Spiral Scout

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of Roundhouse One, a spatial intelligence company that helps users make better decisions about their spaces using data-driven analytics and findings.

What challenge were you trying to address with Spiral Scout?

We hired them for all our website development, UI/UX design, backend development, and anything to do with API connections and servers.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Spiral Scout is our software team. Whenever I have a task or a client request regarding development or UI/UX design, I send them an overview, documentation, and resources that might help them understand the request. This triggers a conversation about design and backend requirements, usually over 2–3 calls or more. 

From there, Spiral Scout reviews the request with their design team and comes back with estimates for time, effort, team size, and cost. If the estimates work for our team, we determine the request’s priorities and milestones. After they deliver on a task, our team tests things to ensure everything is running smoothly, and we provide feedback if it isn’t. At the end of the process, they send us an invoice for the time spent. 

Before working with them, an internal team built some features. We sometimes can’t customize these features ourselves due to time constraints. In those cases, Spiral Scout refactors and builds on our existing code. The team uses the AWS stack for all backend tasks. They’ve also used Javascript and HTML. When they refactor our in-house code, they use Node.js and Python. They do ad hoc troubleshooting that comes up, including bugs. 

The team has designed and built a dashboard system from scratch. Our company collects data about spaces, including information about physical assets such as floor plans and environmental information, like air quality and lighting. For this, we have sensors deployed that report at a frequency of 5–10 minutes. We have hundreds of sensors that yield a lot of data, and it’s not easy to throw all of it at our clients. 

Spiral Scout has developed a platform that gives our clients different types of information at different stages. The application includes a map of the main locations the client is monitoring and shows donut graphs. The inner donut’s color represents the indoor environment, and the outer donut represents the outdoor environment. Users can click on a donut and see a historical view to compare and contrast different spaces. This dashboard allows users to benchmark and see how their spaces perform against each other.

What is the team composition?

The team composition depends on the project size; we’ve worked with teams of 4–5 people. Since our current needs are lean, we work with 2–3 team members from Spiral Scout. I’m only in contact with a project manager who coordinates with the rest of the team. 

How did you come to work with Spiral Scout?

My former boss knew of John (Co-Founder & CEO) through word of mouth. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $50,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January 2020, and our engagement is ongoing. 

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

We have a good relationship with Spiral Scout that we’ve maintained throughout the years. The dashboard system they’ve built is one of our most popular product offerings. Recently, a user gave us feedback for the system; the data was restricted to 30 days, and they wanted to view more and have it load faster. We extended the request to Spiral Scout, and they took the load time of over two minutes, with the app occasionally crashing, to under 30 seconds without crashes.

How did Spiral Scout perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re good about staying on the budget; I can’t think of more than 1–2 instances where they’ve exceeded the budget, and that’s usually due to unforeseen issues that come up. We do a lot of refactoring, so their work also depends on how previous engineers have coded some packages. They usually take longer to refactor than to build from scratch. 

As for communication, our initial conversations for each task start via email. Then, we have calls via Zoom or Microsoft Teams. From there, we use Jira boards to prioritize, track, assign, and update tasks. We use the same boards if we have any questions or comments throughout the process. When they complete a task, they send us a screenshot or video demo as proof. 

If something urgent arises that we haven’t addressed, we send it through email. The Spiral Scout team ensures we’re aware of any hurdles or hiccups throughout the process that might delay the results. They’re very good at tracking and documenting everything, so we don’t have to deal with the backend details. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Spiral Scout’s biggest strength is their availability. Even though they have many projects and clients, they always take our calls. As a result, they make me feel supported no matter what. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve recently given them constructive feedback about communication, which had been a bit off; I wasn’t getting updates unless I asked for them recently. This hasn’t always been the case, but they had 1–2 instances of lack of or poor communication about progress. 

Although I trust that they’re working on the backend, I like regular updates. We talked about that, and they’ve been great since then. They’ve considered our feedback and give me updates every 2–3 days on whatever the status might be. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Set expectations and deadlines very clearly. Your tasks need to be really clear because Spiral Scout takes them at face value. If you ask for a button, you’ll get a button, not a widget. Therefore, ensure your tasks are listed clearly and that you agree with the budgeted timeline. You should also account for some buffer time because development is always unpredictable.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the technology consultant for a B2B strategy company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Spiral Scout?

