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

Inside the Box Foxbox Digital Blog

Versapay: Digital Payments Mobile Strategy

With the need and adoption of cloud solutions continuing to increase, we created a helpful guide for businesses to help them understand the questions they will need to answer to find the right cloud solution.

4 Critical Questions Every Business Needs to Answer Before Moving to the Cloud

Over the last two decades, cloud solutions have become an integral part of modern IT strategy — and for good reason. The cloud offers businesses greater flexibility, scalability, and efficiency compared to hosting on a local server.

The Covid-19 pandemic has only increased the need and adoption of cloud solutions. Between school closures, social distancing, and work-from-home, data center are experiencing massive surges in the usage of compute resources. Shifting societal norms have resulted in greater dependence on technology that makes data accessible from any location.

With 94% of enterprises already using a cloud service, companies that are not embracing the cloud are sure to be left behind in 2021. Not only are customers demanding it, employees need it to effectively work remote.

When selecting and implementing cloud solutions, there are many different options available depending on an organization's unique needs.

: computing infrastructure is located on the premises of a third-party provider that offers a cloud service to a variety of users. Public clouds can be free services, or require that customers purchase a certain amount of usage (CPU cycles, storage, or bandwidth).

: a cloud computing model whose resources are provisioned over a dedicated, private infrastructure that is solely used by one organization.

: a combination of private and public cloud to meet an organization's needs. For example, public cloud can be used to interact with customers, while sensitive data is secured on a private cloud.

: a form of cloud computing that hosts its resources over the Internet. Examples of IaaS companies include Amazon, Rackspace, Flexiscale.

: a service that provides a platform for consumers to develop, run, and manage applications in the cloud without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure needed.

: a software distribution model in which a third-party provider hosts applications and makes them available to customers over the Internet.

 a custom built software designed to meet the unique needs of an organization delivered over the Internet in a subscription-based model.

Selecting the right solution for your business

 based on your needs and budget can be a difficult task. To help organizations select the right solution, we have compiled 4 questions to help you calibrate your mindset in order to determine which solution is right for you.

1. What are my business goals for the cloud?

It is important to first understand how the right cloud solution will align with your business needs. For example, some organizations may be looking for a solution that will be revenue generating. Others might be looking to support their business from an operations perspective. Some businesses will want a solution that will help them to scale and grow, while some are more focused on cutting costs. With different goals in mind, each business would require a different solution to meet their needs.

2. How can my current network and infrastructure support cloud offerings?

While moving to the cloud might mean a smaller IT footprint in-house, it would likely demand additional network capacity. Understanding the current state of your network and infrastructure will allow you to set a baseline for what you may need to support cloud adoption.

3. What is the structure of your technical team?

What is the size of your technical team? Who is maintaining your technical resources? Is your team internal or external? These are all important questions to think about when selecting a cloud solution. Depending on the expertise you have in-house, you may require additional resources to manage your solution.

4. What problems can the cloud solve for your users?

This is the most important question of all. At Foxbox, we are always focused on first identifying your users and how we can meet their needs through cloud solutions.

Where do you users access the application? Is it in your office? Is it at home? Are they online or offline? Do they like the application? Would they prefer to use a public platform/known technology? These are some of the questions we may ask to dig deeper into how we can craft a solution that would be most beneficial to your users.

Taking a user-centric approach is what we at Foxbox Digital do best. If you would like to learn more about our 

. We would love to help you find the right solution to meet the needs of your users.

Striking the right balance between Agile methodologies and Human-Centered Design (HCD) principles can be a challenge for product development teams. We examine how to relieve healthy tension between the two strategies to find the right customer-market fit.

How to Build Better Digital Products By Embracing Human-Centered Design (HCD) + Agile

Striking the right balance between Agile methodologies and Human-Centered Design (HCD) principles paves the way for product development teams to find the right customer-market fit. At the risk of oversimplifying, HCD provides a framework for "thinking" about product development, while Agile provides the framework for "doing". Calibrating the “thinking” vs “doing” is critical to developing great digital products.

