Foxbox Digital is an award-winning engineering-focused product development agency.

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Versapay: Digital Payments Mobile Strategy

We’ve seen too many leaders waste their precious time talking about what they want to know, without having what they what they actually need to know right at their fingertips. That's why we have crafted a reporting structure that provides leadership with what they need to focus on to make the right decisions.

How We Handle Executive Reporting Via Dashboards

If you were to ask members of your leadership team what their most important goal is, how many would say improving the strategy of the business? Probably quite a few. But for far too many organizations, leadership is more caught up in day-to-day operations than they are in high-level strategy concerns.

For example, leadership at a fast-growing company might be spending a lot of time asking for status reports, but neglecting to have conversations around how to leverage a team's achievements to provide the greatest impact.

We’ve seen too many leaders waste their precious time talking about what they want to know, without having what they what they actually 

 to know right at their fingertips. That's why we have crafted a reporting structure that provides leadership with what they need to focus on to make the right decisions.

At Foxbox Digital, we like to keep all stakeholder and executive visibility into development and billing with a high-level summary. Without being bogged down by day-to-day details, we send this executive dashboard every month.

The dashboard is meant to track all cross-functional work and keep strategy at the center. It shares important contributions from all team members involved. Each section is broken down to provide a way of tracking and understanding progress toward high-level goals.

Facilitating better planning and decision making

For many of our clients, multiple stakeholders and decision-makers both within and outside of an organization need to be kept up to date regarding projects and deliverables. The executive dashboard is intended to keep all parties involved on the same page and ensure they are receiving highly accurate and consistent information.

Beyond having a single source of truth to share with colleagues, executive dashboards are often used for budgetary planning purposes. We provide an infographic showing the breakdown of hours attributed to each team member, and what particular piece of the project each member is working on. This allows our clients to understand what areas require the most work and how to accurately plan for the future.

In addition, we make sure to call out changing team members and other important changes to resources. This is important because it allows our client be aware of changing needs like equipment and access that will have a large impact on the team.

When not enough data becomes too much data

Our goal is to provide leadership with enough information to make strategic decisions, but not too much information that will overwhelm them. This allows our clients to spend less time sifting through data, and more time on strategic analysis.

We utilize feedback from each of our clients to understand what is most important to them, and make updates to the dashboard accordingly to meet their needs. We start by discussing business objectives and the key questions that need to be answered—and then go seek out the right data. Unfortunately, this process at many other agencies is the reverse of what it should be.

If you are looking for a partner that provides transparency and strategic insights, 

 and we can discuss our services and reporting in more detail.

We believe there are four core components to getting a digital solution to market: Agile, DevOps/Continuous Delivery, digital lifecycle, and iteration. I wanted to give you more insight into how we think about these components and what it's like to work with us.

Getting Digital Solutions to Market

Here is how we get digital solutions to market.

If you haven’t figured it out, we’re kind of obsessed with Agile and digital product delivery. We’ve thought about this topic for a long, long time. Agile is the core of everything that we do. We don't just say it, or talk and write about it: We do it. It's integral to everything that we do. Without it, we wouldn't have made it to where we are today.

If you're interested more in how we think about Agile, I would start here with these in-depth articles that will give you some insight into how we think about execution. Get some coffee.

The Definitive Guide to Agile Product Development for the Enterprise: How to Build an Amazing Product in 2020

Agile & Scrum: How to Build Better Products, Faster in 2020

How to Nail Agile Collaboration and Build Better Products

DevOps and Continuous Delivery gets our clients software to market, reliably

 follows Continuous Delivery, which enables us to deliver incremental changes reliably, without breaking what has already been delivered. At a high level, this is what you’re getting when utilizing our defined DevOps and Continuous delivery process.

Modern development processes including trunk-based development to ensure a stable product

Peer code reviews, unit & integration tests, continuous integration, automated testing,  automated deployments

Significant reduction in chances of human error

Validation that we’ve built continues to work as your product evolves

We handle the end to to end of our client's digital lifecycle

We follow strict modern software development processes to ensure we reliably deliver the functionality you want, on time, and on-budget. We’ll lead you through the entire digital lifecycle of your product.

 We’ll help you build the right product before anything is planned or developed. It’s worth noting that some of our clients come to us post-product strategy to focus on execution only, and that’s OK too.

 -- This in-depth phase includes UX Workshops, technical discovery and analysis, prototypes and product roadmaps. Once complete, we’ll build out our sprint plan so you know what is going to be built, when.

 We follow staged releases, and agile methodologies to build the product, right.

easure, learn & iterate while developing, not after

Our core components of getting a solution to market all rely on us measuring, learning and iterating what we're developing. We measure everything from development velocity to product effectiveness. We learn from the users to influence future improvements. Once complete, we update our sprint plan.

