operational teams who run our product at the service level. The hedgehog lab team focused on a few objectives, primarily improving the data quality of our onboarding process and how we capture customer requirements. We also requested that the tool reduce our operational model's risk, ensuring that requirements are up to date and improving our contract live process insights.

What is the team composition?

We worked with two developers, and Sarat (CEO & Co-Founder) provided some high-level oversight. 

How did you come to work with hedgehog lab?

Sarat and I are in similar trusted CTO networks, and I reached out to him for help. We knew that hedgehog lab had provided similar pop-up teams for other businesses I have spoken with in the past, so we decided to go with them.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent about £75,000 (approximately $94,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from January–April 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality of hedgehog lab’s work was high, and the maintenance has had a relatively low overhead. They were very responsive to changes and requirements throughout the project. The feedback from the operational teams has also been strong, and they’re very excited to use the tool. Since we’re still trialing and rolling out the product internally, we don’t have any hard metrics yet. However, the portal will allow us to deliver our products faster and realize revenue sooner than before. 

How did hedgehog lab perform from a project management standpoint?

They were great at meeting deadlines; they communicated expectations clearly around timeframes and effectively organized to complete tasks on time. The team hit all the milestones along the way, which is rare in teams solely staffed by engineers without project management support. We primarily communicated over Slack, and we used GitLab for issue tracking and task management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve had mixed experiences with other agencies in their ability to deliver quality, and hedgehog lab felt like a safe pair of hands with solid talent. Sarat made a point of checking in regularly to make sure that the project was successful rather than leaving it all to the very end when there’s a higher risk of everything going off the rails.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In hindsight, I would have liked to have a bit more automated test coverage of the work they delivered for us. However, that was far from a deal-breaker, and I didn’t stress it as a hard requirement going into the project. Overall, there wasn't anything I had significant concerns about.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend having a clear idea of the project's scope and the expected deliverables, which is good for any project you outsource. Although hedgehog lab was very communicative, I had to take the initiative to ensure we had appropriate sprint planning and prioritization since I worked with the engineers rather than project managers.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the director of Booost Education, which makes apps for students with learning disabilities in higher education. I also head up our design and development capabilities.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Netsells Group?

We hired Netsells Group to work on the first product we wanted to take to market. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Netsells Group developed our mobile application and corresponding web app in Flutter with a PHP Laravel backend and various APIs. We had several scoping calls with their team so they could better understand our product. All of the design work was done by my team, but Netsells Group did write our user stories and requirements. Once the back- and frontend development was complete, they ran QC testing and deployed the product to app stores. After the app launched, Netsells Group began maintaining and updating the app, adding features and improvements.  

The app is primarily for students with learning disabilities in higher education, including students with everything from mental health issues to ADHD. Our goal with the app is to help those students organize their tasks and get support to help accomplish activities throughout their education.  

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with Netsells Group’s account manager, project manager, scrum master, and a few of their developers. 

How did you come to work with Netsells Group?

We originally commissioned another agency to build our product but had a bad experience with them. After doing a Google search and finding Netsells Group on Clutch.co, we hired Netsells Group to take over development. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested £80,000 (approximately $105,000 USD) with Netsells Group. The initial project was £50,000 (approximately $66,000 USD), but we made additional payments to cover smaller projects and maintenance fees.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership with Netsells Group began in September 2021, and it’s ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Netsells Group turned around our project quickly despite a three-month delay from our previous partners — the app launched in October 2021. We’ve exceeded our projected sales metrics because of Netsells Group’s excellent work. 

We’re planning to launch new products over the next 12–18 months, and Netsells Group’s development approach will inform how we design our product. We plan to focus more on user stories to ensure our design process is as robust as Netsells Group’s development process.

How did Netsells Group perform from a project management standpoint?

