Double is a software platform that matches executives with qualified executive assistants. It allows executives to communicate with their assistants and delegate tasks appropriately, so they can save time and stay focused on what drives their business forward.
Double was working on a time-tracking feature to help executive assistants understand how much time they spend on their assigned tasks. When their full-time engineer fell through, they contacted X-Team for urgent help. X-Team engineers were able to develop the feature in time and reduce Double's dependency on a third-party service that was costing them $30,000 a year.
Executive assistants now have a feature inside the Double platform that will give them a much better idea of how much time they're spending on particular tasks. This will allow them to better communicate with their assigned executive and plan their day in a more structured, efficient manner.
The following is an interview with Florent Bories, Head of Engineering at Double, about the challenges they faced, how they worked together with X-Team, and the impact that X-Team has had on their engineering team and software platform.
“X-Team was able to find great engineers very fast, allowing us to complete our projects.” (Florent Bories, Head of Engineering)
The Challenge
What challenge were you trying to solve with X-Team?
We were trying to ship a new product to our platform, for which we had hired a full-time engineer to help us out. Unfortunately, the engineer wasn’t a great fit for the project, and we couldn’t carry out the project with them. Thus, we needed help with onboarding a new software engineer quickly, so we hired X-Team to help us find someone.
The Approach
What was the scope of X-Team's involvement?
X-Team helped us find a software engineer to join our project, who helped deliver the product we were developing. Initially, we had a discovery call with X-Team to describe our needs, and they explained how the process would work on their side. Then, they provided us with the profile of the person who could come and join us.
X-Team was in charge of screening candidates on their end, so we knew that the candidate they provided us with had been technically assessed ahead of time. Still, they let us interview them. Our process included a quick technical interview with our engineering team and a product and cultural fit interview with the product manager and me to ensure that the chosen candidate would collaborate with us well and was a good fit for our company.
The chosen candidate joined a week after the interview process, just before my vacation period. However, I managed to plan their onboarding very quickly and delegate the rest of the onboarding process to my team while I was away. This onboarding was fairly similar to how we usually onboard internal resources.
After their onboarding, we started involving the X-Team’s engineer in specific tasks, shared product definitions with them, and included them in our team's meetings for this project. Basically, this person worked with us and delivered code like any other engineer.
The project this engineer worked on was the development of a time-tracking product in the backend of our platform. They helped us custom-build this solution to track the time our flexible assistants spend on the tasks they get assigned. Their scope mostly included backend development, but they also helped us with front-end development.
That project went so well that we eventually returned to X-Team and onboarded another engineer to augment our internal team and help us with other large-scale projects long term. This resource also helped our engineering team improve its processes.
How did you find out about X-Team?
An acquaintance who has also been leading engineering teams recommended X-Team and said that they had great resources. Thus, I looked at their contact information on their website and emailed them. They arranged a call with me and my team, and we took it from there.
The Outcome
Did working together with X-Team have any impact on your business?
X-Team was able to find great engineers very fast, allowing us to complete our projects. Thanks to them, we’re now launching our time-tracking feature, which will enable us to remove our dependency on a third-party service that costs us around $30,000 per year.
Moreover, thanks to the second engineer's work, we could automate our monthly invoicing process. With this automation, we can now send around 90% of our invoices automatically, and only 10% of our invoices need to be reviewed manually. Before having this automated process in place, our invoice turnaround time was around two weeks. Now, it will only be five days.
How was X-Team from a project management standpoint?
X-Team was very fast and truly worked within our timeline, which was finding a new engineer within a week. Everyone from their team was very communicative throughout the process and excelled at listening to our needs.
X-Team's PRM Laura was very responsive. We had monthly check-ins with her to ensure everything went well with the engineers, during which I provided feedback. When we changed the engineer we were working with, Laura truly listened to our needs and recommended another person to fit our new needs. The last X-Team engineer we worked with was outstanding—Laura really nailed the brief.
In addition to that, X-Team resources really acted as part of our team and followed our internal processes, which included attending our project meetings and communicating with the rest of their team. Every week, their engineers participated in the project and aligned with us on what work needed to be done. Then, their work was reviewed by our lead engineer.
What impressed you most about X-Team?
X-Team has a very dedicated customer service team. The way Laura was able to find the right resources for us and the fact that everyone tried to improve each day was outstanding.
Where do you think X-Team can still improve?
Although X-Team was able to find the right resources for us, it would have been great if we had had access to multiple profiles at once. It would have made us feel more involved in the decision-making process. Still, everything worked well in the end.
Read about some of the other companies X-Team has worked together with:
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