thoughtbot

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My company is Health Match 360. We’re a tech-startup that’s building a therapist-matching platform to help clients get matched with mental health therapists.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

Our biggest challenge was to redesign the beta version of our platform. We needed to spruce up the UX and UI.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We worked through a one-week design sprint, and the first two days were spent coming up with essential ways to solve the problem. They walked us through each step of the process and identified the assumptions we wanted to test during the eventual user testing stage. On days three and four, we worked with the designers and developers to build out the prototype. Day five was user testing. In the end, they gave us a PowerPoint and a number of spreadsheets that outlined all the information they gathered.

One of the capabilities we wanted to build was a way for clients to schedule a free consultation with a therapist. That got really good feedback, so we’re going to build it out how they designed it.

What is the team composition?

We worked closely with three people, including a marketing director and two of their full-stack developers. There was also a designer, who facilitated the first two days. There were five total people. The last resource was a senior client success manager.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

One of my mentors told me about a program thoughtbot was launching: a one-week pro-bono design sprint for start-ups. They were looking for start-ups founded by traditionally under-represented founders, as well as those who faced tight deadlines.

How much have you invested with them?

It was funded under a pro-bono grant, but the estimated value was $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together for one week, spanning the end of November to the beginning of December 2020.

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

I didn’t have a really clear idea about what to expect, but I wanted to have a new design for each page of the platform, and possibly some rebranding and user testing, by the end of the project. We got much more than that by the end of the project. The prototype they delivered was beautiful, they did rebranding that I loved, and the user testing was more than I expected. They also did a nice job of educating us throughout the process so we could do our own user testing in the future. I have a much clearer idea of how to do that on our own just thanks to watching how they do it. It was pretty awesome.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

Before we started, most of our communication was by email, and then we had a Zoom intro meeting right before we started. During the design sprint, it was all done on Zoom. They used a couple of other tools, including a digital whiteboard, as well as Figma.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their vibe stood out to me. I know it’s cheesy, but they were all so pleasant, warm, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable. We all meshed; it felt like we were on the same team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It was my first-ever design sprint so I don’t have anything to compare it to, but they blew me out of the water.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Work with them sooner rather than later. They helped us test our assumptions, and that’s something I wouldn’t have gotten to until later down the road after sacrificing time and money building out things that wouldn’t be useful. They’re invaluable.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of a health care startup.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughbot?

We needed to build out one of our products for our website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

thoughtbot built our website and the product, which essentially creates a flow. To get the end product, users have to go through a couple of steps. Based on the information a user provides, our platform creates a product, which calls an API. If a user accepts the product, we take them through a checkout flow that creates a bind.

What is the team composition?

We worked with an account manager, a designer, and a few engineers. The number of teammates varied between 1–4 depending on the amount of work. One of thoughtbot’s best qualities was their ability to scale.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

I originally found them through a piece of press about the best engineering firms that work with startups. I then went to their website and read a couple of customer testimonials. I actually recognized a company on that list and then reached out to their CEO. He spoke so highly of thoughtbot's team. We provided them with a scope of work, which their team reviewed. We ultimately agreed upon the scope and moved forward with the project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $200,000–$999,999 on the project so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2019, and our relationship’s ongoing.

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

They were able to add more resources when we needed them. thoughtbot also reassigned those resources to other projects so that I didn’t have to sustain the maximum capacity of engineers when it wasn't needed. 

Their team was able to scale the team to accommodate our launch deadline. There were also times when we needed basic tasks done, and they scaled down the team. It was a cost-efficient way for us to accommodate the surges of work that happen when you’re a startup.

They have great attention to detail, which was important to our product. They’re also strategic thinkers. If they have a question about a design decision, they won’t accept and implement it.

Their team questions us, so it feels like a thought partnership. The best engineers are the ones who question the design and through that line of questioning, they ultimately make the product better.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

We have retro at the end of the week with our account manager when we freely talk about projects. We sort out anything that needs to be sorted out. Separately, if there are any issues, I feel comfortable reaching out to my account manager. They’re always addressed. Their team’s communicative.

Historically, we’ve also co-located with their engineering team. That was an advantage, especially around critical launch deadlines. We were able to closely work with them, which kept the timeline sharp. Obviously, that’s not possible because of the coronavirus.

