thoughtbot

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of engineering for a digital advertising firm. We specialize in creating digital advertising for the real estate industry.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We were looking for expert developers who specialize in the same language that we used on our codebase which was Ruby on Rails.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We originally intended to get some help on some really difficult software that we were writing. We found out that the best way to use thoughtbot at the time was to help level up our current development staff to make them better engineers and help them solve these problems. That went fantastically and really set the stage for all the other engagements that we’d have after that.

In our first engagement, we used them primarily for teaching and pairing with our developers. After that experience, we used thoughtbot to augment our team. We were going through a transition in our organization; instead of immediately hiring the next engineer, we were able to be a bit pickier. We needed thoughtbot to give us the right amount of staffing to execute on our projects that we were looking for.

We found that the best projects for them to be a part of were new ideas. For short-term engagements, because we have a pretty complex business model, and it didn’t make sense for them to get in the weeds on some challenging business logic. It takes our developers months to learn those things.

They were exclusively on the development side, mostly Ruby on Rails but did some frontend work for us, too. They worked with our designers and product managers and they brought their backend skills.

They were embedded alongside our team and worked on our whole platform. They didn’t work on any one big project on their own but worked alongside the existing set of product developers for our existing application. They were also working on some experimental applications that we were prototyping at the time.

Their services included building custom software with us, providing in-depth training, and implementing developer best practices that we hadn’t been following yet on our team. They also did feature development and architectural review help.

What is the team composition?

We worked with four thoughtbot developers. I worked directly with their Raleigh managing partner. There were a couple of people who helped with weekly project status meetings as well.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

They’re a national company, but they also have a Raleigh/Durham office and that made them a really great potential partner to work closely with. Their engineers were well-known in our development community as very knowledgeable. We had a lot of trust in thoughtbot.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $250,000–$280,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from November 2017–November 2018.

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.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the VP of technology for a venture capital and private equity firm. I oversee anything technology-related, including IT management, custom software development, and company evaluation.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We wanted our own deal sourcing application to give us a competitive advantage in the VC market. We hoped such an app would incorporate different data sources and utilize internal algorithms to automate the process of finding the best companies to invest in.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They created a deal sourcing application in Ruby on Rails and hosted on Heroku with some AWS-supported functionalities. They started with a design sprint to collaborate on ideas and created some wireframes before moving into development.

What is the team composition?

thoughtbot provided a project manager, but for the most part, I worked directly with their developers. Their resource commitment was anywhere from one to four people depending on our needs at the time. They provided a designer at times as well.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

I conducted online research and asked my peers about the best development shops in the Bay Area. I interviewed about 10 local firms, including phone calls and in-person visits. At the end of the day, thoughtbot impressed me the most.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $1,024,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

They developed the app from Nov. 2015–Feb. 2016 and they continue to provide ongoing support.

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

The app has been adopted across our firm, and everyone uses it religiously. It’s been widely praised. I periodically send out user surveys looking for improvements, but the feedback I’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

I have no problem getting in touch with the developers or one of their managing directors, who has served as a project manager. We manage the project through Trello and communicated through Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their developers have been great across the board. We’ve worked with a lot of developers over the past few years, and in most situations, we’ve had to get people up to speed as they learned what was going on. However, all the developers from thoughtbot have been top-notch. They’ve picked things up easily and gotten the job done, which I think is a rare skill.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could do a little better with estimates. I know that tough, but improving their estimates for cost and delivery schedule would make a difference. As long as they understand that, it’s not that big of a deal.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that you have someone dedicated to the project who can commit to daily stand-up meetings, weekly retro, and constant communication on Slack. Your dedicated resources need to be reliable communicators with thoughtbot’s team.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of product for a network for public policy professionals.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We needed a company to develop our iOS app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

thoughtbot took the concept and idea of our product and guided it through the whole development process. We now have a working beta and are anticipating a native iOS app launch this fall.

