Nimble

Introduce your business and what you do there.

At the time of working with Nimble, I was the CTO of a regional budget hotel chain in Asia.

What challenge were you trying to address with Nimble?

We were using them to augment our test development efforts.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Nimble provided staff augmentation for our team, assisting us with capabilities that we couldn’t or didn’t want to hire in-house. When I joined, the company was rebranding and embarking on building its own tech stack. We didn’t have a booking site, mobile apps, or engine to power those in place.

We built the booking engine, website, and backend in-house. We decided to build native mobile apps, but getting reliable developers in that area isn’t always easy, so Nimble was essentially our mobile development team.

They worked with us on building the app through different versions over the last few years. We engaged them for other development projects over the course of that time, such as a tablet application for our self-check-in kiosk and server-side integration development that we had limited time for.

What is the team composition?

Depending on the scope, there were 4–8 developers involved. There were two Android and two iOS developers involved at any given time. The team rotated every 6–12 months.

How did you come to work with Nimble?

I know their founder since we’re both entrepreneurs in Bangkok. Having an in-house team depend on external resources can be tricky, and development shops are usually flaky. I’m generally wary of outsourcing any development work at all, but looking at how Nimble’s team was structured, and their communication methods were more agile.

How much have you invested with them?

We were paying them a retainer of $25,000 a month, and the total was in the range of $1.5 million–$2 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Nimble in late 2014 or early 2015, and it was an active engagement when I left the company in late 2019.

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

If I had to choose a dev shop on this side of the world, it would be Nimble. Sometimes development shops will be good at pushing out development hours, but won’t be the right choice for product-oriented thinking and taking shared ownership in the project being built.

Unless there were a specific reason blocking me, Nimble would definitely be my choice on the next project where I need additional staffing.

The feedback was good qualitatively. It’s Nimble’s agility, ownership, thinking, and developer quality that make them stand out. They’re people who build products rather than provide nameless, faceless developers.

Looking at our release velocity, we were putting out anywhere between 4–10 app releases or updates per year, which is relatively rapid for a more traditional company. The number of defects or bugs was really low, and it was a strong process overall. It got easier as time went on because we got better at working with each other. It was a successful engagement by most quantitative and qualitative metrics.

How did Nimble perform from a project management standpoint?

The process was very transparent. They’re able to work through shared Slack channels, work with clients on planning actual development sprints, and give inputs on product decisions through developers that actually know what they’re doing.

We raised red flags when stuff was missed on either side or when things were going awry, and things were rectified in due course. Part of the success was also our team’s willingness to accept faults in a vendor, as though they were part of our team.

On the project management side, Nimble was communicative, and they put in project and time management resources when they had to. If we saw the need for course correction, even if they hadn’t highlighted anything, they were always willing to look into that and work with us.

Whenever they highlighted issues, or we did, at the end of the day, the issues were worked through, and we achieved effective results.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their developers were able to give us the talent and velocity we expected from a rock star team, but they were able to do that from outside our walls and across multiple projects.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Having more product owner perspectives is an increasing ask everywhere. I’m not sure if this is a fair criticism for Nimble. At the end of the day, they were meant to augment our development team, and they did make product ownership resources available when we needed them.

With staff augmentation, we always want stronger product vision, and my expectation would be to have the same level of product vision, regardless of whether they’re in our office or outside. I’m not sure how to achieve that, but my hope for any staff augmentation gig is going to be stronger product involvement. That’s always going to be something to focus on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They should keep the lines of communication open and treat Nimble as if they were part of the client’s team. By that, I mean keeping them in the loop on product decisions on not just what needs to be done but why it needs to be done that way.

In order to get the maximum value from a partner company like Nimble, one that takes ownership of the work, context is important. If the client is expecting them to augment an internal team, they should treat Nimble as part of their team.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO for You Are MIA.

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

Built a custom website app. Essentially a nan-influencer/business and brand market place that also run fully automated campaigns. The site uses various logic to match and rate influencers with businesses.

How did you select Nimble and what were the deciding factors?

They came highly recommended to me and after some other disappointing developers I have worked with Nimbl3 were a breath of fresh air. From conceptualising to launch I found them proactive and engaged in the project.

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

I am not a tech person but the ideas person, and Nimbl3 in effect became the CTO as well as my developer during the one year development using 2 developers and a project manager.

Project was fully scoped and prepared with detailed tasks and sprints. Project timings were delivered on time and it only over run as You Are MIA turned into a fully fledged product rather than MVP on launch. Built in Ruby on Rails.

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

2 full time developers and 1 project manager. The Nimbl3 team had a structure where other members of the senior team checked all tasks before deploying onto the test staging site.

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

A very professional, fully functional final product. I was very pleased with using Nimbl3 and would use them again for future projects. It is nice to find a team I can trust and count on to deliver a product how I envisaged.

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

Weekly PM meetings via Zoom or Skype. Open and accessible throughout

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

flat structure - all levels got involved. engaged in the project and even suggested their own ideas. having the full team under one roof - not oursourced

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

Not really

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the co-founder and CTO

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

We hired Nimble to assist us in developing our MVP.

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

Experience, quality of project management, competency

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

Ruby on Rails Custom multi-tenant e-commerce platform

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

2 developpers + UI/UX specialist

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

Nimble has been instrumental in lifting our multi-tenant e-commerce off the ground. They were easy to collaborate with, articulating well questions and technical decisions for both of us founders, delivering timely updates and at a very intense pace at a moment when our technical literacy and team were still “under construction”.

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

They also welcomed collaboration with our lead developer, which allowed a very smooth hand-over of the project in production and even better joint decisions.

Their past expertise in building e-commerce platforms, multi-tenancy, gorgeous UI/UX was essential to making the MVP stand out. Anybody willing to build a good standing web application or software solutions should definitely engage with them.

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

Competency level and easy-to-communicate with

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

Nope