What did you find most impressive about them?

thoughtbot’s committed to their client’s success. The best possible contractors are the ones that believe in your goals and work alongside you. The team from thoughtbot's in this project with us. As a startup, we need as many of those people as possible. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we’ve had a successful partnership. I really appreciate thoughtbot and feel fortunate to have chosen them to work with us.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Get them involved early. They provide a thought partnership, which is unique. The earlier you get them involved the better outcome will be. You don’t want to design a product in a vacuum and show up with a finished package because their team can help you achieve even more success.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of engineering at TransLoc, a smart mobility company offering transport and mobility solutions to help folks get where they need to go.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

Our in-house mobile app development team has too many work initiatives right now, and we had determined a need for an android driver application that we didn’t have the capacity to develop currently. We reached out to their team to help us in building that.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provided engineering and development resources to build out our Android driver app. Their team worked closely with our in-house folks to make sure that it was built similarly to our other apps so that we would be able to take over from them when it was complete.

We already had an iOS driver app in place, so they worked on building out the app infrastructure in a similar way so that our engineers would be able to come in and recognize what they had built.

What is the team composition?

Our team interfaced directly with two of their engineers for the project.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

In looking for a development partner, we evaluated several different companies. We decided that thoughtbot’s philosophy and engagement process for their partners aligned most closely with the way that we worked, so we decided to go forward with them.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost of the project was about $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

From our initial kickoff to the final wrap up, we worked together between October 2019–March 2020.

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

Towards the end of the development process, we put the app out into beta testing with a couple of our customers and received some really great feedback. That process gave us a lot of confidence that there was an existing market need for the app, so we’re excited about the success of the app that we anticipate going forward.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

I think they did a great job of maintaining complete consistency with the way that our team operates, which made partnering with them incredibly easy. They communicated primarily over Slack, email, and phone calls, but they also used our team’s JIRA instance whenever we made a request around changing procedures or workflows, and they were always very receptive to those.

Ultimately, those efforts enabled us to become familiar with the application really quickly and to be able to jump in and provide what they needed to be able to continue their work on their project smoothly throughout any issues that came up during development.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What stood out to me the most from their process was the ability to adjust to our workflow and align their core values to align with our own. They produced really high-quality code, asked great questions, and identified issues that ended up benefiting our iOS apps as well, but ultimately, the fact that they functioned like an extension of our team that made the process as easy to manage as possible.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were some initial concerns about whether we would need a project manager from their side, but it turned out we were able to manage the collaboration perfectly well without one. That really was the only potential issue that we came across.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you’re looking for a high-quality application built using a similar method to what your existing team does, they are definitely the right partner for you.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CTO of a ratings and reviews platform for women to rate the places they work. We collect ratings from working women about companies and then we make job and company matches based on that data.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We wanted to create an application that would be complementary to our online platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We came with a pretty fleshed out idea as well as early mocks of what we thought the app would be. We went through a design sprint, but essentially it was more of a getting everyone on the same page sprint. It was a week-long group of meetings where we met and came up with different ideas. I created more mocks based on what was talked about in the design sprint, and I created wireframes for user testing, but they essentially facilitated the conversation.

Our online platform is pretty big and the mobile application is a companion to our regular product. We went with React Native and built it to work on Android and iOS. For the most part, we made use of their frontend developers on a day to day basis.

The main features that we ended building into the first pass of the app are a customized home feed where users are delivered what we call, a “daily drop” of content such as articles, polls, questions, links to other things and every day the user gets a new one in their home feed. We also have a job matching section that utilizes the company’s existing functionality to match women to jobs but it delivers them in a more of a daily batch of 10 jobs at a time.

We also built the ability to respond to those jobs in sort of a “Tinder-like” way; not actually swiping, but the concept is swiping up on a job. We also built a community section, which is kind of based on existing functionality but with some changes where people can post questions to the community, get answers, and get notifications about answers to their questions. Finally, we built a profile management system where people can update a résumé in the app.

What is the team composition?

We worked mainly with one developer who they embedded in the office with us. He came into our office half the week to work here with us. Nearer the latter part of the project, we added a second frontend developer who worked on the mobile app for us. A third ran the meetings but wasn’t really plugged in on the day-to-day. There was a fourth person who ran the design sprint at the very beginning but then was hands-off for the rest of the time.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

Their company has an office in the same co-working space we use. We met one person from just around the office and when we decided that we wanted to build an app with a third party, we contacted her.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent approximately $25,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from June – November 2019.

