Creating an impactful fintech app and a robust in-house product team
- Client
Beyond Finance
- Services
Mobile development, Product Management, React Native
- Description
Launching a powerful mobile user experience while setting the team up for continued success.
We established a great roadmap for our mobile app and completed a huge chunk of it. We got a good framework for sequencing work between different teams so that we could manage dependencies easily and deliver new features.
Personalizing consumer debt management services
Beyond Finance is a next-generation financial services company. They provide financial peace of mind by guiding people to a path beyond debt with financial products that are simple and transparent.
As the consumer debt market grows in the United States, Beyond Finance creates effective and fair debt management services customized to the consumers.
The most impactful thing thoughtbot does is ask questions that abstract the right projects to execute on from your brain. Then they implement a great process to execute on them, and they can execute for you as well.
Increasing customer engagement and team effectiveness
The Beyond Finance team had started the development of a React Native mobile app intending to serve their customers better and increase long-term engagement. They sought a mobile design and development partner to align their version 1 roadmap and then effectively execute with product management oversight, mobile design, and React Native development.
From a team growth and process perspective, Beyond Finance had goals for growing their in-house team across Product, QA, and Engineering departments and was working to establish the planning and management of product sprints.
thoughtbot was selected as the partner to help them move the product forward by supplying deep React Native development mobile design expertise and evolving their team and approach by supporting them in establishing the right corresponding product processes.
Establishing the right product strategy and corresponding product roadmap.
To begin our partnership, our first step was facilitating a Product Design Sprint to align on our understanding of target users and their critical path. We also gathered insights from customer interviews and stakeholders through a business objective review.
These data points came together in a prioritized backlog, serving as our product roadmap. A crucial role in our upfront planning work and the day-to-day execution was our Product Manager who oversaw the effort of the collective team and ensured alignment on the product strategy as we worked through the product roadmap.
Designing the right user experience to ensure success.
It was important for us to design in a mobile-first way while ensuring consistency across mobile and web experiences. We worked to ensure that the information presented was clear and concise as a user went through the experience. It was important they understood the importance of tasks and their progress within the app.
Growing a robust product development team.
In parallel to product design and development, we looked for opportunities to mentor the Beyond Finance team in both React Native development and overall product processes.
Our efforts included supporting the in-house team with application reviews as they looked to hire, onboarding new hires onto the product and codebase, strengthening agile ceremonies with development best practice, and thoroughly documenting development standards and processes along the way.
I was most impressed with the people and the frameworks they brought. Everyone at thoughtbot was super insightful and easy to talk to. They produced diagrams and process docs that helped us prioritize where we should focus attention.
Bringing a great mobile app to life while mentoring the team
Through an ongoing cadence of daily stand-ups, planning meetings, and retros, the team successfully executed on their product roadmap. Strong communication channels allowed everyone to efficiently make decisions as a team.
thoughtbot's React Native expertise allowed us to bring a great native mobile app to life, and in parallel, we enjoyed mentoring the Beyond Finance team on development and product best practices.
An important outcome of our time together included establishing a repeatable, winning approach for continuing to build great software. thoughtbot supported Beyond Finance in building a robust in-house technology division, including a process for organizing and planning how cross-functional teams should be involved as new features are considered.