Process - How we work
As communication architects, we listen to the market to discover its current and future stakes, customer needs, hurdles and measure it to existing or potential solutions.
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Discover
An ongoing watch is integral part of our discovery process. We keep an eye on the evolution of new or existing apps (services), their use-cases, and how they solve their customer's problems. We also study past, current and future communication trends (B2B, B2C or community).
While conversations are key to understanding our clients needs, the data collected ahead gives us a global picture of existing solutions, and their adequacy to solve a given problem.
Before deciding to pitch or not a solution to a client, we try to identify the hurdles to change or disruption with regards to the existing solution. This will, on the one end, determine our appetite to pitch, and on the other end offer solutions that have a realistic chance of being adopted.
Processes included in this phase
- Technology Watch
- Ethnology
- Communication
Build
Project management is key to the success and we have found a nice fit using Basecamp as our project management solution. Their underlying "Shaping " approach helps define a common language for whatever we want to build. The idea is to define key elements of a solution before betting on it. Projects are defined to be concrete enough, yet abstract enough to leave room to work on details further down the road. The goal of shaping is to narrow down a problem and design a solution that fits within the constraints of the project.
Once the scope of what has been defined, the team members define their own tasks, make adjustments and build vertical slices of the product, one at the time. This differs from other methodologies where PMs chop up the work and programmers act like "ticket-takers".
We use 6 weeks cycles where decisions are based on moving the project forward and shipping on time.
Tech Stack involved in this process
- Pencil & Tablet
- Basecamp
- Github
- Figma
Deliver
From the get-go, we onboard our clients on a dedicated Basecamp project where we can communicate on deliverables, progress and issues.
Our approach allows us to build, test and validate a chunk of the project's scope, avoiding project wide rabbit-holes and bottlenecks.
Once all the pieces of the puzzle are assembled, we make sure to deliver a fully functional version to the client for testing, onboarding and final approval. We take advantage of those sessions to enrich the documentation based on UX hurdles we might observe.
Services included in this process
- Testing. Testing is important, but cannot be limited to code validity testing. UX and CX are integral part of our pre-delivery and post-delivery processes.
- Onboarding. Onboarding our clients starts early in the process, but we take pride in offering video onboarding workshops, where we make sure our clients feel comfortable with what we build and can safely transfer that knowledge to their team and customers.
- Documentation. As part of our commitment to customer success, we provide customized documentation at project level, along with extended support via the dedicated Basecamp project.
Philosophy - Balancing usability and innovation
We strive on performance and bleeding edge technology. Yet some projects do not require being on the edge to be performant. Furthermore, the latest technologies often imply a higher learning curve both for the users and developers. Therefore, usability is at the forefront of all our projects. Fortunately, technological trends tend to simplify both DX and CX. Therefore, we are able to avoid the technological "mille feuille" that was more often than not the norm in a not too distant past.
- Pragmatic. We want to make sure we meet our clients needs for today and tomorrow with solutions they will adopt and use.
- Disruptive. We are not afraid to break the codes if it serves a paradigm shift or simply offers a better solution.
- Transactional. We live in a transactional society. Therefore we build and deliver everything with that in mind.