Red Foundry

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

Red Foundry fulfills a critical role. They’re helping us take ownership of our whole tech stack. They’ve been flexible to working with external resources to scale development, even though this means less billable hours for them. They look out for what’s best for our business.

The work that they’ve done has allowed us to see regular incoming orders. We continue to improve the site’s experience from optimization, speed, and functionality standpoints. Having ownership over everything translates to increased revenue, and we’re at the point where we can start thinking about additional resources to continue building our business.

How did Red Foundry perform from a project management standpoint?

Red Foundry does product management via Jira, where they’ve given us access to our project’s workspace. We trust what they’re doing, but having full transparency into their progress across different sprints has been super helpful.

They make themselves available for calls and meetings with my team as well as external resources. We primarily communicate through the Slack channel that they set up. Everything flows through Ron and Kerri. Ron even comes to whiteboarding sessions with our UI/UX designer.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Red Foundry is really flexible to our needs, and they’ve been an awesome partner. They’ve taken it upon themselves to garner a good understanding of our business, industry, and customers. Even if it means less billable hours for them, they’re willing to work with us in order to create a long-term partnership. We value this a lot since many contracting companies out there use the consulting model of billable hours in a way that can be contradictory to business needs.

I’ve also been impressed by their ability to adapt to our business. For instance, my partner and I like to move very quickly, and they’ve adjusted the way their work to what we need.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could be more transparent about whether they’re resource-constrained or not. Also, their team members have different rates; we’d appreciate flexibility as to what resources we can use, since we need some more than others. For the most part, though, they’ve been good. They understand that we can’t 100% rely on them; otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to sustain ourselves.

Any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you have the financial resources to hire them since you’re paying a premium for value. Red Foundry is tech-focused, meaning they’re more conservative and risk-averse than your typical entrepreneur. If you want to move faster, you’ll have to manage to find a happy medium between risk aversion and delivery speed.

Also, communication should come from one direction; if you have multiple people from your organization contacting them, communication will become scattered and fragmented, which will slow the whole process down.

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

Red Foundry’s check-in feature documents the hours that volunteers are serving. This is the single most important thing we can do for the agencies that we work with, since accurate documentation makes it easier for agencies to apply for grants and know their schedule. The feature is expected to increase the accuracy of the hours that are documented through our software.

We’re still pursuing marketing, but we’ve seen an increase in mobile app users. For instance, last Friday, we put a small pop-up on our web app informing users about the mobile app, and our numbers doubled over the weekend. We’re approaching six-hundred users, and we expect that number to continue increasing.

How did Red Foundry perform from a project management standpoint?

Early on, they did a good job communicating the process and letting us know what the sprints would be like, how long they’d take, and how they’d conform to their project plan.

At one point in the build process, we inquired about Red Foundry’s hours. We discovered that they were over-budget and had spent more time on certain tasks than they’d anticipated. Once we uncovered this issue, we identified a few ways to offset some of the costs, such as tweaking features and taking on testing ourselves rather than having Red Foundry do it. We accepted a small increase in budget, and Red Foundry ate some of the costs. After that, communication improved.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Red Foundry’s developers are highly skilled.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They ultimately did a good job, although sometimes communication faltered, and we encountered bugs. We also had an issue with location services working differently on Android versions 7 and 8. The library that Red Foundry used to develop the location services was only compatible with Android 7, so we continue to have an issue with our features on Android 8 and above. Red Foundry could’ve done a better job selecting the library they used or letting us know upfront that this would be a problem.  

I should mention that the development work they did is considered quite complex. The fact that they completed a feature that sends push notifications based on a user’s geo-location is technically advanced.

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

We now have a functioning app that we can use. We haven't fully marketed the app, so we didn't expect to have too many downloads. It's just a foundation that we're planning to develop further to get more business.

How did Red Foundry perform from a project management standpoint?

We had face-to-face meetings as we were working on the design and the initial development. Then, we moved to weekly calls where we discussed the progress of the project. They were very responsive. If there were any issues, they found solutions very quickly. We were very happy with the process.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were very flexible, open to questions, and willing to explain the process to us. We were looking for someone who would take our idea and run with it. Red Foundry delivered exactly what we were looking for and met our tight deadlines.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. I don't have any complaints.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They provide top-notch service, and their pricing is very good. I'd definitely recommend them.