We needed someone to help our client provide their customers with better service access.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’re engaged with Spiral Scout to build a particular component for an e-commerce platform. The team is building the software, a customer-facing platform, from scratch and designing the UX.

What is the team composition?

I’ve mainly been communicating with a project manager, head of UX, head of design, and their management team.

How did you come to work with Spiral Scout?

I’ve already worked with Spiral Scout from a previous company, so I recommended them to be the primary development partner for this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement started in March 2022.

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

We’re still in the development phase, but their team has been consistently responsive and easy to work with, and we’re very satisfied with the quality of their work.

How did Spiral Scout perform from a project management standpoint?

They do a good job of keeping the project on track and are upfront about the development changes and updates. They also strictly adhere to the budget and timeline of the project, so the partnership has been smooth.

We use Confluent to manage the project and typically communicate through Slack and Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with their development experience and approach to communication.

Are there any areas they could improve?

At this point, I don’t have any constructive feedback because I’m very satisfied with our partnership with Spiral Scout.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would advise you to come up with a defined set of requirements to give them a clear picture of what you’re looking for. However, Spiral Scout does offer a complete development team solution including their own BA's to document the requirements.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Co-Founder and Art Director of the web design and branding agency.

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

We worked with the Spiral Scout team on a comprehensive development process for one of the sites we had redesigned. We needed their help to build the site so that it kept the engaging feel of the design while remaining smooth and fast for a good UX. From a technical standpoint, everything had to be easily editable from the admin panel for the client.

The client also wanted the website to feel alive by having a section on the homepage updated with recent events and publications. This required a well-structured homepage and accompanying pages that were in a common, engaging style that was adaptable to new and regular content.

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

We had worked together on Spiral Scout's corporate website. We had completed a redesign for them, and then Spiral Scout handled the development, release, and technical troubleshooting for their own site.

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

Once we had completed the design stage, Spiral Scout’s team worked on the site's development based on our design and UI style kit. Their team was managing the entire development process, QA, and regularly communicating with the client.

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

At least four people from the Spiral Scout team were involved in the management and communication process, and several other developers were involved in the project under very tight deadlines.

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

The main result – a happy client. Together with the Spiral Scout team, we were working a lot to understand the client’s vision and having lots of calls to coordinate our actions and share opinions. I think our close collaboration and communication was the reason for a successful project. Together with the Spiral Scout team, we were constantly strategizing about the best solution for the filters, how we could display all the items in the most efficient way for users, and more. The Spiral team proposed a number of brilliant ideas, and all of them were happily accepted by the client.

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

It was great. Everyone in the project team knew their responsibility and role. PMs and team leads were very professional, responsible, and pleasant. The communication was immediate and concrete, which helped move things along smoothly while adhering to a tight deadline. Every comment or insight from the client was documented and detailed, including what we should do, when, and how. The team always asked the client to clarify any unclear details if required to understand the client’s vision in full - never working off assumptions.

The developers also made a huge impact on the successful finishing of this project. They always worked and communicated with great patience and professionalism, explaining technical topics in simple, non-tech language, and implemented the changes inside the code several times until the website was perfect. Thank you to all of them for the opportunity to work with them, it was a great experience.

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

Well-coordinated work, clear division of competencies, attention to detail, compliance with deadlines, high professionalism, full immersion in the project, and attention to detail.

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

No.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I work for a web development company, specializing in training and educational software. I am the Producer for various in-house and client projects.

For what projects/services did your company hire Spiral Scout?

We hired Spiral Scout developers to assist our internal leads with day-to-day development tasks. Developers have to learn and be comfortable with proprietary software and strict use guidelines.

What were your goals for this project?

In addition to limited custom-code solutions, developers have to primarily identify solutions and build courses using proprietary software tools. They must support the ecosystem with robust investigation, reporting, and overall documentation to boost the ecosystem while simultaneously delivering quality course products on time.

How did you select this vendor?