When combining these strategies, it is important to note that some of their basic tenets are at odds with one another. Agile methods focus on eliminating inefficiencies found in the Waterfall model of project management (“doing”). They encourage design and development to happen concurrently to foster increased collaboration and teamwork. On the other hand, HCD principles highlight the importance of user research to discover and solve real user-facing problems (“thinking”). They suggest a discovery phase at the beginning of the project with limited or no developer involvement.

To better understand each method and how to resolve this tension tension between them, let's review the basic tenets of each strategy.

The Manifesto for Agile Software Development

Agile methodologies are best explained by the Agile Manifesto, which was penned by a group of seventeen leaders from the software community while on a ski trip in Utah in early 2001.

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
4. Responding to change over following a plan

Although the technology landscape has changed significantly since the Agile Manifesto was written, Agile Coaches, enthusiasts and avid practitioners agree that these principles are still key to guiding successful Agile development. While different frameworks may interpret them differently, they remain a core component of both conversation and study around this strategy.

The Top 4 Principles of Human-Centered Design

One of the top scholars of HCD is Don Norman, an accomplished researcher and professor who serves as the director of The Design Lab at University of California, San Diego. He is best known for his books on design, especially 

Much of Norman's work involves his advocacy of HCD. His talk 

 is considered by many to cover the fundamental teachings of the theory.

1. Focus upon the people
2. Find the right problem
3. Think of everything as a system
4. Always validate your design decisions

In his talk, Norman identifies two types of problems — fundamental problems and symptoms of the problem. He argues that it’s essential to solve a fundamental problem first because by doing that you’ll solve a root cause of other problems. He contends that no matter how much time it takes, development cannot begin until the right problem to solve has been identified. Failure to do this could lead to an ineffective product that does not meet the needs of users.

Bridging the Gap Between Conflicting Strategies

In essence, both strategies are trying to achieve the same goals of fostering collaboration, solving real problems, and keeping customer satisfaction at the forefront. The main difference between HCD and Agile is how various staff roles are applied to a project and at what stages they are involved.

To remedy this healthy tension between the strategies, we assert the following practices that allow HCD and Agile to work together effectively.

Although developers may not participate in user research, they can still be part of the design process early on. Design sessions would ideally include developers, the people who will use the services, and designers who are experts at engaging users and interpreting qualitative feedback.

As the software is developed, designers would review changes regularly and the whole team would participate in validating the service with real users. This fosters greater collaboration and communication, as well as ensures that proper user research is performed throughout the project timeline to ensure that the right problems are being focused on by the team.

Some challenges, such as making a high-demand software component perform faster, require little user research, yet can deliver high impact results. While user research is certainly important, it should not be trusted over performance metrics. When a team can get something testable in front of real users, they will be able to make more informed decisions about their product roadmap.

Reserve very in-depth user research for user-facing functionality that is new or different. The more innovative your project, the more it justifies the amount of time spent on research.

Add More Customer Facing People to Your Team

In commercial technology industry, there is often a tendency to have too high a ratio of engineers compared to other roles on the team. This is often due to a focus on rapid development rather than customer-centricity.

When in doubt, always refer to the people in your organization who interface with the people that experience the problems that the team is trying to solve. A balanced team should involve the same number of user-facing people as software engineers. This includes product managers and user experience experts. In some cases, members from other teams such as sales, customer experience, and support should also be referred to in order to better understand the voice of the customer.

Measure Productivity by Value, Not Volume

More lines of code do not directly translate into a product that better meets user needs and business goals. In Agile, many teams try to measure their velocity to understand their progress. However, this practice can fall short as it is only important to a specific team in the context of its own achievements.

The only measure of productivity that matters is user satisfaction. Craft KPIs related to your users experience and the value it provides.

Above All, Act in the Best Interest of the User

In conclusion, Agile and HCD are best combined when they are utilized with the common goal of creating happy customers. This will calibrate the "thinking" and the "doing" in the best interest of the user.

 and development processes will become more effective and more resilient. Resilience enables teams to focus exclusively on generating user value, rather than getting locked into a specific plan that does not result in meeting user needs.

By following the suggestions above and keeping users first, product development teams can work together to resolve the healthy tension between Agile and HCD in order to generate the most value for their users.

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!