The app is built around a directory of congressional staffers and registered lobbyists in Washington D.C. over the past 10 years. thoughtbot took these data solutions and united them. They plugged legacy data into our live data streams that we update weekly. The database serves as a directory and a social networking site. Staffers can find and claim their profile and then participate in the network.  

When the project started, I met thoughtbot in their office in New York. We ran a five-day design sprint to create a prototype that we began testing and building the product towards. We’ve just finished up another design sprint with them last week where we focused on the lead generation, getting users, and the initial marketing page and user onboarding flows. We went through the same type of sprint procedure and ended up with a clickable design prototype. 

thoughtbot has become a part of our team in their way of thinking and advising. They took our concepts and helped shape them into actual prototypes and products. They’ve also helped to change the way that we think about our business plan and how to build out the product in a way that mitigates risk, challenges, or assumptions, and helps us go forward. They really forced us to examine our value proposition and our business goals.

Product owners and clients like us can often have very strong biases towards features, objectives, or items that they think are going to work. thoughbot has helped us to label them as assumptions and challenge them in a very healthy way. We’ve reconceptualized the way we look at our product priorities and opportunities. They have had a monumental impact on how our business functions.

What is the team composition?

There are two full-time people and a project advisor who runs retrospectives every week and works with the managing director there. We’re soon going to be bringing on a fourth person.  

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

They were working for the company before I started working here. One of the original partners with the firm had worked with them previously, and he recommended that we use them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $1 million–$5 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2015, and the work is ongoing.

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.  

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I support our parent education and support program at the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We engaged thoughtbot to help us develop a website for our educational program that parents could easily access on their phones.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Thoughtbot walked us through a design sprint process and helped us hone in on what our goals were for the website before going into development. In the process, they helped us conduct user testing, interviews, and hosted a parent education workshop, so we could incorporate additional feedback into the build.

They then developed the site from scratch, using Ruby on Rails and other technologies, and helped us develop some of the interactive scripts and content we wanted to include.

What is the team composition?

We work with the owner, as well as a designer, developer, and a couple people managing the sprint process and project as a whole.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

They responded to our RFP and were also highly recommended by someone within the Planned Parenthood network. Their vision aligned with ours and we also liked that they were local, so we could spend a decent amount of time with them in person.

How much have you invested with them?

We've invested around $85,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We engaged them in March 2018 and conducted a design sprint week in June. The site launched in September, but we continue to work with them to make updates and small changes as needed.

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

Even though we just recently launched, users are already very excited about the site and we've received a lot of positive feedback.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

They're very accessible and responsive by phone or email. We also track projects and make requests through Trello, which has made the whole process rather seamless.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They ask good questions and have a strong initial process to help clients hone in on goals before going into development. They've been patient with our lack of technical knowledge and are very accommodating overall.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't think so. Any issues we had initially were resolved very quickly.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Keep an open mind to their processes. We found their approach to be very valuable in the long run, despite some initially challenging tasks we had to walk through to figure out the best approach to designing our product.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the senior engineering manager for an online platform.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We needed to hire more senior staff with skill sets beyond a standard background in iOS and Android technology.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Most of the work we've given thoughtbot has involved cleaning up our existing code for both iOS and Android consumer-facing products. They've rewritten and updated much of the code in Android's Kotlin language.

What is the team composition?

We work with a project manager and about four developers on their team.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

I wanted to work with them at a previous company I worked for, because I was so impressed by their work. I had also been interested in working for their company in the past, because I really liked their business model and how they continue to develop their employees.

How much have you invested with them?

We've invested about $100,000 thus far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them for over six months and the relationship is ongoing.

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.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the COO of a Boston-based startup. We're making personal training more accessible and more affordable to people by splitting the cost of personal training.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We wanted to develop a tool that allowed gyms to post their personal training availability and gave users the ability to book sessions with those personal trainers.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We approached them only with an idea and some research that showed there would be a market and interest for this app. They helped us translate what were simply ideas into an MVP. Once we had the basics of a product, we collaborated to get that into the hands of users to get feedback. Our app used Ruby on Rails, and we worked with UserTesting for the user acceptance testing and Marvel to manage mockups and wireframes.

