WebiNerds

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or impact of the engagement?

We just sent out our first round of NPS [net promoter score] surveys and received the results from our first handful of customers. Most of our scores were nine or eight, with nothing below an eight. I think that’s a testament to the quality of the product WebiNerds produced for us.

How did WebiNerds perform from a project management standpoint?

At any given point, we have about seven to eight engineers or technical team folks working on the project, including engineers who work on the backend, UI/UX, and testing. WebiNerds performs extremely well from a project management standpoint, and that’s one of the reasons why we picked them. What we get from WebiNerds is a lot of visibility into what is being built, its status, the way it’s being managed, and the way they break up tasks into sprints and such. We meet periodically, and there are dashboards and reports that we have access to at any given point.

Their openness is one of their core selling points, particularly because their team is offshore. It’s important for us to have that level of visibility. As we start realizing the need for additional product features, that line of communication between the sales and products and customer success has been seamless, even though they’re not here with us in San Francisco.

Our CTO uses a couple of platforms, mainly JIRA, to stay on top of what’s going on with WebiNerds from a project management perspective. I asked them to build some spreadsheets that I can log into periodically to see what’s being built, what’s in the pipeline, what issues are being raised by the customers, what’s the estimated time for completion, etc. I don't necessarily log into their project management tools because I've asked them to build something that’s easier for me to read and understand. They’ve done a pretty good job with that.

What did you find most impressive about WebiNerds?

A couple of WebiNerds’ hallmarks that have worked well for us are their flexibility and range of skills. For example, at one point in the lifecycle of our product, we needed to run data science experiments; it was easy for us to ask them, “Find us a data scientist to run some experiments so we can test and see whether this is a plausible direction that we need to take our product.” That was easily done. A couple of months from now, we’ll need someone to run some machinery experiments so that we’ll be able to pass certain requirements. Those technical skills would be hard for us to find and source as a lean startup, but WebiNerds is able to do it quickly.

The second impressive WebiNerds hallmark is their project management communication skills, which are key. They’ve been stellar in being open and over-communicating, which is what we need. They’ve also been flexible with billing. There have been certain months where we had to delay payment, and they’ve been flexible on that end also. Before we hired WebiNerds, we tried to work with an in-house tech team, and it was not a pleasant experience. It’s been our benchmark by which we compare other companies. That project was built in a monolithic fashion. The difference between working with our in-house team and working with WebiNerds is night and day. WebiNerds has been fantastic.

Are there any areas WebiNerds could improve?

We can't think of any ways WebiNerds could improve. 

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We’ve actually already launched, but it’s not a consumer product so it’s not getting much feedback. But the main feedback we’ve been getting is that everything works great. There is minimal downtime in the codes, especially on the backend. Even when bugs were recorded, which was a rarity, the fixes came extremely quickly. We’re talking less than 48 hours for every bug that’s been recorded in the past year or so. It’s pretty solid as a partnership for development.

How did WebiNerds perform from a project management standpoint?

We knew how many hours per week that the dedicated resource devoted to the project; we had daily communication with him. We had a weekly or monthly communication with the administration of WebiNerds, and again, that flawless communication made things a lot easier on every front. We used Wrike as a project management system.

What did you find most impressive about WebiNerds?

The main thing that I want to highlight is the communication. Despite the fact that we have an eight-hour time difference, it felt as if they were full-time employees. That was unique based on my past experiences with offshore consulting gigs, the fact that they were always responsive and on time. When we scheduled deadlines, they always stuck to them.

Are there any areas WebiNerds could improve?

Short of actually sending people to work on site, I don’t think there’s much to change. I hope that the next time we engage WebiNerds it will be the exact same structure.