Spiral Scout was chosen for their experience with the required toolset and familiarity with what the end-goal products are. They adapt well to changes and are amenable to shifting needs.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Spiral Scout developers are usually pulled into a project after content & design teams have created high-fidelity wireframes with detailed copy & user flows. They are responsible for using proprietary tools to build out these highly detailed courses.

Whenever the toolset does not provide the ability to execute on design, developers will conduct further investigation into what is needed to update the tools in order to execute. They will often come up with alternate solutions until an update or fix to proprietary tools can be made, at which point they will update accordingly.

Developers also have to coordinate with cross-disciplinary teams to help guide design where there is uncertainty about what can be built. Often attending various meetings to review design concepts and provide insight as to what design options can be completed.

What was the team composition?

Courses typically have a stable product team consisting of a Product Owner, Project Manager, and Producer. 1-2 Tech Leads depending on the scope of the course. 2-4 developers or more depending on scope. The art and content teams can range a bit more but developers will typically only interact with leads and the above core product team.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The work done by Spiral Scout has been a key contributor to a healthy partnership with our client. That partnership has grown tremendously from a client/vendor relationship where we previously worked on one or two courses per year, to over 10 in 2020.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The Spiral Scout team always provides timely communication throughout any given project. We communicate daily via Google Chat / Hangouts, Gmail and within JIRA, GitHub, and wherever needed.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their adaptability, commitment to our needs, and quality work impressed us. They respond well to all requests and provide easy to understand feedback for non-technical roles to understand.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Very little to suggest for improvement. I have great confidence in the team here that if any suggestions or requests were made by a client, Spiral Scout would be happy to accommodate.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Marvel Power Group is a boutique consulting and brokerage firm focusing on energy, water, and transportation.

For what projects/services did your company hire Spiral Scout?

SpiralScout helped us create our brand, new logo, and they did all of the web design and development for our new site.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed someone that could understand our needs and see our vision for how we wanted to position ourselves in the market, and then help us create a brand and online presence around that. We also needed a one-pager we could send out to our prospective clients. They absolutely nailed it on all fronts.

How did you select this vendor?

After talking with their team we knew they had they could see where we wanted to go with our site and marketing materials. They were also incredibly responsive and easy to work with, and were able to move quickly when speed was of the utmost importance to us. Last, we saw their work with previous clients and loved that they were able to work with a variety of industries and types of brands.

Describe the project in detail.

We started with a logo, and from there we moved to creating our branding and website design. In conjunction with that they helped hone our messaging. After that they led all of the development for our website, mobile site, and marketing materials. We provided input along the way and they usually turned around the changes within hours. They set out a schedule from the beginning and hit every single milestone on time.

What was the team composition?

We primarily communicated with their CEO, John Griffin. John did a really great job being the point person between us and the development team that was working on this for us.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We started with basically nothing and by the end had a full fledged brand and online presence. Each step of the way we were able to provide feedback and make changes, and they were really responsive so we could stay on schedule and on budget.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very. It was seamless. We used Figma to provide feedback on the website development and that made it very easy and efficient.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Three things:

1. Vision/creativity: They could see what we wanted and had some really good ideas to help realize our vision.
2. Professionalism: They were on schedule, on budget, and just very easy and professional to work with. We had zero issues.
3. Quality: There was not one time we didn't have a high quality of work passed over to us for review.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not that I saw. We are very happy.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Human Touch is the leading provider of high-quality, innovative lifestyle products, massage chairs, and experiences that have been delivering indispensable, life-changing benefits to an ever-growing number of consumers for over 40 years. Products are available at fine furniture stores, back care specialty stores, and mass-market retailers across the U.S., through international retailers and distributors in more than 40 countries, and online at www.humantouch.com. My role within the company is to function as a Digital Marketing Manager, overseeing the company's eCommerce website and managing digital content and advertising on a multitude of online platforms.

For what projects/services did your company hire Spiral Scout?

Spiral Scout completed a major platform migration for us and were extremely flexible, communicated promptly and worked long hours to deliver on time. Their work has received positive feedback from several people in our company ranging from our CEO to our Accounting Department who were impressed with their ability to stay in budget on such a large scale project.

We continue to use them for our web development and intend to keep increasing their scope of work as we discover the broad range of services that is covered by their knowledgeable teams. Spiral Scout leadership is highly collaborative and is always willing to pivot rapidly to meet business goals.