What is the team composition?

We had one designer and anywhere from two to three developers.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

We sent out an initial RFP, and taking direction from our initial investors, we decided to search for firms that had a presence in Boston. We wanted to work with people we could sit across the table from. We put out our proposal and ultimately selected thoughtbot through that process.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We reached an agreement in August 2016, and we did our first design sprint in September 2016. Our MVP was available in the marketplace and in the hands of users in December 2016. We’ve made several rounds of changes over time. We still continue to use thoughtbot for maintenance and support, and they occasionally do some development work for us.

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

I don’t have exact metrics, but the product has been very reliable since its launch.

How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint?

They were organized and easy to work with. I found all the members of their team to be personable and knowledgeable. We weren’t tech people so it was important to have guidance, and they were generally capable of explaining every step to us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The aspect of partnership with them was important to us. They were committed to understanding what we were trying to do and helping us be successful at all levels.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They prove their value by virtue of what they develop, but they’re a high-end firm. We knew it would be expensive to use them going into the project, so I can’t criticize them for that, but they’re a high-end firm.

Any advice for potential customers?

I should have spent a lot more time thinking about what I wanted. Considering those initial user requirements and specifications would have saved a lot of time and money. They were useful in getting us from a blank piece of paper to an MVP, but it would have been better to have that figured out internally.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My names is Justin Seeley and I'm the director of product at Draft. We're a fantasy sports company, with a website and a mobile application for both iOS and Android.

What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot?

We needed to get our website up to date before September 1st, which is the beginning of the NFL season. Our website was lagging behind the app to the point where we had to ship twice as many features on the web just to catch up.

We needed a developer who works in Ember [an open-source JavaScript web framework].

What was the scope of their involvement?

The thoughtbot developer is running the entire backend development of our Ember application, as well as owning basically all of the Ember codebase. He built 4-5 big features on the app. This required ingesting a lot of the API in order to allow users to add players to different lists and other features.

In addition, the developer helped us interview candidates when we were trying to hire a full-time web developer. He also taught one of our other web developers a little bit of Ember.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

A friend recommended them, so they were one of several companies up for consideration. Our CEO made the final call to hire thoughtbot.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $100,000-$150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Work began around 8 months ago, and is finishing up this month [January 2018].

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.

Could you briefly describe your organization?

I work for a specialist data analysis company, focused at the moment on health care in the U.K. We work with national and local organizations, including government agencies, to help them use data and information to guide their decisions, whatever those decisions might be.

What is your position?

I’m the managing director.

What business challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot [formerly New Bamboo]?

We had an intelligent product, which we had created and shared with 140 organizations plus the NHS [National Health Service] every quarter, and we wanted to turn this into an interactive online platform. We had the data knowledge and the vision, but we were not Web developers. We had the technical knowledge to undertake the data analysis, and we knew what we wanted to do with the data. We had an idea of how we wanted it all to look and feel, but because we weren’t trained as developers, we simply couldn’t build the platform ourselves. For that reason, we went in search of outside expertise.

Could you describe the scope of their involvement?

We initially approached thoughtbot in April of 2013, and shaped the project, the requirements, with some initial work on visuals and functionality. We started the website build probably in July of 2013, and the initial, minimum viable product went to market in November of 2013. We then disengaged from thoughtbot for a short time, but went back to them in the spring of 2014 to make some changes and upgrades to the platform’s core functionality. Then we went back to them again in August and September of this year [2014] to make some additional improvements to the functionality. In all of these cases, they’ve been serving as our core development team.

How did you come to work with thoughtbot?

