Featured Case Study
Bark Box
Developing a full-stack team while launching a new product.
Advance your team and improve product performance
As you reach new new stages, your product hits new pain points. Bring on thoughtbot to embed with your team and ease transitions through optimization challenges while maintaining and accelerating momentum with test-driven development and user focused design. Your team, and your users, will thank you.
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“thoughtbot left me with a much more seasoned team than I had started with, a better architecture, and a much clearer roadmap.
CTO, Teikametrics
Team Augmentation
Stabilize your tech without slowing down
As you hit significant new product lifecycle stages, things start to break. Technical debt piles up and it hurts your ability to acquire and retain customers (not to mention your own developers). Augmenting your team with thoughtbot developers allows you to keep flying the plane while you build it.
Whether it’s web or mobile app development, performing code audits, or helping with your next technical hire, thoughtbot has 20 years of experience jumping into complex tech scaling situations and helping the team steady the course and confidently move forward.
Design optimization
Invest in design-led product strategy
Continuous improvement of your product design and design methodology pays dividends. But much like technical debt, as your product grows, you also stack up design debt. Design Systems become outdated, the UI backlog is unwieldy, and user testing and interviews aren’t happening on a regular basis.
thoughtbot Designers don’t just tick off design To Do’s for you, but work closely with your team to mature your product design strategy, the function of design within your organization, and improved cross-functional collaboration through frontend implementation.
We’ll help with:
- UX optimization
- Design mentorship
- Alignment and communication across a cross-functional team
- Frontend development
- User research & usability testing
“We started out just wanting another senior developer to plug in and I’m glad we ended up with an expert mentor who leveled-up our whole team. thoughtbot doesn’t want to just make a product and leave, they’re passionate about improving your whole organization while they help you create something new. It’s really unique.
VP Engineering
Design Systems
Empower your team & align your UI/UX
Combining your pattern library, design documentation, and product workflow, your Design System is the single and sustainable source of truth uniting your product teams. Whether your existing system is falling short, or you're a Design Systems newbie, thoughtbot's expertise can optimize your user experience and product growth.
supporting more than your product
Process improvement and team mentorship
Our team is equipped to introduce development best practices within existing engineering teams by working with leaders to identify skill and process gaps, and execute on a plan. Our custom mentorship uses tools like paired programming, workshops, and lunch and learns to collaborate with your team how they are comfortable. As product-minded technologists, we look to build confidence within our client teams across different aspects of the work we do.
This most frequently includes introducing or improving processes around:
- TDD within an existing codebase
- CI/CD pipelines
- Code review culture
- Automations (Prettier, ESLint, StandardRB, Rubocop, AccessLint)
- Review branches for feature acceptance
thoughtbot Services for existing products and teams
Learn more about a few of our team's specialty areas
Ruby on Rails
Our team has been a passionate and active presence in leading the Ruby on Rails community since the very beginning.
Elm
Elm's easy learning curve helps your new team members get up-to-speed writing production code in no time.
React
Using reusable components, complex interfaces become clear, consistent and feature rich.
Python and Django
thoughtbot’s expert Python developers and designers can get your project moving with this go-to tool for building APIs.
Level-up
We help individuals and teams mature processes and nurture a healthy and productive culture.
Rails Maintenance
thoughtbot, one of the world's most experienced Rails development teams, is here to help and has a part-time support and maintenance team dedicated to supporting Rails applications long-term.
Case Studies
Hear what our clients are saying
Adwerx — Leveling up people, process, tools, and documentation.
Read the case study
MSPP — Scaling and maintaining a vaccine management app to meet surging demand.
Read the case studyResources for your team
Check out the best practices our team is writing and talking about:
Best Resources to Upskill Your Technical Team
As a manager, how can you help your team, both neophytes and veterans, get better at their craft?
Make small, data-driven performance improvements
Performance issues are a form of technical debt. They are issues because we neglect the root cause until it affects our application in a way we can no longer ignore.
Find opportunities for optimization and growth with a service blueprint
A service blueprint is a powerful design tool for organizational change and product transformation.
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What does success look like for your team?