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

We have hundreds of beta users currently using the app. It is a pretty small number, but we are trickling it out. We are seeing increased engagement numbers for the users that are using the app. Engagement is up as far as the number of times they engage with it in a month compared to what we had before.

Our team of developers are mostly backend developers, but they left it in a good state and they worked with us in a way that we have been able to continue working on the app and we have added quite a lot of functionality ourselves. They gave us quite a good foundation for doing that and a good understanding of how we can continue working.

We worked really closely with them the entire time. The end result is something that we are all happy with. We have continued to meet up with the developer that worked with us in-house. We go to lunch with him every once in a while, and it is still a friendly relationship.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

There wasn’t much project management on their end, since we ran most of the project ourselves.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The second developer they added was able to plug in very quickly and hit the ground running even though he was remote. He was a very good addition to the team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were occasions where we expected them to give more expert advice throughout the project. It didn’t feel like they were pushing on some of those decisions as much as we maybe thought they would. I say that with a caveat, as we had some issues at the beginning of the project that potentially scared them and made them hesitant to push on decisions. Acting more as experts, would have been a real help to us on a lot of things since we didn’t know what we were doing.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you can host the developer in-house, do it. If you feel hesitant to do the design sprint because you feel like you already know what your product is and you don’t need to do it, do it anyway because it can be helpful.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president and founder of Real Simple Energy. We’re a startup energy shopping agent.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We initially hired them to build our website, which had very specific needs, so we couldn’t do it ourselves.

What was the scope of their involvement?

For our first project, they built our website from scratch. We’ve had three different engagements with them, though. Our subsequent projects have been big design and backend improvements for the original website they built.

The site is written entirely in Python with a Django framework. They created a completely customized retail energy search engine for home electricity purchasers.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with a backend developer, a frontend designer, and a frontend engineer. We have one point of contact, but also speak a lot with Dawn (Designer & Managing Director, thoughtbot).

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

We were referred to them by two completely different contacts. Neither one of those contacts knew that the other had recommended them, which just reinforced the recommendation.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $80,00–$100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The first project lasted from January–April 2018, but our most recent build-out lasted from October–December 2019.

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

It’s hard to measure the impact with metrics because we started from scratch. They took our vision and turned it into a reality. They created a totally bespoke website—nothing else is like it, so that has enabled our business to thrive.

We’re very pleased with how it worked out. Since the project ended, I’ve considered what we paid them, our engagement, and what the competition could have done for us, and I don’t think the project could have gone better.

We have a really solid and reliable product and we paid a fair price. We easily could have paid twice as much for a lower-quality site.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

Communication throughout the project was excellent. They regularly updated the Trello board so we could easily see what was going on. They were very responsive and answered all questions we had about the process. We used InVision early on, and then Slack as well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was impressed by the developers’ confidence and ability to execute. They weren’t afraid to tell us that something could be done in a better way or if something else needed to be a priority. As someone with little development experience, that was very valuable.

They did an excellent job managing our budget while creating a solid MVP. At one point, we wanted to add ten more features, but could only afford five. They were great at talking us through that and helping us narrow down the features we needed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would be really nice if we could also hire them at an hourly or daily rate. Right now, they charge by the week and they encourage us to let issues build up until they can put a developer on a project for a full period. Of course, the rates aren’t cheap and a week can add up.

There also isn’t a huge difference in price between senior and junior developers. I think that the rates should be more commensurate with the seniority of the developer.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of engineering at a healthcare coordination company. We help hospitals place patients in post-acute care facilities to improve patient outcomes as they move through the care continuum.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We needed to rebuild our entire platform but didn’t have time to build up our own team. We hired thoughtbot to augment our existing team for both the design and development process.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We created a search tool for discharge planners at hospitals can use to find the appropriate facility for discharged patients. It helps users collaborate with patients by incorporating their preferences and leverages Medicare information to ensure that they’re going to a high-quality facility. Facilities are able to create and edit profiles to show information like what services they provide and what insurance they accept.

thoughtbot worked through one design sprint with our team before moving into the development stage. They built a web app with Ruby on Rails and integrated a PostgreSQL database. Because thoughtbot was working closely with our internal team, they used the same tech stack as our older platform. However, they didn’t think our older code was salvageable, so they built the platform from the ground up.

