Made-to-measure.
Every project is unique, and we create a detailed process and roadmap for our team to deliver to you innovative and solid solutions that work.
Our specialty is working with teams to excel at Conceptualization => MVP Development => Scaling => Expansion. We structure our business so we can flex to your unique needs at each point in your startup journey.
Concept
MVP
Scaling
Expansion
Conceptualization
Together, we make ui/ux and architectural decisions to maximize your business goals.
MVP development
We use the designs to build and launch a minimum viable product.
Scaling
We help you assess and overcome the challenges of scaling. (i.e. more users than expected, customers use the app in an unexpected way, etc)
Expansion
We provide a smooth transition from working with us as your core technical team to installing your own internal CTO and technical team.
How we operate
Navigate through the menu tabs to understand each step of our process.
Special Note: For those new to the world of software development, many of the concepts and terminology will be new. That's OK. We are happy to take the time to be your guide.
Assessment phase
It’s extremely common for companies, teams, or individuals to contact us for help to understand what a path forward looks like. This is exactly what the assessment phase is for!
In this phase, we have a few core goals:
We
- Learn about you, your business, and your goals.
- Conceptualize potential paths forward to help you reach those goals.
- Guide you to a decision that is best for you.
You
- Learn about different ways to achieve your goals.
- Become empowered to make a decision on how to achieve your goals that is best for your business.
- Begin moving towards your goals!
Frequently this means now isn’t the right time to work together, and that’s okay! We would rather you take a different path than unnecessarily spend money with us. As long as you know what the right path is for your business, that’s a win for us.
Kickoff
Assignment of Resources
One of our core responsibilities is team building. If we don't have resources available from current team members, we recruit them from our network. That process typically takes about 2 weeks depending on the skill set required.
We will initially plan for a basic set of resources and discuss with you the desired number of hours/wk you would like to have spent on the project. Our aim is to match resources with that target. Some examples of resource skill sets include:
- Design (UI/UX)
- Front End Development
- Back End Development
- ML/AI
- Blockchain
- Security/Encryption
- Project Management
- Fractional CTO
Establish Secrets Vault
We create a vault in 1 Password for your company/project and give you access to it. This vault contains all the credentials for the SaaS products that will be used on the project. We will need to immediately add to the vault the following items:
- Email address provided and controlled by you to create all of the SaaS accounts (we will help you set this up if necessary)
- A credit card we can add to the vault to pay for SaaS products as necessary
Why?
We want you to have complete control and ownership over your product, which means that you own and have immediate access to all the services that were used to design, build, and run your product.
Set Up Hours Tracking
We provide a link that allows you to view the hours spent on the project at your convenience. There is full transparency into spend and burn rate.
Set Up Project Wiki
We set up a Notion.so that acts as a single source of truth for the project. Everyone involved in the project (both your team and our team) is provided access and works from this single source of truth. If you have a different system for establishing a source of truth, we’re more than happy to work within it.
Design Phase
This phase specifies the scope for the first version of the product. The outputs of this process will reduce technical risk and provide materials to present to potential users for feedback, reducing market/business risk.
People
- Product Owner (Customer): Guides the vision for the product, thinking about the product end to end.
- Lead Designer: Leads the visual design process. Possibly supported by a Designer.
- Lead Developer/s: Leads discussions on technical capabilities and limitations, as well as ensuring technical best practices are captured in the design (multifactor authentication, password complexity, etc.)
- Project Manager (if necessary): Ensures that particularly complex products stay on track with the goals.
- Principal: Identifies issues and strategies that need to be addressed now to maximize long term success for both the product and business case.
Process
- Discovery: understand and define the problem
- Brainstorm and analyze: benchmarking, sketches of solutions, and UX (wireframes)
- Design: create assets and clickable prototypes for user testing and to feed into development.
- User testing: depending on the project, can be done during the discovery phase (if there are too many open questions about the product), after the first model (to validate flows and decisions), or prototype (to validate the final product). User testing results are fed back into the design process until confidence in the plan is solidified.
Deliverables - Design
- Clickable prototype for market/user testing
- Assets for development (Figma)
- Design system (guides for color scheme, typography, buttons, components)
Deliverables - Development
- Technical Architectures (network, complex/high risk tasks)
- Technical proof of concepts for complex or high risk tasks
- A better (but far from perfect) estimate of time/cost
Build Phase
V1 is built and deployed.
Special Note: It's possible that the Design Phase has shed light on key problems in product-market fit that are deemed insurmountable. That's OK. It's always a good idea to not invest more money into a product not fit for the market. It's better to spend a little money to ensure you don't waste a lot of money.
Resource Allocation Adjustments
Previously assigned resources are re-evaluated and confirmed. If more or different resources are required, they are assigned.
People
- Product Owner (Customer): Responsible for regularly interacting with the product as it is built, answering questions about the product, attending weekly planning sessions and reporting bugs. (There are times when this could be tedious, boring, repetitive, frustrating, or all the above. This is normal.)
- Lead Designer: Answers questions about the design and updates the design as changes occur. Possibly supported by a Designer.
- Lead Developer/s: Writes code, reviews pull requests, ensures best practices are followed, updates architectures as changes occur, and is responsible for deployments.
- Developer/s: Write code and support code reviews, as necessary.
- Project Manager (if necessary): Ensures that particularly complex products stay on track with the goals and plans the sprints.
- Principal: Performs code reviews, reviews architecture changes, reviews sprint tasks
Process
- Sprint tasks are created and placed in the backlog
- Sprint planning sessions with stakeholders are held once per week to review what was done and the next tasks to accomplish
- Tasks are executed and moved to done
Note: The scope and pace of work are evaluated by the Principal and Product Owner as work continues to understand the consequences of reality, which is always different than what is planned. Changes in any number of tools, platforms, and SaaS products make development unpredictable. Moreover, we select the best tools for the job for each product, because shoehorning and inappropriate solution is usually worse than using a solution we have not applied before. This means that frequently there are unknown unknowns that are only discovered during development, another reason development is unpredictable.
Refinement and Launch
End to End testing is intensified and expanded beyond the project team (alpha/beta customers and testers). Issues are identified and remediated. Stability in the system is obtained.
People
- Product Owner (Customer): Heavily tests the application and recruits other testers (ideally potential customers) to use and test the application as well.
- Lead Designer: Answers questions about the design and updates the design as changes occur. Possibly supported by a Designer.
- Lead Developer/s: Writes code, reviews pull requests, ensures best practices are followed, updates architectures as changes occur, and is responsible for deployments.
- Developer/s: Write code and support code reviews, as necessary.
- Project Manager (if necessary): Ensures that particularly complex products stay on track with the goals and plans the sprints.
- Principal: Performs code reviews, reviews architecture changes, reviews sprint tasks
Process
- Testing intensifies in the project team. Sometimes QA members are added to the process.
- Outside testers, recruited by the product owner are added to the testing group, ideally using it in real world scenarios.
- Bugs are found and added to the backlog to be completed
- Sprint planning sessions with stakeholders are held once per week to review what was done and the next tasks to accomplish
- Tasks are executed and moved to done
- As the product is deemed more stable, more users are added until the application is generally available.
- After general availability, bugs and issues are identified and remediated as they occur. This will happen, and sometimes it is scary, but the most important thing is to stay calm and fix the issues as they occur.