We looked at firms in the London area that had significant technical development expertise and had a track record of building interactive, data-driven websites. I suppose it was more of a gut-feeling approach because any decent vendor could have developed what we wanted, but we wanted a partner that could offer more than that. We wanted a company that would not only be able to build our platform to our unique specifications. We wanted a company that would be in a position to provide additional strategic insight. We wanted them to be able to provide key recommendations in areas in which we have little knowledge.

We knew that we needed to go through a fairly intensive iterative design process, with people that would understand what we were trying to do and, quite frankly, were perfectionists like we are. Unless it was exactly our vision, it wouldn’t be good enough. The reason we chose thoughtbot is because they demonstrated that they could do what we wanted, technically, but much more to the point, they demonstrated that they had a passion for what they did.

Could you provide a general cost estimate for this engagement?

Total spending for the project was probably half a million dollars.

When was this project complete?

The relationship is still ongoing.

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the quality of their performance?

There isn’t any real way to track metrics and isolate their own individual contribution. Because they’ve worked alongside us as more of a collaborator, it isn’t all that effective to monitor metrics in that way. However, anecdotally, our end-users have been very impressed with the functionality and accessibility of the platform. Rarely do we come across defects or malfunctions. We’ve been very impressed with the overall quality of the code they deliver to us; it’s always viable and in accordance with our specifications.

When working with thoughtbot, is there anything you’d consider unique about their strategic approach or development methodology that distinguish them from other vendors?

Their internal drive for delivering high-quality, viable solutions is a key differentiator. Their ability to understand our core technical and business requirements is bar none. Those two characteristics combined with their transparency and responsiveness make them one of the best vendors out there. It’s extremely difficult to come across that mix.

In retrospect, are there areas in which you think thoughtbot could improve as a service provider?

As with any relatively small business, continuity of staff is always a problem, and they have sometimes had to change members of their team. It hasn’t occurred during a piece of work, but between finishing one element and starting the next. That’s not always worked out so well. They haven’t put as much thought as they could have into the fit of a particular developer on our team. Certain temperaments and personality types are better suited to our corporate culture than others. On a high level, I know they understand this, so I would have expected more thought put into which developers are newly incorporated into our team.

Could you briefly describe your organization?

I work for the consumers association of the U.K., and our mission is to make consumers as powerful as the organizations with which they interact. This is a nonprofit organization. We generate revenue through our members’ subscriptions, which give people access to product reviews and content that we create, for specific advice around best products to buy in the market, or how to manage your finances, or any consumer-related issues. The revenue from those subscriptions is funneled into our campaigning efforts on behalf of consumers, such as having more transparent ticket pricing, energy prices and so on.

What is your position?

I’m the head of products on the digital team.

Could you describe the business challenges that you were attempting to address when you first approached thoughtbot [formerly New Bamboo]?

For us, it was getting a team that could come in and do some custom development work on the specific verticals we wanted to launch. We have our own in-house development team, but these were areas where we wanted to try new products and services. We weren’t really sure if we wanted to invest in a permanent head count to build out a team and work on these projects. Working with an agency gave us the flexibility to allocate resources with an agency to build something. If the product didn’t work, we could choose to kill it off without having committed in long-term overhead costs. We’ve worked with other digital development agencies before. Thoughtbot has great reputation among them, and our in-house development stack is unrivaled. We really only wanted to work with firms that had an established reputation with our technologies.

Could you describe the scope of their involvement?

They worked primarily as an extension of our development team. In-house, we had a product manager and business analysts, so we wrote all the stories in the backlog, and then thoughtbot provided a scrum master and the developers. They performed all the custom development work, and it was a kind of team effort. Our people were signing off on the user stories during phase, and the iterations were only one week apiece. The process was very agile.

They also contributed some thoughts around our information architecture, but it was pretty much performing the customizations. We had several in-house user experience, interactive, and visual designers. As a result, we provided them with the design assets they’d need, and they built it accordingly. They had some valuable ideas around the visual design, some of which we took into account, and some that we chose to disregard. I’d say the majority of their work was relegated to technical responsibilities, rather than visual design.