What is the team composition?

We worked with one designer and 1–2 developers.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

Our head of product worked with them before and I’ve used their Gems before. I’ve also attended Chad’s (Developer & CEO, thoughtbot) discussions. They have a great reputation within the engineering community and I’ve had great experiences with them.

How much have you invested with them?

This project cost between $250,000–$300,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from September 2016–March 2017.

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

All of our existing users thought the new version was a major upgrade. The interface is much friendlier and easier to use. Our team of engineers felt that they benefitted a lot from working with the thoughtbot team and were able to develop new skills. We ended up with a nice, clean, well-tested code base that we continue to extend. It has lasted for the last four years and is still going strong. Working so closely with our team, it was easy for them to stick to our vision. It’s been a really positive experience all around.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

Communication was really great, and their team was very thoughtful. They asked great questions and truly understood the users and their goals. They helped our team refine our own development provides to ensure functionality for the customer. We worked in-person and used Slack so it was very easy to collaborate with them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

By asking a lot of questions, they earnestly try to understand the root of the problem and come up with the most effective solution.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Even though their questions ultimately helped us achieve a better product, it also created challenges when we were trying to move on. When we had a clear vision of what we wanted to build, we didn’t feel the need to dive into the details and instead needed to convince them that it was better just to get everything developed.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Really engage in discussions with them. You can definitely leverage their knowledge, skills, and expertise, but it’s important to keep in mind what you want. Sometimes, you need to hold your ground when you know what you want to get out of the engagement.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a startup social networking company, and our product is a knowledge-sharing platform for pet owners. I’m the co-founder and CEO of the organization. Right now, we’re in sort of a pre-launch stage.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We hired thoughtbot to help us redesign and rebuild our app. We had another development company take a first cut at the app, and we just needed a bit more firepower to get it over the finish line. thoughtbot was brought on to rework what was already there, both from a development functionality perspective and a design perspective.

Our project was unique to them because they were inheriting a codebase that wasn’t theirs to begin with. Diana (Managing Director, thoughtbot) told us before the engagement started that they don’t usually take on clients like us. There were a lot more unknowns compared to a project where they would be building the product from scratch.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started with a design sprint, which was a week-long brainstorming process to come up with a design based on extensive user testing and feedback gathering. thoughtbot set out to identify which functionalities were the most important to our users. They took a platform that felt like a traditional social networking app and redesigned it to be more focused on knowledge sharing. 

We retained the social networking elements, but the goal was to build a community of pet owners who can easily share knowledge with each other. They delivered a set of features that you would expect with a social network—feed, profile creation, onboarding, search functionality—and kept those as the key pieces of functionality. Everything was built and designed for iOS.

What is the team composition?

We started with a team of three individuals from thoughtbot—two designers and one programmer. After the design sprint, we transitioned to having just a head designer and a lead programmer. 

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

We wanted to work with a company that had an office close to us. Since we’re a Connecticut-based organization, we started looking for New York City-based development firms. We were referred to thoughtbot by a friend of my business partner, who had interviewed with them and thought that they were an exceptionally strong development company.

After interviewing a handful of other development companies, we felt that thoughtbot was the best fit for us, from many different perspectives. One is that they were incredibly professional and well-organized, both in terms of their organizational structure and their ability to produce materials quickly. We felt comfort in the fact that they had a well-thought-out process in place.

I care greatly about efficiency and structure, and that was important for my business partner as well. I also appreciated how their thought process was clear and how they were able to articulate their plans well. That gave us confidence in their abilities from the outset.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent close to $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with thoughtbot in early July 2019 and finished with them in October 2019.

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

We’ve only worked with a couple of other development firms, but, from our perspective, the thing that worked well for this engagement was how dedicated they were. We had both a designer and a developer from thoughtbot that were singularly focused on our project. This brought a level of focus that was critical to making our time with them successful. The designer and developer were also both incredibly talented and diligent in their workflow. 

For example, our developer was excellent at documenting every single change that was made. As a result, we now have a codebase that any other developer could step in and quickly understand because it’s so well documented and organized. That level of professionalism was extremely refreshing and distinguishes thoughtbot from other providers.

