thoughtbot

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chief customer officer for the Multi-State Partnership for Prevention.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We brought them on to help us scale and maintain a SaaS software devoted to public health.

What was the scope of their involvement?

thoughtbot has helped us with the conversion from Heroku to AWS, so they’ve helped us a lot with our system architecture and the code behind the features. Since our company is entirely virtual, they’re fully virtual members of our team. Moreover, they help us build out the skills in our team. While they work to improve the performance and features of our system, they also mentor and upskill our team members. We’ve never intended to have them forever, so they teach our team how to do this.

What is the team composition?

The team always has between 5–7 developers. We’ve worked with Chad (Founder & COO) and Joe (CTO).

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

They were recommended to us.  We interviewed them as potential technical partners. We decided to engage them based on the interview and the references we got.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested over $1 million with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2021, and our relationship is ongoing. We now have only a few specialized people, but we still have a great partnership.

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

Our system is performing perfectly. We don’t have metrics, but we’re 100% sure that we wouldn’t be in the business anymore if it weren’t for thoughtbot. They came in and identified how to scale the system and maintain it. Moreover, they did a complex migration without downtime for our customers.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re great. They’ve set the standards for our technical and project communication. We were having trouble scaling up to our business demands; thoughtbot helped us structure the foundation for project management and communication that we still use today.

We use Jira to manage and track the tickets and development. Also, we primarily use Slack and Zoom to communicate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

From day one, they’ve helped us as team members, not outside consultants. They function like us, celebrate our wins, and help us with downtime. We feel like extremely close partners. Additionally, the team has the expertise we need, but they’re also conscientious and ethical. If they make a mistake, they lead by example and are accountable for it. The people in our organization have seen that and understood that this is how partners treat each other. They’ve helped us develop our engineering culture.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything. Bringing them in is one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. We’re still working with them, so I don’t have anything to complain about.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If your project meets their capabilities, I’d highly recommend them. thoughtbot is a great partner, and they’re very knowledgeable. Also, they have an excellent reputation in the engineering world.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Founder and Managing Director of Contractuali UG (haftungsbeschränkt) a (future) contract management SaaS, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany.

For what projects/services did your company hire thoughtbot?

We engaged thoughtbot to design and develop a prototype representative of the Contractuali MVP to test with users and give investors a more concrete illustration of what capabilities the product will provide.

How did you select this vendor?

We requested proposals from two vendors that have capabilities in the tech stack in which we plan to build the service. We were impressed by thoughtbot's level of interaction and feedback during the proposal process as well as the proposed structure of the design sprint. Thoughtbot also took our previous designs and planning into account, allowing us to significantly reduce the cost of the engagement.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

The design sprint took place over the course of a week and was broken down to quickly and efficiently move from ideation, sketches, and storyboards to an interactive prototype. The produced prototype was then tested across five users from our target and related markets. The testers provided feedback on the UX/UI as well as the usefulness of the product within their respective markets.

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

The design sprint was very collaborative. We worked directly with two thoughtbot UX/UI designers.

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

Given the duration of the sprint was only one week, we are extremely pleased with the delivered prototype and feel it accurately represents the vision we have for the product. This was reflected by the positive feedback we received from users. Overall, we now have a great blueprint to guide our engineering push!

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication with the UX/UI designers was frequent and timely. In fact, for most of the sprint, we were collaborating directly with each other on video calls as we worked through the prototyping process. The sprint wrapped up nicely with a post-mortem meeting in which the findings of the test sessions were shared and recommended next steps were outlined.

A member of the thoughtbot engineering team was also on this call to get a leg up on any technical challenges that the prototype presents.

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

The UX/UI work was really top notch. I was extremely pleased by how polished the prototype was, given the number of features it covered.

