Speed and Function

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m project manager director at Mangos, a brand marketing agency. We do anything from traditional print and web design.

What challenge were you trying to address with Speed and Function?

We had an in-house developer, but we had more work. We needed a team of frontend developers and producers for some of the work we were doing.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Speed and Function does all our HTML development on our frontend projects. We initially subcontracted them to handle two of our clients and their development needs.

What is the team composition?

We go back and forth with the project manager and build relationships which whoever is the developer on our emails. We’re directly engaged with them.

For larger projects, we’ve been on teams with at least five people: a project manager, a procured, the head developer, backend infrastructure people, and more developers. It depends on the project we’re doing.

How did you come to work with Speed and Function?

This wasn’t my first relationship with them. I met Speed and Function almost ten years ago through a UX company that was my partner. We got to a point where we no longer needed a UX firm, so we subcontracted Speed and Function for their development capabilities, and they did maintenance and everything for the website.

How much have you invested with them?

It’s been about $150,000 over the last two years.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2019, and the relationship is ongoing.

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

The best thing about Speed and Function is that they’re a true partner. They act as an extension of my marketing department, and they help us figure out things and come to us with better options or strategies around what we need. They’re genuinely engaged in the outcome of our projects and want us to be successful.

How did Speed and Function perform from a project management standpoint?

We never have to wait on them when we need something. Our project manager is always there, but if they aren’t, one of the developers will jump in and answer our questions. They have a home-grown solution for tickets and the managing process.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Besides the partnership, they really stand out for their continuous process improvement. They’ve brought and immersed us into their process, and we’ve come out of it better organized and more successful. Moreover, Speed and Functions always looks for constructive feedback, and they’re honest with us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have any criticism. We’ve run into problems, but they never hide from anything. They come to us right away to solve any issue together.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Give them the opportunity and see how they work out for you. We haven’t been disappointed.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at a museum. We’re a nonprofit cultural organization, and I’m in charge of maintaining and redesigning our website.

What challenge were you trying to address with Speed and Function?

We needed help with website development for our business.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Speed and Function have been our backend development support on our Drupal 8 content management system — our website is focused on providing visitors with information to plan their visit. They’ve also been helping us augment our team’s resources and skills right before we launched our revamped website. Since then, they also provide dev-ops maintenance and content migration into different content management systems.

In terms of functionalities to our platform, they added the ability to build new pages more efficiently within our content management system. They’ve also helped us with a good amount of security breaches that we’ve had by improving our security features.

Regarding technologies, we use a Drupal 8 content management system, a React frontend, and API calls between us to deliver content.

How did you come to work with Speed and Function?

They were referred to us by someone who already knew them and their work.

How much have you invested with them?

I estimate that we’ve spent $40,000–$50,000 with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2019, and the engagement is still ongoing.

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

Speed and Function have been instrumental in the launch of our redesigned website. They brought us back from several security breaches in the last months. In addition to that, the cost savings from working with them have been significant.

How did Speed and Function perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been great; their proactiveness, organization, and availability are excellent. They respond fast to our questions and calls. In terms of tools and communication, we usually use Slack and email with them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their responsiveness, despite the time zone difference, is outstanding. They come back to us quickly whenever we have an emergency, and they’re available every time we need work done.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could translate the technical language to non-tech people; although we get quick answers and demos of the products, we’d like to make those technical conversations more straightforward.

Please describe your company and your position there.

My company builds technology solutions for First Responders. I'm a co-founder.

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

Our goal was to create a demo application to showcase the vision for our technology and how it would work in practice. We decided to build it for browser using react native.

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

Speed and Function understood our needs as a startup and was exceptional about communicating what was possible in the time and resources we had to devote to the project.

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

Speed and Function conducted a solution design based on UI screens we had already developed. We dictated specific functionalities that were required & worked together to prioritize each. They focused on Front-End development, while our internal team focused on back-end server-side development and hardware integration.

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

One project manager, one senior full-stack developer, and one junior-level front-end engineer.

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

We were ultimately able to successfully demonstrate the technology on schedule to potential investors & strategics interested in partnering with our company to advance the technology to a more commercial ready state.

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

Their project management style was flexible to the needs of our team. We have certain skillsets where we can devote internal resources to tasks, while S&F had skillsets that we simply didn't have. We were able to work together to let each team contribute their unique value in order to maximize productivity and make as much progress with the resources allocated to the project.

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

S&F's team is very dedicated, understanding, and flexible to the needs of a young startup. Not to say this is their only specialty - we're just one example of a startup that had a great experience with their company.

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

Through no fault of Speed & Function, admittedly we were a little early to invest the capital we did in development. We should have spent more time understanding the market and the needs of the customer to know what to build and how to prioritize features better. Ultimately we were able to overcome this challenge together.