The other element of the engagement that helped a lot was the level of collaboration between the designer and developer. There was a constant flow of communication, and every time the designer worked on a deliverable, they confirmed the feasibility with the developer. If there was ever a moment when the design was a bit off, they could make adjustments very quickly. It was amazing how in-sync they were.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

We had an exceptional working relationship with them. thoughtbot follows an iterative design and development process, meaning that they didn’t lay out a schedule for the whole engagement at the very beginning. It’s a week-by-week process.
    
We used different tools, like Slack and Trello, to stay in constant communication. We were tracking progress with them all day, every day. Because we were always on the same page, we were able to test out features that they had developed in real-time. Having a small team also helped with this.

There was a tight feedback loop that we maintained throughout the engagement. Every morning, we’d have a standup meeting to plan out the day, and, at the end of the week, we’d have what they called a “retro” meeting. This was typically 45 minutes of discussing the successes and challenges of the week with some planning to improve the following week. Those meetings always brought the week together in a thoughtful, organized way, and we always felt prepared going into the next week as a result.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The standups and retro meetings were helpful because they provided an open forum for us to look critically at our performance. They also gave us the chance to make adjustments as needed, relative to our timeline and budget. Whenever we were falling short in an area, we were able to make the best decision to get us back on track.

Working with thoughtbot was, overall, a wonderful experience. I can’t say enough great things about the entire team, their process, their workflow, and the quality of the code. They have an excellent team of developers working there.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were a lot of unknowns coming into the project that ended up delaying our timeline. I don’t know if these could have been avoided; I think that’s just the nature of working with an existing codebase.

They struggled to make accurate predictions at times, despite their best efforts to review and dissect the code at the beginning. In that regard, the timeline did slip, but it wasn't due to a lack of effort or a lack of programming knowledge.

In general, they had a great sense of what could be accomplished in a given week. They were also very helpful in guiding us through pivots that we had to make because of new content or information that we encountered along the way.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Getting the most out of working with thoughtbot will come from having a tight feedback loop between your company and their team. That’s one of the things that we did well, and I’ve been told that it doesn’t always happen with their clients. Usually, clients take more of a hands-off approach, whereas we—my business partner and I—were working alongside them all day long.

That created a strong working relationship and allowed us to maximize the output during the time we had with them. I would highly recommend maintaining that level of engagement when working with thoughtbot.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Joydrive is the first online marketplace where customers can buy both new and pre-owned vehicles without visiting a dealership. Customers can complete the entire car-buying process online, on their own time and at their own pace.

Dealers interact with customers through a platform that provides the tools and features needed to complete the transaction, all the while being consistent, transparent, and fair to consumers. It's like Amazon, but for cars!

My role is leading our technical team, including any thoughtbotters who are currently engaged with us. My responsibilities range from product design to project management. I have been involved with the project since the technical inception.

For what projects/services did your company hire thoughtbot?

We went to thoughtbot to help build and provide a solid foundation for our website and marketplace platform. Being in the Automotive industry, there are quite a lot of challenges when it comes to interfacing with fragments vehicle data and descriptions, so ingesting and presenting all that information to consumers in an accurate, easy to understand way was difficult.

There is also a need for consumers to have an easy and intuitive purchasing experience and a need for dealers to be able to interact and fulfill consumer's purchases. Car purchases are quite complicated and almost always situational, so our system needed to be flexible and adaptive.

thoughtbot teamed up with Joydrive to help build a well-structured codebase and system using best practices and modern languages in order to scale as needed and be as performant as possible. Between design and development, there was a large opportunity to make a unique product that was special in the industry.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed a resilient and reliable website that used modern practices to provide a truly online ecommerce marketplace. This meant responsive & component-based design for optimum UI and UX that at all times considers accessibility. We needed a system that would scale as we grew and a codebase that was clean, well-tested, and maintainable.

We were largely flexible on the technologies used and consulted extensively with thoughtbot to find the correct fit. We ultimately settled on Elixir and the Phoenix framework, which has served us extremely well. This project was our entire business, as this was the first technical step in our journey. The stakes were extremely high for us to create a dependable foundation and an actually viable first iteration.

How did you select this vendor?