Our project manager is detail oriented and organized and excels at follow-up and keeping our team informed and focused. They have been an excellent fit with our organization.

What were your goals for this project?

We had just over 3 months to complete this migration, in order to meet the Magento 1 platform support cutoff date. We also needed this done in tandem with our regular website maintenance, and had a number of custom website modules that would need to be reconfigured for the new platform.

How did you select this vendor?

We found Spiral Scout on Clutch.com!

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Spiral Scout has provided us with website development work by way of both maintenance and migration support, as well as exceptional organization and project management support.

They have suggested a number of helpful tools so that we can stay on top of both large and small projects, and have had excellent communication throughout this entire process. We have also sought them out for SEO work, website design, and digital advertising analysis.

What was the team composition?

Spiral Scout has provided us with support from their CEO, Project Manager, Technical Team, SEO Management team, and several website developers. This team has remained much the same size since we initially engaged with them.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Our website migration was seamless, without any type of negative impact on our ranking or website performance, despite the rushed deadline we asked of Spiral Scout.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We used Jira, as well as Confluence to coordinate project management tasks. Until this point, our team had no experience with either of these tools, and Spiral Scout has been wonderful at helping us to understand and maximize our use of these tools.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Spiral Scout has been amazing to work with. They have really impressed us with their excellent communication, organizational skills, technical knowledge, and willingness to work long hours when needed.

We enjoy our routine maintenance calls with them, and they have been provided us with friendly and informative support for both the migration and also our regular website maintenance.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There really aren't many things I would change about our relationship with this team, and I say that with 100% honesty. Their CEO is always quick to hop on a call with us if we have questions, and they have really been helpful as they explain situations where we may struggle to grasp some of the more technical concepts of these website projects.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are Temporal, the open source microservices orchestration platform for running mission critical code at any scale. We provide a service which enables developers to build highly reliable applications in the language of their choice. I serve as Head of Product but am currently responsible for Sales, Marketing, Devrel and a few other functions.

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

The core of Temporal is our backend, which is agnostic to the language developers write workflows in.

To actually use Temporal, developers write applications using clientside libraries we provide in a few popular languages. As a project and a company, our ability to attract developers is directly limited by the number of languages we support. Adding support for a new language is not a trivial exercise.

For one, we strive to make sure each language experience reflects the methodology and best practices for that language. This means that the anyone writing a new language SDK for Temporal really needs to understand the language inside and out. Regardless of the language, implementing a Temporal SDK requires deep understanding of distributed systems, race conditions and Temporal itself.

Until last August all SDK's were created and maintained exclusively by the Temporal team. We knew that our language support was not growing at the rate we hoped. When Spiral Scout approached us last August and offered to build a PHP SDK for Temporal, we were very interested.

Once we felt that they had the right set of skills to tackle the job, we engaged with them officially and started working together closely.

How did you select Spiral Scout and what were the deciding factors?

The effort and competency required to build a new language SDK for Temporal is so high that we completely assumed it would always fall on us. When Spiral Scout approached us and showed serious interest in doing the work, we were very excited and interested.

Although the work is very complex, it makes it quite easy to validate if someone is capable of doing it at all. After a number of sessions with Spiral Scout it was clear that they had very strong engineers who could dive deep into system details.

A major concern was that even a skilled team would require so much hand holding such that it would invalidate the value they added in the first place. It became immediately clear that this was not an issue with Spiral Scout.

As a group they are incredibly driven and self motivated, almost always able to find solutions to the problems they encounter. They're also great about knowing when to not waste time and just ask for help. It's a hard balance to strike.

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

The key deliverable was a full fledged PHP SDK for Temporal. On top of the usual complexity that comes with a new language SDK, this project also had additional complexity. Instead of implementing things from scratch, there were limitations that required it to be implemented on the base of our existing Golang SDK. This meant that Spiral Scout's team not only needed to be proficient with PHP but also Golang. Once we agreed on high level details, the process was very iterative. Spiral Scout was great about constantly giving us updates about the current status and raising issues sooner rather than later. They happily adopted our processes such as GitHub, Slack etc. Overall the engagement was very consistent. There were never points where we felt worried or disconnected, it was a constant stream of information.

