Product Features Dev for Customer Collab Platform Startup
Dock’s software platform drives transparency and collaboration between businesses. NineTwoThree developed features to elevate that platform.
Please describe your company and your position there.
Dock is a customer collaboration platform. I'm the CEO of the company.
For what projects/services did your company hire NineTwoThree Studio, and what were your goals?
We hired NineTwoThree to build out a number of features in the application, including Security Profiles and integrations with video providers. Our goal was to increase the speed of our product development while maintaining a high code quality.
How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?
923 impressed us from the beginning. Andrew was fantastic to work with when it came to scoping the project. Pavel and Tanya were amazing throughout the process as we moved into development.
Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.
The project included both front and backend work. Our tech stack is built on Javascript, React, Typescript, and GraphQL. The key deliverables were our Security profiles which included a complex admin flow, but also a streamlined customer experience. We also built integrations with Zoom and Gong.
How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?
The team featured a project manager, developer and CTO.
Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?
923 delivered an exceptional product right on schedule. They did exactly what we asked them to build with a really high code quality and very little oversight on our end.
Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.
Communication happened through Slack and Monday boards. We also had a weekly meeting where we reviewed open tasks.
What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?
923 has been incredible to work with and I'd recommend them to anyone looking for product development support. The code quality was exceptional. Tanya did an amazing job project managing everything from start to finish. It made things really easy for us as a customer.
Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?
Nothing that comes top of mind! We love working with 923. It's more expensive than internal engineers, but the speed and quality makes up for that cost.
Dock is a software platform that drives transparency and collaboration between businesses. It is a collaborative workspace where different groups of people can clearly communicate ideas, costs, and initiatives.
Due to the nature of venture-backed companies, Dock needed help adding integrations, security, and other features to their existing platform at a faster pace. NineTwoThree was able to seamlessly integrate with Dock’s engineering team to support the features needed to stay competitive.
A venture-backed company - like Dock - is high growth, high speed, and oriented towards building a product for the next venture. They needed to find a way to move faster without hiring a full time engineer and increasing the managerial burden on their existing team.
The main challenge of working with a fast growing company was that we needed to blend in seamlessly to their deliverables and perform alongside their engineers to reduce headaches.
Development agencies typically struggle to match this type of model because instead of taking over the entire project, they have to deliver code as if they are a part of the company’s engineering team.
We focused our efforts primarily on matching our project management and development to theirs. This allowed us to more effectively shift from agency style to Dock’s style of working. We also blended directly through Slack with their engineering team to understand how they committed and approached code.
After we learned how they do code, we were able to match Dock’s high speed environment and developed the security-related features for their giant application. Once we received approval from the CTO, they continued to give us features to build as if we were an in-house development team.