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

Not this time. This was a fairly short engagement with almost constant face-to-face interaction. As such it was not prone to some of the pitfalls surrounding communication, deadlines, etc. of longer engagements.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the two co-founders of Hotshot. We make videos and other learning materials to help lawyers learn and help organizations — whether it’s a law firm or a law school — provide training programs.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We have a SaaS-like product, since people have to log into our website to be able to watch our videos. In this regard, the web experience is fundamental to our business, so we worked with thoughtbot on the development of our website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our initial engagement with thoughtbot involved the development of a website from scratch. Their team built it such that we, as administrators, could upload videos, manage users, and manage customer permissions through a CMS and an administrative interface. They also developed it in a way that could allow users to track their own progress.

Over the course of our partnership, we also worked with thoughtbot on several other projects, mostly involving the addition of features to our SaaS platform. We asked them to give it a scalable, modern, and high-end design since we have a prestigious customer base. The quality, professionalism, and simplicity of the interface were as important to us as the site’s overall reliability.

What is the team composition?

We usually work with 1–2 people at a time. Over the years, we’ve interacted with a total of 7–8 people from thoughtbot. 

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

I was looking for high-end web development agencies on Quora and spoke to about 3–4 different providers. Of them all, thoughtbot seemed to be the best people to work with. We really liked the way they operated and ran their engagements.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested between $500,000–$1 million. 

What is the status of this engagement?

I first found thoughtbot in Q2 2015, and we are still engaged with the team.

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

The thoughtbot team has developed a very stable platform that experiences very little downtime, if any at all. It’s also highly flexible seeing as we’ve been able to add several features to it with no issue. Though we don’t have the numbers for it, the user feedback we’ve received has been almost universally positive.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re very good in terms of project management. We use Zoom and Google Meet, but Trello and Slack are our main, day-to-day communication tools. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’ve got really high-quality developers and designers. Though they follow an agile methodology, they’re not dogmatic about it; their processes are well-balanced. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there’s nothing for them to improve upon. We’ve been very happy with their services.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Different web development agencies have different approaches and price ranges, so you have to make sure that the provider you hire is a good fit for your organization. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at a software company; we’re developing a staff product tool.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We needed expert consulting for our business.

What was the scope of their involvement?

thoughtbot did business consulting for us. They had a well-thought-out process which started with a two-week sprint of product research to find out whether we should build this product or not. We used online whiteboard tools to do whiteboard sessions where we created hypotheses and storyboarding for the platform that helped us understand if what we wanted to build was something that the market needed. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with four people from their team, including Kelly (Associate Director) and Jimmy (Developer).

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

They were referred to us by a friend who worked with them in the past.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $10,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from October–November 2021.

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

I give them five stars out of five; I’m delighted with their work, and they exceeded my expectations.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

They were on point; they stuck to the schedules and budget and kept me in the process loop. In terms of communication tools, we used Zoom, Slack, email, and Miro.

What did you find most impressive about them? 

They were thorough and helped us understand if we were on the right track or not, which is good. They also took pride in ensuring that we didn’t build something we didn’t want, so they went through all the necessary steps to ensure that we weren’t wasting money on something useless that couldn’t help us increase revenue.

Overall, everything was amazing.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on — they did great. 

Any advice for potential customers?

Keep an open mind because they will help you think through many things. They’re experts on their work, so they understand how to build and test products and validate hypotheses. Being open will increase your chances of success with the product you’re making with them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product manager of accessory sales at a fitness wearables company. I own the e-commerce experience for the customizable add-ons to our main product line.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

Prior to working with them, we relied on Shopify for the front- and backend of our e-commerce site. Shopify’s frontend was prohibiting us from completing another project of ours, so we brought them in to migrate our site from the Shopify Liquid templates to a custom React frontend platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The new platform uses the Gatsby framework. It is designed to allow consumers to look at our product collection, filter and search within that collection, log into the site with membership credentials, and ultimately purchase a product. We spent the first several weeks of the project determining what processes and infrastructure to use. From there, we collaborated to rebuild the website page-by-page. We provided them with a PowerPoint presentation that gave an overview of our site and product suite.