It's critical for us that this all happens while we're developing and managing the product development. This constant measurement enables us to stay focused on creating a product that creates an impact.

There is a reason our tagline is Move Purposely. We are disciplined in how we deliver our client's products from start to finish. We do everything with a purpose and are always moving to create a quality product that has lasting impact.

If you want to learn more about how we create software, 

, and we'll walk you through our process in more detail.

Getting Digital Solutions to Market: Disciplined Agile Project Execution From Start to Finish

In our recent partnership with Adobe, we created a Bootstrap 5 DSP for the Adobe XD Extension for Visual Studio Code. Down the extension today to accelerate your development experience with Bootstrap.

Bootstrap 5 DSP for the Adobe XD Extension for VS Code

Make developing with Bootstrap 5 even easier by using our free design system package (DSP) for Visual Studio Code. Gain direct access to Bootstrap code snippets and documentation with Intellisense right in the VS Code editor. This allows you to stay in flow and focus on development, instead of switching between your editor and the docs.

Click here to get your free download of the Bootstrap DSP

Bootstrap DSP supports code snippets for:

Adobe collaborated with Foxbox Digital to create the Bootstrap 5 DSP for the Adobe XD extension for Visual Studio Code. Foxbox Digital is an award-winning digital product agency, headquartered in Chicago. We Move Purposely to deliver innovative digital experiences for you.

This is one of our shorter updates, but ironically, one of the biggest updates we've had since the founding of the company in 2018. 

Foxbox Digital 2020 Q3 Update—Finally Sharing Our Largest Product Launch, and Even More Growth

This is going to be a short update, but ironically, one of the biggest updates we've had since the founding of the company in 2018.

On January 1st, 2020, we launched an AI-powered telehealth mobile app for a large healthcare organization. This was during the early stages of the pandemic, so the timing was incredible. It was a really big deal, not just for us but for our client and its customers.

I would have loved to share the news of this launch in one of our Q1 or Q2 updates, but I’m excited to be able to finally share the news in this update!

. I would also love to tell you the name of the company, but because of confidentiality agreements, we’re not able to share—yet.

Outside of it being the largest launch we’ve had, it’s a big deal for three main reasons:

It showcased the strength and talent of our team.

 Based on our interviews with the client executive team on the project, a big focus was on our talented engineering & product team. They mentioned how easy it was to work with us and how they could trust the work we did. That’s a big win for us, and I couldn’t be more proud of those testimonials.

It showcased that we can work with large clients on mission-critical projects.

 This was one of those projects where success was the only option, and the impact was important for our organization. It was also a project that had a lot of moving parts. We were definitely not the only team working on this project—this was a collaboration across many teams. It showcased our abilities to work with cross-functional teams and other vendors to get it done. One of the greatest testimonials we got was: 

“They operated as a startup within our team.”

It showcased that we can pivot under pressure.

 We started this project in mid-2019, well-before Covid-19. When the pandemic started growing, we shifted with our client to develop a solution specifically for Covid-19, and it was all done in under 10 days from development to production. This also resulted in revenue generation for the client. It proved that although we had a defined work product, we were able to shift on a moment’s notice and do what’s best for our client and our client’s customers.

This was a massive effort from everyone involved, and I’m glad we were able to be part of it. If you haven’t checked out the case study, I highly recommend you do:

Driving Digital During Covid-19: Helping an Enterprise Healthcare Company Develop an AI Mobile Telehealth Product During a Pandemic

Until now, we've grown sales organically through my network, word of mouth, and even some of the content we've produced. This was the first time we invested in a dedicated business development lead, 

Spencer is reaching out to folks to form genuine connections by giving content and knowledge, and starting real conversations about tech and product. We’re sharing our point of view on a variety of relevant topics across product strategy, development, and agile. With all of these real connections, we hope that people will think of us when they have a technology problem to solve.

If you're interested, we will be posting our POVs 

 to share with our network when they're done:

Creating meaningful products with Human-Centered Design

Implementing automated UI testing on mobile (on-device) and web (in-browser)

That's all for this Q3 Update. I'm also excited about our Q4 update, which will be about our website refresh and service offerings. Never a dull moment :) As always, I hope everyone is staying safe, and thanks for reading!

We take time to get the right people working alongside us. The next step is to get them to play nice, and do great things, together.

How We Structure Our Product Strategy & Delivery Teams

 working alongside us. The next step is to get them to play nice, and do great things, together.

95% of our clients renew their agreements with us, and this isn't by accident or luck. We've structured our product delivery teams to deliver value, day in and day out. Product delivery 

 our core business, and it's one thing we absolutely have to get right.

Here are 3 principles we have when it comes to client product delivery.

Some agencies are a black box. They disappear for two weeks and you hope they come back with what you wanted. We will always lead the delivery process while collaborating and integrating with your team, and be transparent along the way.

