Railwaymen

What was the scope of their involvement?

Everything is built in Ruby on Rails, but we also use Java, HTML, and React Native. We used a layered, tiered approach to organize video tags and add subcategories to our playlists. We improved the look and feel of our homepage and boosted our SEO. We wanted an easier onboarding process for our users and a better backend. We also wanted features like marking a video as viewed. We wanted to organize our media into a clear curriculum.

We already had our key features sketched out in InDesign, so we pushed through modifications and templates in both InDesign and through Skype screensharing. They made changes and sent regular progress reports.

What is the team composition?

I work with a team of three, including a backend developer, frontend developer, and a project manager. They’re talented and fixed all the bugs right away. We emailed each week and they completed tests quickly. They had a good synergy and were always very accommodating.

How did you come to work with Railwaymen?

We needs someone with a bigger team that could finish the project quickly. We had worked with developers around our area but needed more flexibility with the team.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2018. They worked on development for two or three weeks before we launched phase 2. They’ll be working on additional features for that. We’re in constant communication and get reports from them.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our webpage is an ordinary landing page for our business, containing the information about what we do, as well as our contact information and maps. Railwaymen took care of the technical side, working with the different people involved in the project. They did most of the backend development and collaborated with the designers at the frontend.

The mobile application was a digital added-value project developed for both Android and iOS and created for clients and public use. The main goal was to put in process functionality. Within the business of law, there are different standard templates, contracts, or agreements used for trades like carpentry, as well as other typical construction projects. We wanted to make those available in digital format, so they developed the technology of producing a document onsite when working on projects, as well as making it easy to go through the different questions to be answered. We put in the important parts of ordinary paper-based documents, which can then be sent to predefined or added-in email addresses.

How did you come to work with Railwaymen?

We met them in Oslo at an event. I got the impression they were skilled and had capable IT engineers. When we had the idea regarding the app and webpage, we contacted them to try them out, which has worked out well for us.

How much have you invested in them?

We've spent between $10,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in 2013, and the relationship is ongoing.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our original site was built in one language which was not Railwaymen's specialty, but they said they could help us. The technical side of our site is not complicated, but how the site works is. I used the old site as a way of gauging whether or not they could understand what we were building; what we wanted to design, how it needed to work, how the pieces needed to fit together, and the kind of customer experience we wanted our subscriber base to have. They fixed it and then I hired them to build me the second site.

I asked them to develop every single aspect of our website. Our site is built from the ground-up, so it’s a native site using Ruby on Rails. We worked through the UI/UX [user interface/user experience], which has been refined. Then they built the architecture. They selected our vendors. Amazon and AWS [Amazon Web Services] is our server. We use Telestream and they did all the coding. They didn't do the design, however. I had another woman do our design who was pretty amazing. They worked seamlessly with her, and vice versa. Despite geographical distance, it was a great collaboration.

We did split the testing because it made sense to not have them be solely responsible for the testing. You need independent, objective third party people to push the testing, to make sure all the aspects of the site work. I think that’s good practice. They were fine with it, and so we did that. Any adjustments that needed to be made, they made.

The building of the site took much longer than they had originally intended and thought. That did not deter them at all. I wanted it to be a responsive site because we don’t have a mobile platform. There were things on the responsive side that they recommended that we took advantage of. They also did our backend SEO.

What is the team dynamic? 

The project grew and involved different people depending on what’s going on. They have a marketing person, a UI/UX person, and then they have a couple of people who are more junior who do little projects. I don’t talk to them at all.

How did you come to work with Railwaymen?

I wanted the site to be in Rails. Marcin [co-founder and CIO, Railwaymen] had been doing some consulting work in San Francisco and came to Austin for a festival where we met. He told me who he was and who he worked for. I asked him what technology they use, and he told me they were a Rails firm but could do PHP too. I got his number and told him I wanted to set up a call.  

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $100,000 over the course of our relationship.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in 2012 and the relationship is ongoing.

What was the scope of their involvement?

When we started working with Railwaymen on the search tool, they didn’t only listen to the instructions we gave them, but also read a lot of what we’d already done, saw who we were and who our audience was, and helped make a tool which would both appeal to them, as well as to a broader audience.

We knew how to talk about what we wanted from the perspective of a future user, but not in terms of how the site would operate and how we could deliver it. One of the many things I liked about Railwaymen was that they were able to articulate options for what we wanted to deliver and coach us on what they thought the best option was for running the site and what experience the user should have.

What is the team dynamic? 

Łukasz Młynek, their CEO, has remained my main point of contact over the years. From early on, we began to think about them as a third partner, and this deepened over time.

How did you come to work with Railwaymen?

When prototyping, we initially worked with someone else, and we left that experience feeling that we wouldn’t be able to articulate the concept in a way which would help someone make what we envisioned. In the process, we found a graphic design firm in New York, called OrangeYouGlad. We liked some of their work, and the mix of things they’d done. 

We went through the initial design phase, and it turned out that they had worked on some projects with the personnel of Railwaymen, doing everything from brochure sites to banking systems. They introduced us to Railwaymen, and we liked their approach. Our previous experience with an outside programmer was more of a for-hire relationship, but our initial impression of Railwaymen was that they were all-in, like partners.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost of the work with Railwaymen, since 2009, has been between $50,000 and $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with personnel who are now a part of Railwaymen in 2007, but who were with a different company then. We decided to switch to Railwaymen when they started in 2009 because we liked working with them. They were the people who made the experience of working with the other company a good one, and they were the ones who understood the real nuts and bolts of how the site worked. They helped us envision and build it.

We continue to work together on an ad-hoc basis. We had a performance issue recently, and Railwaymen dipped in and fixed it. I’ve also been talking with them over the past one or two years about a possible next life for Cookthink.