How did you select thoughtbot as your solution partner?

We knew of them in terms of the [Ruby on] Rails community. One of our architects had done a bit of Web research, and suggested that we speak with them. We spoke to a couple of other agencies and, from our perspective, we decided to give it a go and see how we worked together. We’ve now worked through four different projects with them because the first project went really well, and we continued from there. That first project was basically a trial run with them, and its success inspired us to continue using them.

Could you provide a general cost estimate for this particular engagement?

£115,000 [approximately $181,000].

When was this completed?

This is still ongoing. We’re always making adjustments and enhancements.

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, and user feedback that would demonstrate the quality of their performance?

I don’t know the stats off the top of my head. The first site we launched has done very well. That one launched less than a year ago, and it’s doing well from a traffic perspective. It’s definitely meeting our expectations. I think that’s mostly due to the design and marketing of the product, not the development itself, its functionality certainly plays a role. We wrote the technical requirements, and they custom built the functionalities in accordance with them. The advantage of using them is that they work in a very agile fashion. If we built something and it wasn’t quite right, we could change it quickly in the next sprint and test it again only a week or two later.

The fact that they’re so proficient at working in an agile fashion meant that, as a whole team, we were able to get things delivered quite rapidly, and iterate on them, rather than waiting three months for something that didn’t match our requirements. We were able to look at each prototype after one iteration and see what was working and not working. The end quality of the product was as solid as we could have hoped for because of the process we used as a team. They followed through on all of their commitments. They were excellent at retrospectively looking back at the work and determining how we could improve the process. Overall, that resulted in a higher quality product, but it was a combination of them working really closely with us to do that.

When working with thoughtbot, is there anything that you’d consider unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguish them from other vendors?

I’ve worked with six or seven developers from thoughtbot because they have a habit of rotating developers every six to eight weeks on a project. To me, the rotations have been seamless. They have very competent developers. They do loads of pairing and code reviews. It seems to me that the quality of their developers is equal. They’re all really quite good. As a client, I don’t see a drop in velocity when they take one developer off and bring another in. They provide a consistent level of service that I haven’t seen in from agencies, or even our in-house team. Their engineering standards, development standards, and the way that they have that consistently through their team is very impressive. I’ve yet to be disappointed in one of their developers.

In retrospect, are there areas in which you think thoughtbot could improve as a service provider?

Their developers are so adept at self-managing, I’m not really clear on the value I get from their scrum master. Perhaps because we’re a digital development team anyway, we’re not like some of their clients that completely outsource their development responsibilities. We work with them very closely, so I feel like the scrum master is almost not doing anything because our product managers or business analysts will make sure that the user stories are there, and groomed in the backlog, and the team is ready and set up to go. I’ve just not really seen a return on investment from the scrum master, but that said, I’m really happy with the package we get from them. That’s the one area that I have some skepticism about, and it’s more because that particular resource seems unnecessary for us.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I run a single-founder startup in the cryptocurrency field.

For what projects/services did your company hire thoughtbot?

I had an idea for a currency exchange and I reached out to them to help refine the concept and build a prototype.

What were your goals for this project?

I wanted to create a prototype that I could market to users and potential investors.

How did you select this vendor?

I evaluated multiple vendors online, looking at reputation and other projects on their websites. After that, I met with my top three choices to evaluate their approaches and ultimately chose thoughtbot.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

They used a programming language called Elixir to build a prototype for a bitcoin exchange system.

What was the team composition?

There were two developers and one project manager.

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

Thanks to this project and thoughtbot’s hard work, I was able to fully explore my business concept. The effort was ultimately abandoned but the experience was useful to me nonetheless.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project manager oversaw the developers. They had a separate manager who handled all of my concerns, which was very useful.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I appreciated how well they kept their work on track. I also liked how they used job stories to focus on the most important elements of the product.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

Not really. I enjoyed working with them and would do so again if the opportunity arose.