You’ve built the core of your product and now your company grew leaving no time for you to keep building great software. Maybe you’re part of a large enterprise looking to hire a firm who can provide a team that already works well together to join yours. You might even be transitioning away from a different partner that no longer suits your needs. It doesn’t matter where you come from, the point is you’re considering WyeWorks to help your company move forward and we couldn’t be more excited for the opportunity and challenge ahead.
But putting our excitement aside, we understand you might have more questions than answers in terms of what to expect. Given all that’s going on, probably more uncertainty being added to the picture is not what you’re looking for, since most people find uncertainty an aversive state that generates cognitive stress. That’s why we wrote this step-by-step explainer on how we usually kick off projects, so you’ll know how our partnership will start taking form, hopefully shaping up into a beneficial long-lasting relationship.
Getting to know each other
While paperwork is being done (more on that later), we’ll be engaging in several conversations so we can really get to know you. In order to be able to add value and help you, we need to understand what you’re looking for, your vision, the challenges you’re facing to get there, your priorities, everything. If we’re going to help move your boat forward in the right direction, we better know and understand where that is.
This way of conceiving our collaboration is what makes clients feel they’ve got a true partner and say things like
“The WyeWorks team worked to quickly understand our complex environment and started adding value almost immediately. They have been easy to work with, organized, and excellent at communicating with our team. I’ve found them to be knowledgeable in engineering, as expected, but they also know the importance of the business context of the systems, and have made a significant effort to build their understanding in that area.”
Once we get a clear sense of the challenge ahead of us, we put a lot of thought into forming the right team, balancing different levels of experience and skillset according to your needs. Every person is different and each with a unique set of strengths, so one of the advantages of engaging with WyeWorks is that we can pick the right team for you by taking all that into consideration.
Legal
Before kicking things off we’ll need to agree on a few items first. For example, we’d love to sign an NDA to ensure everyone’s peace of mind as sensible information is revealed along the way. We’ll also start working on defining the terms of our partnership, and capturing all that into some MSA & SOW documents. For that purpose we have our own legal templates we can use, but if you’d rather use your own just send them over and we’ll sign them!
Kicking things off
Once the team is established, the best way to start rolling is working on a trial project. In all our years in the industry, we found that working side by side in real problems is the best way for you to assess the value we bring to the table, and for us to determine how the collaboration would be moving forward. We understand you might be hesitant to embark in a large project without knowing us, but it doesn’t have to be something too big; working together in a small two-week engagement is more than enough to make sure we’re a good fit for each other and reduce possible risks to the minimum.
We know how much is going on with your business, and the last thing you need right now is us imposing the way we like to work and the tools we use. That’s why our approach is completely different: we quickly understand your technology and process as it is and make as much as we can out of it increasing your productivity. Later on and once we’re rolling, we will propose some changes to both technology and process as we see the potential to bring more value to your business.
Moving forward
After a few months of collaboration, you’ll have a clear idea of the true value we might be able to offer. What usually happens with our clients once they fully trust us and are able to see the potential of having our teams working with them, is that our ability to help expands the coding domain and they tap onto our skills to improve other aspects of the company.
In some cases we’ve done interviews to potential candidates wanting to join their company. In several opportunities we’ve trained their most junior developers to bring them up to speed with the technology stack. Some other times we’ve worked side by side with Product Owners helping them refine and write stories in a more efficient manner. And let me tell you, that’s just beautiful. Our mission is to make your business flourish, and that might as well mean to deliver new features to end users, or it might just be to brainstorm together different alternatives to a difficult situation you’re currently facing. It doesn’t really matter, we’re here to help.
Of course, you don’t have to believe what I’m saying here, so you should definitely go check out what our previous clients say about us here. In fact, only 2 months ago we started collaborating on a project for Code Climate, and this is what Ale (their VP of Engineering) shared with us about the experience so far:
“Working with Wyeworks has been critical to grow the capacity of our team. The team ramped up quickly and they were very diligent on understanding the product and system by proactively asking questions to get as much context as possible. They were delivering impactful improvements to our product from week 1. The clear and prompt communication, and the high quality of their work makes the development process very smooth. Also, I appreciate how they’re going the extra mile to ensure solutions meet customer expectations.”
If you’re about to start a new project with us, we can’t wait to work together! Not a WyeWorks client yet? Learn more about how we can help you build the next big thing together.