Netsells Group works in development sprints and always meets our deliverable requirements. Their team uses Jira to manage the development and lifecycles, and our codebase is in a GitHub repository. We also use Trello to manage user stories, and that’s where I convey our support issues. We had weekly Google Meet calls at the beginning of the project, but now I’m in regular contact with the project manager and development team through a shared Slack channel. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Netsells Group has an extremely robust development process, so I know that by the time I receive the final deliverable, it’s been thoroughly tested and checked. Each deliverable from Netsells Group meets their high standards. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I have nothing for Netsells Group to improve. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d advise future customers to utilize Netsells Group’s technical expertise and listen to their recommendations. It’s better to go to them with a problem for them to work out than a solution. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of global marketing for connectivity at Edwards Lifesciences, a life sciences company. We have multiple divisions, and we do heart valve replacements and critical care patient monitoring.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with hedgehog lab?

We wanted to create an app that can help us educate clinicians on specific clinical protocols. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The hedgehog lab team created a custom native web app that could also run on mobile devices. Their resources had plenty of back-and-forth interaction with clinicians to understand the value of what we were trying to do. They designed the app’s front- and backend architecture. From there, our teams underwent multiple rounds of integration testing to ensure all the features we needed were there. 

Speaking of features, the app was intended to address various challenges. For one, it had to distill clinical study data — which weren’t easily accessible for clinicians — into easily digestible tiles. It also had an interactive protocol guide that walked clinicians through the clinical experience depending on their patient’s status. We also wanted a decision tree feature that could help clinicians give better patient care. They could also use it as an educational tool throughout their service lines. With those things in mind, hedgehog lab had to make an easy-to-use and educational web app. It had to be available on a phone, laptop, or tablet — wherever and whenever the clinic would need it. 

At present, we’re wrapping up the work; we’re in the final stages of finishing everything. However, hedgehog lab continues to provide support services for us; the support will continue for at least another year. 

What is the team composition?

We work with Patrick (Managing Director for the Americas) and two UI/UX designers. Pavel (Senior Systems Architect) serves as the backend developer and database architect. One of my project managers and their intern also help manage the project. They’re the liaison between us and the hedgehog team. 

How did you come to work with hedgehog lab?

I’d heard of hedgehog lab before but didn’t talk to them at that time. When this project came about, I did a Google search and they were one of the firms that came out. I found their information and contacted them. We reviewed a few outside firms, too. However, we were impressed by the hedgehog team’s knowledge and openness right off the bat. They seemed to be a good fit for the project, so we engaged with them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $300,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our relationship started in February 2021, and the engagement is ongoing. 

For clarity, our vetting process started in December 2020, and we decided to go for hedgehog lab in January 2021. The development process then kicked off in February 2021. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We don’t have any statistics yet since we haven’t officially launched the product into the real world. That said, we’ve showcased it at one of our conferences and talked to a number of clinicians about it. We’ve shown it to them, and it’s been positively received. We’ve heard plenty of great feedback around how the app helps apply protocols and educate people about them. In fact, one of our bigger customers — a large hospital network — is interested in using the web app for education. 

That’s the preliminary feedback we’ve received, and we haven’t even done a full-force marketing campaign. As a result, we’re truly excited about what the app is going to bring to the market. 

How did hedgehog lab perform from a project management standpoint?

The hedgehog lab team is highly organized. We’ve had weekly calls with them, and we have back-and-forth communications through Slack. They use Monday as their project management tool for our scrum processes. 

Overall, everything has gone smoothly. If we have any feedback during our calls, they clarify everything and create action items to address the feedback in the next call. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The hedgehog lab resources immerse themselves in understanding our use cases and user preferences value creators before starting the development process. The fact that they want to understand the business first before jumping into the project is extremely helpful; the team has become knowledgeable about what we do and what our clinicians need, making the project move more quickly. 

On top of that, they’re highly responsive to change. Our team hasn’t been fully sure what we wanted to develop when we started. As a result, we’ve had many changes to the scope. Luckily, hedgehog lab is highly flexible and amenable to change; they respond quickly, which is highly impressive. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’d like to use hedgehog lab for our class-device medical development projects, which need to go under the FDA umbrella. To do that, the team also needs to be ISO-certified. It’s a gating factor for us to use them moving forward, and we want to make sure they comply with FDA and ISO standards. For clarity, the web app isn’t classified as a medical device, so we’ve been able to use their services on this project. 

