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

Inside the Box Foxbox Digital Blog

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.

Our Hiring Philosophy: How We Hire the Best People

Just as Covid-19 was gaining momentum, Foxbox Digital collaborated with a leading enterprise healthcare organization to launch an AI mobile telehealth app.

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

On January 1st, 2020, just as the spread of Covid-19 was gaining momentum, Foxbox Digital collaborated with a leading enterprise healthcare organization—as their mobile development partner—to launch an AI mobile telehealth app. This sophisticated AI product allowed any consumer to easily access healthcare providers via real-time video and text chat, without ever physically going to a doctor’s office.

This was more than just the impressive launch of a mobile telehealth app. It’s the foundation for our client to support the accelerating evolution to digital and virtual healthcare services.


By mid-March 2020, the spread of Covid-19 accelerated, forcing many professionals to work from home, and preventing critical care for many non-Covid patients. 

The mobile application became a critical application for many people who needed limited care, preventative care, and also consumers with chronic illnesses.

“We built a solution that some of our customers have reviewed as being ‘life-changing.’ The ability to identify and diagnose issues without physically going to a doctor, and in the comfort of their own home, is a rewarding experience to be part of, and we continue to see the growing impact of our telehealth platform.”
- Chief Data Officer

This was a mission-critical, well-coordinated project with many enterprise integrations and coordination partners. We acted as a fast-moving, agile startup within their organization to enable them to bring this next-generation app to market in under six months.

On the launch date, both iOS and Android apps were available for download from their respective app stores. As of August 25, 2020, the telehealth app has been downloaded nearly 250,000 times, while hundreds of customers continue to utilize the application daily to diagnose symptoms, and seek guidance for their health conditions from a device that lives in their pockets.

Some of the core benefits of the mobile application include the ability to:

Identify possible conditions with the AI-based symptom checker

Chat in real-time over video and text with healthcare providers

Receive prescriptions at the customer’s pharmacy of choice

Pay via credit, debit, or via insurance provider, all within the app

Receive a Covid-19 assessment as well as a formal certification that the customer is ready to go back to work.

Once the pandemic hit, our mobile and backend development teams worked hard to develop mission-critical mobile product updates enabling consumers to get back to work as quickly and safely as possible.


What we admire about our client is their dedication to driving better customer healthcare experiences, and it shows with the final result of the product.


“I spoke with a doctor about my allergies using the video chat option, and I was able to pick up my prescription in under 45 minutes! I never had to physically visit a doctor, or sit in a waiting room for the single doctor at the office to come see me. I think I found a new way to do healthcare. Very impressed.”
- Customer review, iOS App Store

Moving Purposely: We Operated as a Startup Within the Enterprise and Accelerated Delivery

We are always excited to work with partners looking to push the limits in terms of digital innovation. And when we had a chance to lead mobile development for a leading healthcare company that was operating as a startup within their enterprise organization, we jumped on the chance.

“We picked Foxbox Digital because of their React Native skill set. Their ability to integrate into our environment quickly, be agile, and push through roadblocks was an amazing feat. We are grateful to have them on our team.”
- Staff VP of Engineering

Our client had a very similar operating vision to ours: 

We developed and published the initial mobile solution in under six months, which enabled our client to get to market even faster than originally planned and respond to the growing pandemic in a significant way.

It’s All About the (Customer) Experience: We Developed and Integrated Complex Mobile Features for iOS and Android Using React Native


Our client initially hired us for one big reason: 

We had deep, proven technical expertise in mobile and the React Native platform.

They continue to engage with us as a long-term partner for another reason: 

We execute with strong project management, a diversified skill-set in digital and mobile delivery, and the ability to integrate with a large organization while still being nimble and agile.

“They operated as our React Native experts and partners, and their knowledge of React Native was truly incredible. We could always rely on them to lead us in the right direction.”
- Staff VP, AI & Architecture

Foxbox’s responsibility was clear: Bring this technology to life in the easiest, most intuitive way possible. A successful launch will result in a single, powerful, life-changing application that is constantly learning.

Even with many complex moving parts, various integration partners, and a global, enterprise IT infrastructure, we accomplished their goal of creating a powerful, mobile app for their digital-first healthcare platform.


Here are the main capabilities delivered by leveraging existing technologies and seamlessly integrating them into the native mobile application.

In collaboration with our client, we integrated our client’s AI-based symptoms triage functionality into the app, allowing a native experience for consumers to check their symptoms and get personalized guidance.

Integrated Video and Chat for Virtual Doctor Visits

Considering that the video chat and text chat functionalities were separate technologies developed by our client, it was an even bigger feat to integrate this feature natively into the mobile application to create a secure, easy-to-use, native experience.

The ability for a consumer to access a healthcare professional from their personal devices without leaving their home is an incredible convenience.

Direct Integration with Consumers’ Insurance Providers

We developed the application so consumers were able to quickly pick their insurance from a select list of our client’s partners to pay through their insurer when necessary.

“I tried this service out for the first time and within 20 minutes, I was able to speak to a doctor and get a script sent in, and this includes the time filling out the required information. HIGHLY RECOMMEND.” 
- Customer review, iOS App Store

In Response to the Growing Pandemic, We Quickly Pivoted to Develop and Publish a Robust Covid-19 Attestation Solution in 10 Days

Covid-19 caused a lot of confusion for critical service providers who desperately needed to keep their employees safe while operating during the pandemic.

