Spiral Scout

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm founder of Loop Golf, which is the online platform connecting courses and golfers together to create the absolute best on-course golfing experience.

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

We needed help developing our MVP app product so we could get it in the hands of early beta testers and prove out key hypotheses necessary to help build our compnany. That help included front-end and back-end development as well as design.

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

Quality of developer was the number one criteria, which we found to be very good in terms of professionalism, code quality, dedication to the project/team, flexibility in working across vastly different timezones and communication. SpiralScout as a broader organization has been very accommodating, responsive, and helpful in sourcing the right type of talent to help us progress quickly on our project.

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

We needed a capable product designer, SWIFT developer for our iOS app and back-end development support (ruby, postgres, firebase) in order to build all facets of the iOS app and the defined MVP features.

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

As a product manager by trade, I needed to assemble a team around me who could help execute on the product vision I outlined, provide feedback and input on execution strategy/sequencing and guidance on how to minimize cost/scope in order to achieve the best initial product we could build. That team included a product designer, mobile developer and backend developer.

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

Within 1-2 months we had a test app live in Testflight that enabled us to live test many functions of the app. Within 5 months of part-time work we had a fully functional, feature rich app live in the app store, enabling us to do live beta testing and start the path to iterating on our core features with feedback from users.

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

I served as project manager given my previous expertise in this area. We leveraged Pivotal's Tracker ticketing system, Trello, slack, figma. We held standups 3x per week with a sprint planning meeting every 2-weeks, which enabled us to plan our our work, identify blockers and collaborate on scope/timing/features.

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

Their flexibility, especially for a small, early-stage start up. Most companies won't take on smaller companies at our stage given the smaller budgets and uncertainty. They've been an excellent partner helping us slowly build and grow over time and we've chosen to continue to expand our investment with them.

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

I can't think of anything. They've been exceptionally well organized and professional the entire time.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and president of a funeral establishment that specializes in cremation arrangements that can be made online.

What challenge were you trying to address with Spiral Scout?

We needed to build an e-commerce platform with a high amount of automation built in.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We first had some conversations with Spiral Scout’s co-founder, John, during which he answered some of our questions to help define the project and its initial scope. He also provided us with a ballpark estimate of the project’s price.

Given that we were a new business doing things that no one had done before, Spiral Scout suggested that we spend a few weeks working with their business analysts. Thus, we spent about two months working with one of their business analysts, revisiting the client’s journey on our site from start to finish. This person answered all of our questions and helped us understand the details on which the developers would be working during the development phase.

After the discovery phase, we spent about five months working with the developers until they finished building the site. Currently, we touch base with Spiral Scout once per month. They keep making improvements to the site and maintaining it to ensure that everything works well.

In traditional funeral homes, people who want to make their arrangements would have to visit them or call them to have guidance on making those arrangements. However, Spiral Scout has built our site so that people can easily make their cremation arrangements themselves. The site has some intensive user flows and built-in integrations with third parties like Stripe so that, based on what the families select, they can find all the paperwork needed, make payments, and track the statuses of their arrangements.

What is the team composition?

Our initial point of contact was John, but we then worked with the business analyst during the discovery phase. Since then, the project manager has been our main point of contact. Still, I know that there has been a team of 7–8 developers and QA engineers working in the background.

How did you come to work with Spiral Scout?

We researched and shortlisted around 10 different providers based in the Bay Area and other parts of the country. Speaking of Spiral Scout specifically, we found them through a ranked list of the Bay Area’s best web developers. We interviewed the 10 companies we found and narrowed down our options to three companies. After narrowing down the list, we had extensive interviews with each company, and it was very obvious that Spiral Scout understood our project better and fit our budget.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2021, and we launched the site in October 2021. Still, our engagement is ongoing.

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

One of the most important success metrics is how useful this site has been to families. We’ve had feedback from them saying that, in the past, it took them a couple of hours and either numerous calls or a visit to the funeral home to make the arrangements. Now, it takes them less than 15 minutes to make the same arrangements through our site. We don’t have any metrics regarding traffic or lead generation, but the UX that Spiral Scout has created for our clients is significantly better than the experience they had traditionally hiring these services.

How did Spiral Scout perform from a project management standpoint?

Spiral Scout has done a great job managing the project. It was very important for us from the beginning to have a clear idea of the project’s price. They first gave us a pricing range, and they were very honest about it, detailing the number of hours required to complete the project and the costs associated with that. Still, given that we were a new business, we needed a fixed cost. Spiral Scout was very willing to work with us in capping the number of hours required to build the site.

In addition to that, their communication has been incredible. They gave us access to Jira from the get-go to see the project progress, and we had weekly Zoom or Google Meet calls during the development phase. Now, our meetings are monthly, and we communicate via email if needed. Whenever we send them an email, they respond within 24 hours.