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

Quite a few developers on the SpiralScout team who were involved with the project. Our main point of contact was Anton, who did an outstanding job on all fronts. He was expected to both understand the incredibly complex technical requirements but also the high level deliverables and business value. Anton is an exceptional communicator, technologist and strategic thinker. I would feel comfortable essentially having him and the team work on any technical challenge.

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

The major outcome was a fully functional PHP SDK for Temporal. This task has been 100% delivered on with no exceptions. Overall its very hard to fault any of the work Spiral Scout did. Even nice to haves such as documentation were handled without us asking. The quality of work across the board is consistently high.

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

Project management style was seemingly very well planned and detail oriented. In general it's hard to design a working Temporal SDK without thinking ahead quite a bit. As I previously mentioned, Anton is an awesome communicator and we were constantly updated about any critical changes or concerns.

They used a combination of internal project tracking tool and the GitHub repo to stay on top of issues and requests. Timelines were in general very transparent although the project did go over projected by a bit.

SpiralScout never asked us to pay for the overage although we did because the work was outstanding. In the end, scoping a Temporal SDK is incredibly difficult even for us so I find it very difficult to fault Spiral Scout for the outcome. We value reliability far more than velocity, and I felt SpiralScout does too.

They probably could have delivered on the original timeline but with something less premium. I'm happy they didn't do that.

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

They took an incredibly broad task and delivered a high-quality result with zero experience in our domain. Not only did they overcome an immense technical challenge but also married it to their specific area of expertise (PHP) in a way we could never have done. I would also say the communication and transparency stood out.

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

In all honesty there is not much I can think of. I have no complaints.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product owner of technology at an online marketplace that connects users with deals from local merchants.

What challenge were you trying to address with Spiral Scout?

We needed more in-house resources to develop an iOS app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We originally brought Spiral Scout on board to design a UX optimized interface for our iOS app, but their scope eventually grew to include designing our website and Android app as well. Their primary focus was on the web design, but they also spent a significant amount of time creating two unique profile experiences for advertisers and consumers on the mobile apps.

Before we send their work to another company for development, Spiral Scout completes a final review and troubleshoots existing bugs. Since we’re working with multiple vendors, they put together a technical specification document that explains our platforms in full-detail and includes instructions on how to build them.

What is the team composition?

We mostly work with the project manager and design lead.

How did you come to work with Spiral Scout?

They came highly recommended by two trusted sources, so we decided to reach out to them. We knew that they would be a perfect fit for the project after the first phone call.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership began in January 2018 and is ongoing.

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

After years of listening to the false promises of our previous web vendors, we’re pleasantly surprised to witness Spiral Scout transform our vision into a gorgeous and functional design. We already have a sense of how smooth the navigation will be from the models they’ve presented us.

How did Spiral Scout perform from a project management standpoint?

The project manager is very responsive to our needs. Overall, working with Spiral Scout has been a great experience.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re amazed at how consistent their designs have been for all five projects. Their attention to detail was a helpful asset in optimizing their high-quality designs for the end user. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’ve been exceptional in every area so far.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CMO and co-founder of Cheque.

What challenge were you trying to address with Spiral Scout?

We needed to build our product.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Basically, we presented them with a scope of work. We reviewed the scope together, talked about our goals, and discussed how they would address specific features. And then, they started to build the app and the CMS.

The product was released in March, which was intended as our beta version. It was meant to be an in-person product — a scan and go app with a backend inventory piece. But then, COVID-19 hit and everything closed.

We quickly transitioned to an online solution, so our beta product became our main, live product. We had real merchants and real shoppers having real experiences on the platform right out of the gate.

What is the team composition?

We had three points of contact. One is a project manager who oversaw the initiative. Another person acted as the brains behind the operation. And then the third person focused on the business aspects of the project. We spoke to them about invoicing and sprints.

How did you come to work with Spiral Scout?

We found them through word of mouth and decided to work with them based on their references. We called and spoke with a bunch of their customers. All of them were happy, so we decided to give them a shot.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $350,000 on the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the project in November 2019 and the product rolled out in March 2020.

