FixForm’s plan was suddenly disrupted when their technical co-founder had to leave the company and the product was only half complete.
Who was going to build the management interface? Who was going to add multi-tenancy? Who was going to help them launch the MVP?
Their vision was to keep buildings and spaces in good, safe, and clean condition. And now… that was in jeopardy. Fortunately, FixForm had heard about madewithlove before. One of their founders collaborated with us on a previous project and knew that we would deliver quality.
If you can tell VCs, “we are working with madewithlove” they already know it will be quality because they have also used madewithlove to do, for example, audits.
Thomas Vanhumbeeck, Cofounder & CEO FixForm
Quality-driven development services to the rescue
When madewithlove joined the project, we were initially in firefighting mode. Our team of developers, Emma and Bram, first focused on getting the product shipped. Over the next two months, we took the incomplete solution and molded it into a quality-first MVP built-in Inertia.js, Vue, and Laravel.
Step one was building a robust continuous integration/deployment (CI/CD) pipeline. Within the first month, this was supplemented with a suite of end-to-end tests built with Cypress. These tests run on every pull request and still add value.
Recently, the team refactored the way data is accessed and this could only be done with confidence thanks to over 50 tests that focus on behavior instead of implementation details.
By assigning two software engineers from madewithlove, you’re ensuring a quality codebase, which for me was crucial, instead of outsourcing it abroad and having to recode part of the codebase again afterwards.
Thomas Vanhumbeeck, Cofounder & CEO FixForm
Building features iteratively
The core value of FixForm is for people on the go, those in physical spaces and interacting with the real world. The product is designed entirely around this experience.
QR codes are printed and fixed in the buildings so that people can immediately report problems complete with descriptions and helpful pictures. Facility and property managers then respond to the issues.
Managers configure the QR code ahead of time so that all the necessary information is present and the app knows what you are trying to report on. This allows facility managers to go to the right location and resolve the complaint. It's as easy as that.
This QR code system had some complexity behind it. The team needed a way to generate thousands of unique stickers in a cost-effective way. Because this functionality was untested with real users, our team pushed to have a simple solution at first. This was later upgraded in an iterative process.
Another example is in data storage. Facility managers and service providers can resolve issues for multiple, different tenants but they use one account to do so. Madewithlove structured the data in a way so that it tenants have complete privacy unless they share access with people that support them.
Later one, when it was time to change the way the data was accessed. It was easy to do. Building simple functionality the right way, the first time, helps teams ship the next feature.
They knew what our ambition was so it was also easier for madewithlove to find somebody to hire, somebody that was was part of the vision of FixForm.
Thomas Vanhumbeeck, Cofounder & CEO FixForm
Hiring our replacements
Our mission is to mentor and nurture technical teams so madewithlove began the search for our own replacements early on.
We used our network and expertise to source candidates, filter and interview them, and eventually, make a recommendation. A new senior engineer was hired and able to join the project 3 months in, making an impact immediately.
Product management upgrade
Throughout the collaboration, we also helped upgrade the product management processes. We started by formalizing a roadmap using customer input and a document structure to help with discovery, called feature passports. FixForm’s product owner now owns this aspect of the business.
Nearing one year, we have agreed on reducing the time spent on our collaboration. As the FixForm team grows, the focus is on helping new engineers get settled and mentoring them in our ways. Then the team will be able to stand on their own and continue to deliver a high-quality product.
I think what I also really valued about the collaboration was transparency and knowledge transfer. It's also from a perspective that it needs to be a good fit with the company and the phase that the company is in.
Thomas Vanhumbeeck, Cofounder & CEO FixForm