On top of their great communication and budget management skills, Spiral Scout has no issues with the timelines; they’ve always met the deadlines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Spiral Scout has excelled in two aspects. Firstly, they were very quick to understand what we were trying to do. Not every vendor got our business or believed in it, but Spiral Scout believed in our project and understood our competitors far better than everyone else.

Secondly, their business analysis process is impressive. Working with Spiral Scout’s business analyst during the discovery phase almost certainly saved us tens of thousands of dollars. In correlation with that aspect, the fact that they wanted to understand everything they possibly could about our process meant a lot to us.

Although Spiral Scout is very quick to understand, their moves and processes are very deliberated. For example, if we ask for changes, they don’t make them without first considering all the implications those changes would have across the site and the potential problems they could create.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. The only aspect is that we’ve needed to adjust to their schedule, but this is not necessarily an area of opportunity because they work that way, and it hasn’t presented a problem.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Spiral Scout treats their employees very well, and you can see it by how happily they work. As part of their work culture and environment, they’re very respectful of their work hours and don’t work a lot of overtime. Thus, you should be aware that they don’t work on weekends, and they take every other Friday off, so you’ll need to adjust to their schedule. Still, they’re very responsive.

Additionally, be aware that most of Spiral Scout’s employees aren’t native English speakers. We’ve had some issues with their copywriting, so don’t assume that what they deliver will be proofread. It is better to have someone on your team double-checking their copywriting.

Furthermore, I recommend that you leverage their business analyst and go through that process. Although the discovery phase takes some time to complete initially, it will save you time and money in the long run.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the owner and CEO of a K-12 curriculum company.

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

We hired Spiral Scout to create a web-based application for teachers to use with their students to improve reading fluency. Our goal was to create an effective and affordable tool for teachers.

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

Spiral Scout had experience in the K-12 curriculum space. They also recommended completing a Business Analysis prior to the project. This BA created a solid blueprint and cost estimate for the project.

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

The initial Business Analysis allowed us to create detailed user stories, wireframes, and an itemized list of the entire project. Once we started on the project, the Spiral Scout team has a systematic and efficient development schedule. They established 2-week sprint periods with clear deliverables and due dates. They kept up informed about the project via weekly SCRUM meetings and via Confluence and Jira.

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

There were 4 people on the team: 1 project manager, 1 head developer, 1 quality assurance tester, and 1 general supervisor. In addition to these members, I was able to directly communicate with the owners/CEOs at any time.

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

We launched the product in February 2021 with great success. We had over 300 teachers sign up in the first 45 days. We continue to have teachers join every day and have received several purchase order requests from schools and districts across the US. The positive feedback we have received from teachers has been overwhelming. We anticipate a huge influx of new members in the late summer and early fall of 2021.

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

The project management team provided exceptional communication. In addition to being very responsive to emails, they used Jira and Confluence to keep us informed of every minor detail. They also conducted weekly zoom meetings. So far we have had two project managers, and both did an amazing job responding to our concerns and explaining the process of development.

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

Spiral Scout exemplifies integrity. Every team member follows through with what they promise, and they make every effort to ensure our satisfaction and the satisfaction of the users. The team is also very patient--even though we are unfamiliar with program development, they did an excellent job explaining things to us and they were always open to our questions.

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

We honestly can't think of one thing Spiral Scout had done differently. We couldn't be more pleased with work they have done for us, and we look forward to working with the company for years to come.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior director of a startup accelerator.

What challenge were you trying to address with Spiral Scout?

We were trying to overhaul our website and elevate our brand. We wanted the develop a more sophisticated UX design for the site and improve the look and feel.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We provided Spiral Scout with wireframes and sketches for them to start with and established that we wanted a WordPress site. The site needed a few specific functionalities, including a media page to host our calendar of events. We also wanted to be able to display new features and blog pieces for users to click. Our team provided all the content for the site.

What is the team composition?

It’s hard to tell who exactly was working on our site, but I communicated with John (Co-Founder, Spiral Scout) and one other individual.  

How did you come to work with Spiral Scout?

I had previously worked with John’s team when they developed the website for the company I founded a few years ago. I found them through a few recommendations during that time. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $16,000–$18,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

This project ran from April–July 2019, but they’re providing ongoing support for minor updates. 

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

Everything functions perfectly and looks great. The main constructive feedback we’ve received has been from the public institution we work with since some parts of the site were not compliant with federal regulations. 

How did Spiral Scout perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed at a pretty high standard. We mostly communicated through phone and email. Additionally, we now have monthly recurring phone calls to check-in. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were a very responsive team—I felt like they were on it at all times.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing I can think of for them to improve. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Our monthly recurring call is something we implemented later in the engagement, and I’d recommend utilizing that if you work with them. It helps to check-in by phone once in a while instead of email.

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.