That being said, they’re already working on getting those certifications, and it’s the direction they want to take from a business standpoint. If they can get the necessary approvals, we’d love to continue to use them for some of our future projects. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Bring in hedgehog lab early and immerse them into the project. That way, you’ll help them understand your market and goals. They’re eager to do that.

Moreover, don’t shortchange yourself by thinking you’re only going to use them as a technical service provider. They can do that, but you’ll benefit more from them if you treat the team as a partner on value creation and customer research.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the principal analyst of a security nonprofit and our organization has around 450 members. We produce information security materials for companies to use, such as risk assessment methodologies, standards of good practices, and benchmarking tools.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with hedgehog lab?

We were looking for a vendor that could help us migrate our existing toolset into a series of web apps.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

hedgehog lab built a web app for us and a full software solution that initially included gathering requirements and elicitation. They provided us with design, development, and UI/UX research, and approached the project from a psychological perspective. This was something we didn’t have internally, and they came up with a solution that was going to work for us.

We currently have a support contract with them where they’ll continue to make changes with the app, and build three more — they will be our primary vendor moving forward.

What is the team composition?

We’re currently working with Ben (Interim Head of Product) as our main point of contact, three technical specialists, a dedicated lead designer, and several members of their support team. 

How did you come to work with hedgehog lab?

We did a lot of our initial research through Clutch to make our short list of candidates. We liked the idea of working with a vendor in the UK so we could see them, and that was one of the reasons why we hired hedgehog lab.

They’ve had big customers and were a bit more expensive than our previous vendor at first, but we’ve had an easier experience working with them, so the money is well spent now.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve roughly spent £150,000 (approximately $200,900 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership started in May 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We haven’t released the app yet so I can’t really provide a figure at the moment. However, in terms of the budget, they were very spot on with the figure they gave. Some functionalities fell by the wayside, but they were always upfront when it comes to issues, and that’s something that’s really important to us. hedgehog lab is transparent and they allow us enough time to make good decisions based on all the knowledge they provide.

The app is good overall and functions as expected, so we have no concerns. We just recently finished a penetration test and there have been a couple of minor issues, but nothing really major.
 
How did hedgehog lab perform from a project management standpoint?

We haven’t had any concerns with their deadlines and they’ve hit all the major milestones that we set perfectly. They manage their projects through Basecamp, and we typically communicate over the phone.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed by the fact that they consistently hit their deadlines, treat the project seriously, and are always upfront and transparent.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t really think of anything because I don’t remember being disgruntled at any point in the relationship.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The hedgehog lab team is very upfront and if you’re the same towards them, then they’ll come up with the best solutions for you as an organization. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of engineering at Neurable, a brain-computer interface research company. We’re currently building headphones for the consumer market. Our focus is on understanding and deciphering human brain activities and providing feedback to users.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with hedgehog lab?

My internal team built algorithms to decipher EG signals and make sense out of them, but those algorithms don’t add any value on their own. We brought on hedgehog lab because we needed an app development partner to build applications that can demonstrate the capabilities of our algorithm.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The first project they worked on was the app development. It wasn’t easy because everything they worked on was completely new. On top of that, Brain-Computer interfaces (BCI) and neurotech is challenging.

They had to integrate the front- and backend in a simple and low-cost infrastructure, so they built a custom web app on React.js from scratch.  

First, they sat with us to understand the requirement. We had very few data points that we could share with them and didn’t have a product owner or a UX designer. They took over those responsibilities. We had several meetings so they could understand what our goal was and what we wanted to build.

Then they slowly started building the UI framework and ran through a few iterations before building a demo app. In this process, they also handled QA, staging, and the production environment. They set up the cloud infrastructure to support the demo.

Since they delivered the first iteration, they’ve continued to improve the platform by adding more functionality. Currently, we’re in the maintenance phase.

I’m currently working with them on the next phase of the project in which they will build a mobile app for Android and iOS. In this project, they’re working closely with the team again. So far, they’ve pulled together the UI framework in Figma.

Once that phase is done, they’ll work on the backend architecture. This is very complex because none of the architecture that’s available in the market can be reused. They’re building a totally unique platform given our use case and the amount of data that’s going to go back and forth between device and the cloud.