We utilized a ton of research and referral reviews as we considered many companies. Over several months we revewied many different companies to find the right fit. Several factors were critical in this selection:

1. the company must work as a partner in our journey, we wanted collaboration and growth-mindset
2. we needed nimbleness and technical excellence
3. we wanted consultative approach in addition to technical implementation
4. we wanted a vendor that can help us grow our technical team as we grew. Our President and CEO, myself, and others were involved in the selection process.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

thoughtbot started with a deep-dive design sprint to fully understand the business and to figure out the initial structure of the product itself. We started with no codebase, and they established not only the structure and a growing product, but also the approach and strategy to develop and design.

The process, from inception, was very collaborative and the thoughtbot team was deeply involved to understand the core needs and next steps. Since this was a multi-sided marketplace platform, there were many needed features, not only in the base functionality but also in design and branding.

Technical requirements were broad but necessary--a consumer would need to be able to browse, select, and actually purchase a vehicle, 100% online. At the same time, a dealer would need to be able to interact and complete the purchase. thoughtbot helped design and develop a product that would do all of this.

What was the team composition?

Our interaction with thoughtbot and their team members engaged with us have always been very lean and nimble. We started with a team of 2-3 and have ranged in size up to 6 members.

Throughout the entire process, there has been flexibility to scale up or down depending on needed bandwidth, current backlog, time to market, etc. thoughtbot has been a valuable partner in their flexibility and expertise.

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

thoughtbot has not only helped build our initial project but aided in continued development throughout our multiple year engagement. They have hep improve and refactor features along that way that significantly help grow our results, not only in direct transactions but also in added efficiencies, new technologies, and even additional services offered to consumers via the marketplace.

We are now the largest true marketplace in the industry and the only place where a consumer can buy, sell, trade, or lease New, Certified, and Pre-Owned vehicles, all 100% online.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was well structured yet flexible throughout the entire process. They helped introduce Agile processes and build out a management system that we still use today. For all work, they helped set expectations for timelines, were always responsive, and deeply involved.

In the beginning, they led project management but helped to grow our team to lead the management of the product and project. Many tools were used on the project to assist in communication and management, including GitHub, Slack, Google Hangouts, and Trello.

Over time, the technical team became 100% remote and thoughtbot's leadership in this area (along with the tools and practices they helped introduce) has led to a very successful team.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

thoughtbot is very innovative and knowledgable about not only the technologies that are widely adopted but also emerging or younger technologies. They quickly become experts in the tools and languages they use and have a network on employees they can rely upon to fill in any knowledge gaps.

They constantly work to "level up" their knowledge and are big contributors to the design/development communities and to open source. They are very consultative and thorough with their approach, doing the appropriate amount of user research and due diligence in order to properly identify what is viable and actually worth implementing. They communicate extraodinarily well and continue to help improve our processes.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We have only had difficulty once when we had a thoughtbotter in a European timezone when that person was the only one who's schedule didn't really overlap with the rest of the team. While this usually was not a problem, occassionally the timezone difference did prove challenging.

By the end of that person's engagement, we had discovered some additional strategies to deal with the time differences but unfortunately, it did take a bit of time to optimize. This is not thoughtbot's fault but just the circumstances.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product manager at an education company.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We needed a partner to design our online courses. We wanted a company to help us finder where to start and position us well for our development work. We needed help to focus our vision.

What was the scope of their involvement?

thoughtbot facilitated a design sprint for us. We shared the feedback received during our previous two design sprints with thoughtbot. Then, they came into our office and worked to understand our company including processes, challenges, and previous research. Their team helped us define the assumptions we wanted to test and the results we wanted from the design sprint. We worked on a storyboard for the prototype and discussed various different solutions. Their team built a prototype product using Sketch and InVision, integrating the content I produced. After, their team managed user tests.

What is the team composition?

Two thoughtbot employees worked directly on the project. In the run-up to the project, we had meetings with their team when they tried to understand our business and needs. Through that process, I communicated with three or four additional staff members.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

Our colleague had met a thoughtbot employee at a conference. I spent a lot of time researching agencies to decide which would be the best partner. I looked at about 30 different companies and contractors both onshore and offshore. What made thoughtbot stand out was that they really took time to understand our needs. Their team asked good questions and challenged us, which is what we needed. We didn’t want a partner to only execute a provided brief. Rather, we wanted a collaborator to challenge us, question our assumptions, and maintain a rigorous focus on the user. Even though they weren’t the cheapest offering, we felt like thoughtbot would provide us with the most value.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost about £16,000 (approximately $20,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We began the design work in September 2019. We began talking to them in May, but it was quite a long process because we weren’t sure when this project would start. Our work with them has concluded but it’s possible that we will work with them again.

