thoughtbot

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

thoughtbot gave us all the tools and guides to be able to overhaul our whole test suites. We had more accurate tests that ran less time and were more dependable. We found the evergreen projects and the new development that was outside of our core business regular path to be a really fantastic way to leverage thoughtbot's value. They could deliver on a lot of things in that regard.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management was highly effective. We had weekly retros to get us all on the same page. We’d talk about the progress we were making and they would talk about any tension that might have existed. There were times when we needed to pivot based on the level of difficulty on our end. We learned that we can’t just throw any developer, regardless of how much of an expert they are, at our hardest business problems and expect them to solve it in a few weeks.

We also had video calls. Most of the time, everybody was remote with the exception of a few in-person arrangements. We communicated on Slack and Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We already trusted them due to the fairly public persona of the standards and styles that their team works with. We already were getting inspiration from them. From the beginning, we were aligned from a philosophical perspective of how to build software. That gave them a level of sway that may have been more challenging for another agency.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We learned the best way they could help our team was providing assistance to our existing developers, who had a lot more knowledge than thoughtbot did on how the business works and the business use cases. Short term engagements on systems with complicated business logic wasn't as impactful.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

thoughtbot does really well if you have a team of engineers who are transitioning away from that small, scrappy startup model and are starting to take on a more standard approach to engineering. They’re great in leveling up an engineering team.

If that’s not a concern, thoughtbot can really own the whole development in building a new application. They have excellent strategies for how to start a project and deliver when something doesn’t exist. If some company is trying to use thoughtbot and has a very complex app, I’d advocate that you’d never want to do a short engagement for six weeks because it wouldn’t be helpful for anyone. The ramp-up time in a complex app is such that you can only deliver so much value in a short period of time, and thoughtbot needs a month or so to really start delivering.

They’re really talented developers, but they’re not magicians and it’s easy to forget that sometimes.

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

We have great feedback from our beta users. Several power users have really taken to it and use it for their jobs every day, finding the right people in Congress to talk to in order to move their legislation or gain support for their offices’ initiatives. We haven’t done much marketing at all other than in-person, grassroots-style outreach to individual offices. We’re focusing now on testing the user onboarding and marketing page experience and validating our work based on past user interviews. We’re very excited about how this polished experience will essentially sell itself.

We’re scaling up our thoughtbot team to launch our iOS app in the next few months, and then we will lean on thoughtbot to help us build our internal team. They allow me to focus on hiring people into an existing system, with an existing culture and robust practices and workflows. They way they built the app and maintained the code makes everything very transferrable to the next person who will work on the project. thoughtbot is increasing the breadth of knowledge across our organization about our project. They’re doing internal code reviews with the rest of their team before they deploy it to our QA site. Whenever we shift or move to a new developer or designer, it’s a seamless transition. Everything is done in a way that makes me feel very confident in the way they’re building the application and preparing for an internal tech team in the future. The last person we’ll need to hire is a CTO. thoughtbot plays the part of a really experienced, seasoned CTO and an entire technology team.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

Communication is excellent and highly constructive. We have daily morning standups and retrospectives at the end of every week with thoughtbot. Even when there are tough decisions we have to talk about, we’re able to have those conversations with them in a very structured and beneficial. It’s never a drag to have to speak to them.

thoughtbot uses Trello and GitHub for project management and code management. We use monday.com internally, and the team joined our tool and could integrate nicely. They can view things that we’re working on and contribute when needed. The way they have set up their Trello boards is amazing. I’ve never seen a system so meticulously created and maintained. It’s extremely simple but incredibly developed. It’s seamless to use the tools they’ve set up. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The way that thoughtbot treats each other and treats us is something I want to emulate in our organization. The way they hire and develop their talent also stands out to me. For their typical hiring phase, they bring a new developer and a new designer onto their team and put them through an apprenticeship phase. I’m very impressed with the high level at which they are thinking about and producing their work. Everything—from the way they run their company to the way they organize their office—is set up in such a mindful, intentional way. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would be fantastic if they had an office in Washington D.C. Working remotely with them has been seamless though. I don’t have any complaints.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Evaluate your project idea by doing a product design sprint with them. It’s a five-day process where you are in a room together and go through the process of structured brainstorming, assumption listing, mind mapping, and storyboarding. You start with these relatively amorphous ideas and assumptions, but those first 3–4 days are truly paradigm-shifting. thoughtbot then builds an actual design prototype that you can test with users during that week.  

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

We're 100% confident in the coding work thoughtbot has done thus far. The quality of their work has even helped boost the morale of our own engineers, who now feel more empowered to take ownership of their work and learn from thoughtbot's team. We've very much enjoyed having them work with us on site.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

They've been flexible and responsive throughout the engagement thus far. Despite the fact that many of them work remotely most of the time as consultants, we haven't had any communications issues.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their engineers are very enthusiastic and proactive when taking on new projects. They're also very autonomous; I don't have to micromanage anyone on their team. They even come up with lists of recommendations, which has been very helpful.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, but I'd like to see them expand their staff so we could work with them even more.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Trust their team from the start of the relationship, because they truly know what they're doing and will work hard to meet business goals.

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

The biggest metric of success was that we were able to ship 5-6 major features before the September 1st deadline.

Since launch, we’ve seen a 10x jump in traffic on the website. Some of the credit for that goes to marketing, but the site and the new code performed well. A metric that's important to us is the deposit rate, which is basically the percentage that people deposit on our site. That rate increased from 22% to 30%. Some of that growth is due to the features that thoughtbot implemented around allowing users to play with the site before depositing.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

They're great at communication, checking in frequently even when the developer was working remotely. He was always communicating what he's working on, and asking intelligent questions about how things should work.

The developer’s ability to act like a product manager for our other web developers saved me time as well. His ability to grasp what tasks needed to be done without a lot of direction was very helpful.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Definitely their professionalism, and the quality of their work. I was very impressed how safe we felt with our decision to hire thoughtbot from day one. We knew we were in good hands because their developers are extremely talented. It took a lot of the pressure of hitting the deadline off because we had confidence that the work would get done.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They don't work on Fridays, and it would be nice if we could get that extra day.