2. One size doesn’t fit all, but some sizes work better than others.

We adapt our team structure to your current needs and capabilities. Have a great UX design team already? Great, we can’t wait to meet them. Have a strong front-end design engineering team but need some strong back-end engineers? Fantastic, we’ve never met a front-end engineer we didn’t like.

3. We think in terms of teams, not individuals.

While we sometimes help with strategic sourcing of particular roles, we typically provide a cohesive team to deliver for you.

These principles are what helps us deliver the results that we do. But, these principles are only effective if the structure of the delivery teams are correct. And as I said above, one size doesn't fit all. We have a unique flexible structure that integrates with our client's teams, to maximize collaboration between our teams.

Whether it's a full product execution team, a product strategy team, or an advisory team, we mix and match talent to supplement your delivery teams:

Being a long-term partner for our clients, means that we have to fit in to their structure, and not the other way around. By structuring our teams to be flexible, and agile, it has helped us accelerate our delivery, and be a true partner for our clients.

When we operate as one team, great things happen. Between our 

 services, we have an incredible set of capabilities to accomplish any goal. If you would like more information about how our flexible teams can operate within your organization, 

Every company I've ever worked for says they have the "best people." What's not talked about much is *how* they hire the best people. So I thought it would be useful to detail how we found a good approach (through trial and error) that works best for us and our clients.

Our Hiring Philosophy

I'm going to be honest: Every company I've ever worked for, and every client, all say they have the "best people." In some cases, it's true. In others, it's far from it.

 they hire the best people. That information can provide some great insights into how a company operates.

So I thought it would be useful to detail how we hire the best people for Foxbox. Meaning, we have found a good approach (through trial and error) of what works best for us and our clients.

We've gotten great at filtering out the good from great candidates, and been able to hone in on what makes someone a great fit for us.

1. Our culture → It’s really, genuinely important.

Our culture is important to us. So important that we 

 on how we expect to work as a team, and it has everything to do with what we call the Foxbox Way.

We created these documents and shared them publicly because we want every hire to understand that having technical expertise is simply not enough. There must be a cultural fit that's so important to us that during our hiring process, we often have to tell technically-skilled and talented candidates, “It’s not you, it’s us.”

And if you've ever considered creating a culture document, I was featured on a podcast where 

I shared my thoughts on how to create a culture document that scales engineering teams

2. Engineering → We look for T-Shaped candidates.

We look for experts who have deep experience in single topics while being capable of understanding related subjects. Now, we’re not saying I-shaped or generalist candidates aren’t a fit for you. But we are saying they aren’t a good fit for the way we work. For example, full-stack developers are a great asset, but what we're really looking for is someone who specializes in the front or backend, and if they can also handle the other side too, that's a huge bonus.

3. Solution Architects → Been there, done that, always learning C-Suite counterpart.

When it comes to architecting modern software the right way, we don’t take any chances. We look for candidates who have experience architecting modern, complex software and can easily hang with and deeply understand a c-suite CTO or Engineering Director of any size organization.

4. Product Managers → Friendly, flexible, in the trenches with you, disciplined human beings that get the right things done.

What we focus on is hiring people who are disciplined and understand Scrum and Agile deeply. Agile Product Managers who have the capacity to engage with clients, respectfully challenge them, and actively "steer the ship" rather than blindly following directions passively.

And, of course, we have a few thoughts on 

creating a culture that isn’t always interrupt-driven

, and instead prioritizes uninterrupted focus for our team members.

5. Onboarding team members → It’s never a “welcome to the team, now get to work” type of thing.

We think throwing people in the deep end and telling them to figure it out is a bad approach. That’s why we dedicate one to two weeks for onboarding where every hour of the onboarding is scheduled before they start. Want to know exactly how we do it? We thought you would never ask. Here you go: 

How We Onboard Our Remote Engineering and Product Management Team

Location, location, location → It still matters, matters, matters.

Many things have changed because of Covid-19, including how we work. While we’re open to the “new normal” changes, we believe that building local in-person teams for our clients is the best approach to getting the right work done. We, of course, still help clients in locations where we don’t have a physical presence.

Our HQ is in Chicago, and some of our engineering teams are located in our Latin America offices in Rio, Brazil; Santa Fe, Argentina; and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

This setup has enabled us to expand our talent-base significantly while serving our clients. It has worked well for us.

A lot of work and thought is needed before starting the hiring process.

It's more than just throwing up a job posting on all the job boards and filtering out the most qualified candidates. We have found that doing a deep dive on our cultural values, spending time onboarding, and creating a framework for what makes a candidate work well at Foxbox Digital, has enabled us to find great people that we enjoy working with on a daily basis.

If you have any questions on how we hire or if you'd like tips on how you can hire the best people at your company, feel free to 

, and I'd be more than happy to share my thoughts. Thank you.

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