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

Spiral Scout built solid software with clean code, so we haven’t had any downtime. When we launched the product, we quickly had a tremendous volume of users, but everything went seamlessly.

Their team was forward-thinking, creating the design with growth in mind. That helped us tremendously. As we hit the ground running, we were able to make changes and adjustments that Spiral Scout anticipated. They foresaw that needs would arise that we hadn’t written into our development plan.

How did Spiral Scout perform from a project management standpoint?

We talked to our project manager daily. During the development, we had weekly calls when their team showed us their work. We both asked questions and they presented their thoughts.

They’re a responsive team. They showed up at what would be 3 a.m. their time on multiple occasions. Spiral Scout accommodates for any time differences.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team actually thinks about the implications and future applications of development requests. If we said that we needed a widget, their team would ask us why and consider the best way to build it. Their team thinks through the implications of requests before executing them. Spiral Scout’s a great team that we view as part of our company.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I wouldn’t change a thing about them.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the chief visionary officer at One Group Digital Solutions. We’re an IT firm that helps companies of all sizes design and build world-class software. I manage all incoming sales leads, help with project management, and manage partnerships with sub-contractors.

For what projects/services did your company hire Spiral Scout?

Lacking the necessary bandwidth, we needed a software development partner to help build a digital asset management (DAM) system in PHP and Go. We hired Spiral Scout to manage the project, write the actual code, and perform QA. 

What were your goals for this project?

Initially, we had to update a legacy DAM system to get our client through their busy season. Afterward, we set out to build an entirely new system and migrate their data onto the new solution.

How did you select this vendor?

Our CEO and I considered five outsourced software development companies. At the end of a RFP process, we believed Spiral Scout had the project management and technical chops necessary to deliver the project. They had a lot of experience building DAM systems, and we already had a good relationship with them. A consultant of ours had introduced us a year and a half ago, and Spiral Scout traveled to our offices to visit. This made us quite enthusiastic about working with them.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

After patching up the old system, Spiral Scout helped to describe technical specifications, design high-fidelity mockups of the UX/UI, and deliver a new DAM software solution. Our client had some documentation written by their previous development team, but Spiral Scout used a business analyst to gather all requirements, which they used to create user stories and divide the project up into sprints. Then, they designed wireframes and had their technical team create the entire design and write the code for it. They also provided all bug testing via their internal QA team. Finally, their DevOps resources helped us deploy the project onto our customer’s AWS servers.  

The project was a mix of JavaScript, PHP, Go, and AWS. It also required a partial refactor and rewrite of our client’s codebase. Some of the features they helped to build from scratch were a customer facing website, a subscription service for downloading images, an integration with Stripe and Mailchimp, a backend dashboard for our client to manage their users and files and gather reports, and a collaborative image editing and captioning tool. Additionally, they provided and implemented SEO recommendations and wrote documentation on how to use the new software.

What was the team composition?

We’re working with a business analyst, a UX/UI designer, three front- and backend engineers, a QA engineer, a project manager, and a DevOps engineer. Team size fluctuates based on what we need at a specific time.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Our customer experienced an increase in their revenue and website signups and a dramatic improvement in website performance. They were able to decrease their AWS bill from $3500 a month to $800 a month and increase their organic traffic from search engines. Spiral Scout continues to work on the project with our internal team.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Anton (CTO and Co-Founder, Spiral Scout) acted as their lead project manager and was very effective. He communicated clearly and was responsive, keeping us updated throughout the project and constantly re-evaluating the timeline when new features were added. There were also no communication issues. We spoke via daily standups on Discord, as well as on Slack, Skype, and UberConference.

Spiral Scout’s co-founders, John and Anton, were instrumental to our success. We could count on both to maintain contact with us, emailing back in minutes, even during the most challenging parts of the project. Their communications were so clear we could simply forward them to our client. It was truly seamless.  

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their communication and honest and reliable feedback stand out to me. They manage our expectations well and never sugarcoat what’s going on.

Are there any areas for improvement?

The only thing that proved to be a small challenge was the time difference. We had to do calls when it was early morning for our customer (they’re on Pacific Standard Time) so that Spiral Scout’s co-founder could join us. This is a nitpick, but everything else has pretty much gone according to plan.