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

Their designs were impressive. They had listened to everything we discussed in the collaborative design sprint as well as any feedback we provided.

Their team also facilitated the user test well. As a result, we have valuable feedback and constructive criticism that can guide our development efforts. That’s what we wanted: a clear picture of what we needed to build for users. Our work with thoughtbot will save us time during development as we won't be creating a platform that isn't focused on user needs. Their team has enabled us to be more efficient.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated well via Slack. I was impressed with how quickly they responded. We also did a lot of co-location work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re relentless in their focus on user needs and outcomes. Their team's not afraid to ask challenging questions, making sure the project hones in on one question or outcome that will shape the product. They were more collaborative than any other provider, listening and acting on any feedback. thoughtbot were creative thinkers. Their team approaches challenges with creativity.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think so.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have frank conversations and give thoughtbot a call. Before we started the work, they came to our office to understand the cultural fit and work styles. The experience was incredibly valuable.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a product company that also delivers digital marketing services. We make tools that help nonprofits, political organizations, and other altruistic groups solve digital marketing problems.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We were hearing signals from the market about a need for a conversion tool, but we didn’t have the engineering resources to spin that out fast enough. Most of our engineering resources were tied up with our flagship platform.

We hired thoughtbot to not only bring that product idea to fruition, but also to level up our own development practices and methodologies. Our goal was to build a more engaging and personalized form that could handle video and other rich forms of media.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Thoughtbot developed a tool that can handle a variety of use cases. One of the early ones they implemented was collecting video stories for crowdsourcing campaigns.

Another feature provides an easier method for accepting payments and donations. The product itself is a web app, which they built using Ruby on Rails and JavaScript.

What is the team composition?

We had two full-time engineers on the team from thoughtbot. One was a frontend guy who was also a designer. The other focused on backend development.

Throughout the engagement, we had plenty of opportunities to work with other designers and developers as well. Also, during vacation times, they assigned one or two additional developers to the project.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

We’d borrowed some things from thoughtbot in our own development methodologies and practices. They’re not only consultants but also practitioners. This made thoughtbot stand out from other development teams.

When it came to choosing a partner, we thought it would be useful to engage with a company that wrote the book on a lot of development best practices. We searched around for other development shops, but ultimately thoughtbot seemed to be the best fit, both in terms of culture and skillset.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost of the engagement was between $90,000–$110,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started at the beginning of June 2019, and we were done by the end of July 2019.

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

We recently started launching the product, and people seem to be very impressed with it. It’s much easier to use than other leading forms tools, and that was one of our goals.

We learned a lot from thoughtbot during the engagement, mainly because of their agile expertise. They also built an amazing product; something that few people have seen before. Overall, the experience was extremely positive.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

The project management was excellent. thoughtbot was very good at understanding our needs and goals, and they planned each week of work to meet those requirements. We were also embedded in their offices; they were very gracious to let our team members sit in with them. We were able to talk through processes, as well as our clients and users, which made for a very collaborative environment.

We had a Slack channel that we used and a Trello board to track tasks. We also communicated through a DevOps platform. They guided us throughout the project, and they were always receptive to adjustments. Sometimes we would go to them with things that we learned during the week, and they would respond with ideas for how to make our new vision happen. It was a warm partnership.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Aside from their technical proficiency, they were able to listen well and understand our perspective. They were very customer-focused. I always felt comfortable talking with them because they held our needs in the highest regard.

They didn’t push things on us, but they did offer suggestions based on their past experiences. I was impressed with how they were able to adhere to our needs and deliver an awesome product.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Maybe the handoff of the work at the end could have been smoother. Even so, I felt like that transition was pretty fluid. It was honestly more on us to be more receptive.

It’s hard for me to come up with things that could’ve been improved. We gave them a two-month timeline, so we didn’t expect them to help us set long term goals or anything like that. There’s some room for improvement with the UI/UX of the tool, but we knew that would be the case with a quickly-launched web app. Overall, they did a great job.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Research what you want to build. thoughtbot can spend plenty of time problem solving, but if you don’t know what you want, you may not get the right product. We did tons of user research and planning, and I think that allowed us to maximize the time that we spent with them.