Ice House

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I run a personal software design agency providing UI/UX research, development management, and infrastructure architecture. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Ice House?

I work with several vendors and clients, and I’ve used Ice House on multiple projects in the past. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve partnered with them in building native iOS, Android, and web apps. Ice House functioned as a software development company, providing high-quality developers from different parts of the world depending on the budget of the client (i.e. myself, in this scenario). They also provide top-level management to oversee developer productivity, and they perform much of the logging work required.

I handle frontend design, and I haven’t usually used Ice House for this, although they do have the capacity. They’ve brought in designers for certain projects, who did an excellent job.

The team is full-stack, working on both frontend and backend development. Because we’re a design firm, we provided all the documentation around design and information architecture. Ice House worked with us in order to deliver our requirements and helped us refine our goals continually by asking questions throughout the process.

We have used Ice House primarily for development services, including a long-term strategy for creating resilient code. They’ve also helped us manage the deployment processes on app stores as well as private deployments for product testing. We haven’t used Ice House for marketing.

One of the apps we’ve worked on allows users to conduct real-time messaging across a mapping ecosystem. The tool serves organizations like real estate brokers, as well as emergency responders, who need messaging functionalities around location-based pins. Slack built on top of Google Maps would be the best way to describe it.

How did you come to work with Ice House?

I was referred to Ice House by a developer I’d worked with in the past. We were looking for a broader, full-bodied development team and wanted to move faster without having to source our own development talent. We chose Ice House as a vendor.

How much have you invested with Ice House?

The cost of their work has been in the range of $300,000–$600,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Ice House in August 2015. The initial app was finished in February 2016. The product was made available in a public beta phase, but it’s still in the market-fit development stage. We ended the relationship with Ice House on that project because we were trying to move towards a maintenance level of work with a smaller group. Aside from this, I continue to work with Ice House on other projects. They bring me in for design when needed. 

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

It’s hard to quantify results, and user downloads wouldn’t necessarily reflect Ice House’s work. We’ve received a lot of positive feedback on the development quality. They’ve done a good job of managing the bug count. We’ve eliminated many of the issues we found with the first release of the app.

How did Ice House perform from a project management standpoint?

Ice House is realistic in terms of delivery times, and they set expectations that conform to their abilities. In regards to the budget, things aren’t ideal. But, they have options that potentially allow startups to work with cheaper development talent to bring down costs. We used North American developers, so it was more expensive for us, but we had the added benefit of being able to work within our time zone and communicate more effectively.

We use a multiplicity of tools for tracking developers, including JIRA and Slack, depending on the type of information—JIRA for product-related items, and Slack for conversations. The project management has been good. They did a good job of organizing thoughts into a database that serves as a primary store of information.

What did you find most impressive about Ice House?

They have a no-nonsense approach to projects and are more service- than sales-oriented. I encountered a lot of agencies in the past that didn’t have this ability, but it’s something I appreciate about Ice House.

Are there any areas Ice House could improve?

They could add a resource who performs some sort of quantitative analytics around app metrics. Ice House’s team knows how to build functions for measurement, but they don’t have or haven’t applied the expertise for integrating presentable data analysis into the apps. We’ve hired another organization for this role, but it would be nice to have a full development ecosystem under the same roof. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Luxury Shoe Club, the world’s largest designer shoe club exchange. Users can pay a membership fee and rotate their shoe closets with each other at a low cost.

What challenge were you trying to address with Ice House?

We put together a business concept and built out what the flows would look like through a tool called ProtoFile. When we built a non-coded functioning app, we knew we needed to work with a top-notch agency that could handle the project management, testing, frontend design work, and functionality.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had an external backend developer for the deployment on Amazon. Ice House was great at working with them, making it one team and one project. They used an Agile approach in deciding how we would communicate across time zones. They built on Node.js in docker containers. It’s a cool design because you can leverage and minimize a set of resources with elastic scalability on the backend. On the frontend, we did iOS development. We had a senior developer and a junior developer. We also had a testing team of 1–5 people that would scale based on the functions and releases. After we’d approved the work, a project manager and a designer would work on the cycles in order to get the project done.

There are two parts to the app. People can window shop before they join and use club points instead of cash. We tried to make the user experience high-level because it’s a luxury design. When users first join, they receive shipping boxes. There’s a full integration of one-touch clicking where you pick the box, and then it is picked up at your house using next-day shipping. The shipping includes two-day delivery and tracking. Members can also message each other. We created a Facebook-like feature called Shoe Circle. There, members can post comments and share pictures about everything they love about shoes. We’re also adding a partnership feature with shoe repair and restoration services so that members can get shoes repaired and polished.

How did you come to work with Ice House?

I knew one of the co-founders at Ice House. We talked to a lot of different design shops who were quoting prices that were more expensive than Ice House. For a firm of their size, their rates and process were great. They’ve had experience building apps for movies, so we were able to get top-notch resources. I felt comfortable with Ice House, but you do have to be careful when outsourcing development. Just because you’re getting something cheaper doesn’t mean it will be done the way you want it. I felt like my experience with Ice House was really strong.

How much have you invested with Ice House?

The whole project to date has cost between $250,000 and $300,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them May 2015, and the work is ongoing.

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

We’ve done a soft launch that came out in January. We use a tool called AppSee that lets us see all the user behavior within the app. It lets us track by video what people are doing in the app, which has been very useful. People don’t want to read how it works, so we’ve set it up that they have to read how it works before they pay. This helps them understand the app. We also added a video within the app to make it easy for people. We spent a lot of time on the simplicity of user design and flow. People say it’s simple to use.

How did Ice House perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Slack and JIRA to manage the project and communicate with each other. Their approach to project management, tracking and reporting, and billing worked really well. We used Trello for project management to keep track of tasks, and we tried Asana as well. There was a time difference of 11 hours, but it worked great for me because I have a day job as well.

I felt like that onshore/offshore model for me really was incredibly helpful. They had some really talented people who understood code and made sure we were doing the right thing. I found them very amenable. Their English capability is really strong, but there are translation issues. The hardest thing about these projects is the loss in translation about why we’re doing something and how that translates into technology.

What did you find most impressive about Ice House?

When you’re a startup trying to do this, there’s a lot of noise and information out there about the providers. I found that Ice House brings a large company infrastructure, with a speed, agility, and cost function that was really useful. I found their turnaround to be very good, and their rates were very reasonable. Their thoughtfulness and approach were refreshing for a large team. I had a great team that helped. I was fortunate to come across them.

Are there any areas Ice House could improve?

They should continue to come up with additional ways to keep the speed of the project going as a remote team. The onshore project leader should be someone who understands where you’re coming from culturally.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with Ice House?

The client needs to be willing to be involved in the project and not just hand it over and expect it to be done right.