What is the team composition?

We worked with two software engineers, one of whom was brought on as a subcontractor by them.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

I didn’t start with the company until about two weeks before the project started, so I don’t have much direct insight into the selection process. However, my understanding is that they were selected due to their demonstrated expertise, low price point, and trustworthiness.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $167,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from February–April 2021.

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

When we were launching the new website, we conducted some A/B testing between the old and new sites. The new site had a 2.5% increase in revenue per session, a 40% decrease in page load time, and a huge decrease in development errors.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

They were great. Since we were all new to each other coming into the project, they were flexible with figuring out the processes that worked best for all of us. We used Confluence for documentation and communicated via Jira, Slack, and Zoom.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very knowledgeable and personable. Josh (Managing Director) checked in regularly to make sure all our needs were met. In the end, the project was a great success. We ended on time and on budget.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had a hard deadline for this project, so we wanted to start working on development as soon as we brought them in. However, there were some staffing issues on their end that caused delays. We both could have communicated about these better.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be flexible with the processes you use. We figured everything out as we went, which helped the project go well. Trying to synchronize between internal and external processes can be a major challenge, so keeping everything loose was a major plus.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior product manager of the therapy product at Relias. We develop online healthcare education content.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We assessed all of the changes that were happening within the healthcare system and realized that there were some gaps in our offering. We were providing education to healthcare providers, specifically physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists. However, in order for therapists to get the best outcomes, they needed tools to help them engage with their patients.

We wanted to develop two mobile applications with thoughtbot. One would be for therapists to use to prescribe exercises. The second one would be for patients to receive those exercises.

What was the scope of their involvement?

First, we defined the problem that we were trying to solve. thoughtbot was very flexible and designed a mini-sprint with us. We had already done a ton of formative work for them to accelerate the process. Instead of going through a full five-day sprint, we only went through a one-day sprint.

After that, we validated the problem through rapid prototyping and user interviews. We finalized the designs, validated them, and built the iOS and Android apps. thoughtbot did the frontend of the app, and our in-house team built the backend.

What is the team composition?

The team composition changed quite a bit for a whole variety of reasons. In total, we worked with five people from thoughtbot.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

My company put out a request for application (RFA) with a highly competitive bid. We liked that thoughtbot definitely had the level of expertise that we were looking for.

They were very clear and well versed in how to run design sprints, design thinking, and rapid iterative prototyping, which are things that our company was embracing. That was the deciding factor. They had a process and system in place that we wanted to adopt. We were really interested in working with them and seeing how they use those tools.

What is the status of this engagement?

We formally worked with them from October 2020–April 2021. The initial phase of the project is done, and we’re on hold for a little bit.

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

We internally had some challenges, so our app is not fully functional at this point in time. However, the frontend of the app, which thoughtbot developed, is done. We’ve experienced a couple of minor bugs, but they were immediately fixed.

Despite the app not being a product ready for people to buy, we’ve been validating it in the market as a fully functional frontend. We’ve gotten really positive feedback from the therapists working in this space and our end-target patients, which are older adults.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

We set up a superefficient communication system. We had a standup meeting with thoughtbot once a week.

thoughtbot was extremely attentive, flexible, and they addressed everything immediately. They integrated into our team exceptionally well and were easy to work with.

What did you find most impressive about them?

thoughtbot didn’t bring any preconceptions or misconceptions to the table. They were really good at listening and understanding the project. We worked together to identify the problems. After that, they let our end-users dictate the direction of the project, which was really powerful.

Sometimes, there’s a tendency to put in features to make things look super snazzy. However, they understood that we needed a clean and simple design because that’s what our end-users wanted. They were excellent about sticking to that and didn’t misdirect us at any point.

Any advice for potential customers?

The processes that we put in place together and the way they attended to our daily engineering standards helped significantly.

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’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.