Solid Software

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a software engineer at a financial company, and I’m responsible for evaluating technologies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Solid Software?

We were trying to improve the productivity of engineering teams by using one language across the front- and backend.

We were looking at visualizing enterprise data; this involves creating charts and graphs, and we needed to have cloud and microservices deployed to handle data processing. We also needed to integrate with the new SQL database.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

For the frontend, we were building up a web client and wanted to use Dart and Flutter to have just one language that we could share business logic across the back- and frontend.

Solid Software started our project by defining the architecture design for the system based on an existing UI/UX design and using frameworks in order to set up testing. 

At the beginning of the project, we had automated tests that verified that the functionality continued to work properly as we added to the platform..  

What is the team composition?

I worked with nine people from Solid Software. There was one engineering manager who was responsible for the project and people management and eight individual engineers. They work together collaboratively to develop the features, functionality, and results.  

How did you come to work with Solid Software?

I did a lot of Google searching, looking for companies that had experience in Flutter for the web. Solid Software was one of the only companies in the world that was accepted into Google Flutter for the Web Early Adopter Program. That was a good filtering mechanism for me to understand what companies work with Google and pioneer this technology. Additionally, I felt confident that they would be able to deliver. 

How much have you invested with them?

We invested around $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from May 2020–April 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We used Haystack, which was very helpful for us to understand team performance in general and specifically for this project. Haystack helped us look at cycle time, throughput, deployment rate, and then change failure rate. Those are the metrics that we looked at as we scaled the team and increased functionality. 

We also were looking at roadmap delivery, so we broke the features down into Capital Expenses (CapEx) and Operating Expenses (OpEx). It consisted of individual tickets, and the success was defined by delivering the features on time. 

How did Solid Software perform from a project management standpoint?

Solid Software was great at keeping high-quality bars as they delivered the features or whatever we were expecting from an engineering team.

I trained them on my expectations for how the project should be run. We set up daily tasks, and we had weekly retrospectives and backlog refinement meetings in order for their team to understand what they were working on and how they could improve. Solid Software handled this particular project management in a helpful manner because of the way we defined the roles.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was impressed with the quality of the code Solid Software designed. They were designing the feature from the beginning, which was correct because they started with the created document. That was very helpful for us, and not having to go back and fix things later compared to other teams we’d worked with.

One of the major benefits of working with Solid Software was that from day one we had a clean architecture that was well-tested, and we continued that development practice throughout the cycle of the project.

With Solid Software, we aligned on design documents and architectural requirements, and they’d plan out the classes, methods, and files before they start the implementation. Once we got a design approved, the implementation was very quick and done correctly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Solid Software was amazing with software development, Dart, and Flutter, but not for design. That was one area that I had to learn. If somebody has a project and they need design or other languages, Solid Software won’t be able to do it. You have to bring that for yourself or find an additional design team to collaborate together. 

Any advice for potential customers?

Have clarity upfront over what and how you’re building the project, and what roles and responsibilities are necessary on the team to deliver the result. 

I feel we were very successful with Solid Software because we knew exactly from the beginning what and how we wanted it delivered, which was a Flutter application that used SQL, had clean architecture, and had code testing. I was able to make sure their team had additional support that they needed from DevOps and design. If I had started a project and figured that out afterward, it’d have taken more time.