What is the team composition?

I have four weekly touchpoints which are the managing director, an architect, a UX lead, and an engineering project manager.

How did you come to work with hedgehog lab?

I reached out to a few connections and did a Google search for the top 10 partners in Boston. I shortlisted three companies including hedgehog lab. I ran them through a few interviews to see how they interact with small companies like us. hedgehog lab fared well in all the challenges that I threw at them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $200,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2021 and our partnership is ongoing.  

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They’ve delivered a fantastic demo app in a very short time frame. At the same time, they never sacrificed quality. They owned the project. As a result, I’ve never had a project run so smoothly. Throughout the engagement, I’ve never been concerned about the quality or support that they’ve provided. This is — by far — the best partnership I’ve had with another vendor.  

How did hedgehog lab perform from a project management standpoint?

I just gave them a PowerPoint of what I really needed and they broke it down into user stories. Once that was complete, they input the information onto monday.com so we know how they are executing.

The team has run weekly sprints. They’ve stayed on top of everything, and as a result, they delivered the first iteration in just six weeks — it was amazing.

They ask questions and challenge us to remain on top of things as well. The only touchpoint I have is a weekly 1-hour call. I don’t have to get on any other calls or respond to any emails from them. In addition to monday.com, we use Zoom and Slack to stay in touch.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The overall experience has been impressive. I don’t have to worry about anything. They take care of communication, delivery, and support. Every time I need new changes, I just ask them for it and they quickly put together a cost estimate.

They felt like an extension of our team. It didn’t feel like I was working with a vendor.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They handled everything well. We had the right level of communication and escalation. Everything felt right.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear and precise about the requirement and scope. Understand what you need. That helps them to stay focused on what is necessary and just get things done. If you don’t have any guidance, things can go back and forth and take longer.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Head of Client Service at a company specialising in Digital Product Development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Netsells Group, and what were your goals?

We partnered with Netsells to work together on a bespoke fitness mobile app that allows users to track their fitness progress and set training goals. Together we worked on defining, validating and building the MVP to get the app to market as soon as possible.

SOLUTION

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

We initially first came across Netsells on Clutch during our research stage of the right company to work with. We wanted to make sure that we were working with a market leader who is highly skilled and trusted and saw the reviews on here. We spoke to their Lead Consultant who impressed us with the team’s experience and clear process for delivering MVPs. Getting the initial set of features tight, but also aligned with user expectations was really important and their understanding of this area was definitely a deciding factor.

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

The project consisted of an MVP version incorporating the basic features. The objective was to start with a small, limited-scope MVP version and then scale it up into a full-featured app. This started out with a pre-discovery workshop to align the teams on overall app goals. The next project step was a Problem Sprint which focused on user research and understanding the need behind the app and what user requirements, followed by a Solution sprint which focused on defining the scope of work and core features that would sit within the MVP.

Their UI/UX team provided wireframes and concept designs for review and validation. The actual build of the MVP was delivered through a “Implementation Sprints” which also incorporated a UAT process to catch any bugs before launch. Work is on-going post MVP to further build and refine the app’s feature set with a product roadmap that Netsells have assisted with. The app was built cross-platform in Flutter to get the solution to market quickly on iOS and Android.

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

We worked with Netsells’s Discovery team which consisted of Product Managers and UI/UX designers. We also had a dedicated Scrum Master who oversaw every sprint. On the development team there were two senior Flutter Developers and two QA engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

So far the app is in private beta and has had excellent feedback. It's extremely well designed and intuitive, but most importantly the majority of users say they will continue monitoring their fitness activities using the app once the full version is live.

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

We collaborated closely throughout the partnership, using a dedicated Slack channel, agile SCRUM ceremonies and weekly reporting to delivery high sprint velocity and a quality product.

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

Their honesty and transparency are extremely commendable, working as true partners at every stage of the process. They were equally as invested in the project’s success.

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

There’s nothing major that stands out. As with all projects there were occasional slips on timelines but these were dealt with in an extremely professional and open manner, we never felt like they were overpromising.