To help employers identify which employees are safe to come to work, we pivoted quickly to prioritize the creation of a new “back to work” functionality. This enabled employees to provide an employee authorization form they can give to their employers to alert them if they are ready to come back to work.


This functionality—developed and published on the app store in 10 days—in addition to a previously created Covid-19 assessment solution, allowed our client to partner with a large technology company to offer “back to work” services for 30,000+ employees, with many more partnerships to come.

Getting It Done with Talent and Execution: We Met Delivery Milestones Through Strong Agile Project Management and Collaboration

With so many global partners that developed critical parts and technology for this telehealth solution, we followed our agile principles to make this consumer product a seamless, easy-to-use customer experience.

We interacted with our client’s Product, UX, Business, Integration, Authentication, Backend Development, and Security teams to make this happen.

“Foxbox doesn’t have a meeting culture. They know how to get stuff done, and we saw it first hand.” 
- Staff VP of Technology

Hand-Picked, Highly Qualified Engineers and Project Managers Across Many Technical Disciplines

We take pride in our selective hiring process. It isn’t just about skill-set, it’s also about culture-fit and communications skills. It’s baked into our culture, which we call 

“Foxbox was very transparent about what they knew and what they didn’t know. Every engineer and project manager we worked with was top-notch and well-versed in their respective areas.” 
- Staff VP of Engineering

Strong Engineering Execution Alongside Enterprise Product Teams

Our React Native engineers and architects have worked alongside many partners to build native, integrated experiences. With the added complexity of working within an enterprise environment, we continued to be flexible and agile in our approach of acting like a startup within an enterprise.

Working inside an enterprise organization is always a challenging feat, regardless of the organization. Our team worked alongside their teams to build the best experience possible and tear down any roadblocks that came our way.

We shifted our resources to the challenges that needed the most attention.


“Foxbox Digital helped us build internal knowledge, and worked to help us scale our technical training internally. They went above and beyond in terms of knowledge sharing and training. That was really appreciated.” 
- Senior Director, Product Engineering

We started this engagement by building out a React Native bridge, and through this experience, we expanded our team to build other aspects of the solution and provide technical expertise along the way.


As the scope of this project grew, we expanded our product teams with hand-picked engineers and project managers that would enable the teams to continue moving forward quickly and purposely.

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

Hiring great candidates in-person and hiring great candidates remotely requires two totally different approaches. And we learned this the hard way. After going through the normal talent acquisition process, we needed to solve for ensuring each team member met with the candidate, while also being conscious of the time this may take.

Remote Hiring: How We Streamlined Our Interview Process and What We Learned

Hiring great candidates in-person and hiring great candidates remotely requires two totally different approaches. And we learned this the hard way.

, we recently made some new hires on our Product Management team. After going through the normal talent acquisition process, we needed to solve for ensuring each team member met with the candidate, while also being conscious of the time this may take.

It’s one thing to take the day to go to an interview and spend a few hours in the office, and it’s another to go to 3 back to back Zoom calls. We didn’t think this would be an engaging or pleasant experience.

We concluded that candidates would get a better feel of our team dynamic, and be able to get multiple perspectives on both the job and life at Foxbox in general if they met with the team all at once. It had to be a panel interview.

So, how were we going to do this over video chat?

Being that there were four people in the room who live for solving this kind of thing, we set out to figure out how we could both get the information we needed during our interviews, as well as ensure that our candidates were engaged and comfortable.

 is "Move Purposely", you may have already guessed that we put thought and intention into everything that we do. Given that this was a new experience for us, as well as the person on the other side of the call, going into each interview without a strong understanding of what we were trying to accomplish over the time we had wasn’t an option.

Any time you get a group of product managers and Scrum masters together to discuss creating a process, the discussion is spirited. Our team often operates under the guideline that we appreciate strong opinions loosely held, so while there was no disagreement per se, we all certainly had different thoughts on what questions and actions were the most important.

Scrum masters wanted to ensure that they'd integrate with the engineering team and understand the nuances of working with a fully remote company. Product managers wanted to focus on what hard product skills a candidate could bring. We accounted for everything we wanted to ask in a document and discussed. After synthesizing our ideas, we made a tactical plan:

Created a kanban board with all of our candidates and their information (because isn’t everything better with a kanban board?).

Blocked time on our individual calendars to focus on our candidate pipeline and leave an initial impression based on the resume and phone screen notes.

Met to brainstorm interview questions, which we then divided into four categories: 

Determined who should field what questions and blocked them out in a shared document.

Scheduled a pre-interview call to review the candidate a final time before the interview.

Scheduled a post-interview discussion with the hiring manager to share our thoughts and give a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

Provided the hiring manager with the guidance needed to move forward based on our feedback.

So you can see we accounted for just about everything except the interview itself. With this solid foundation to work off of, we designed our process to be as effective as possible.

Practice not for perfection, but for timing

It seems strange to conduct a dry run of an interview, but that’s exactly what we did. We needed to know roughly how many questions we could ask in the time we had allotted, as well as account for follow up questions, candidate questions for us, and who should answer what during our conversation.

Additionally, we needed to assign roles. Who would kick off the interview, given that bringing a video call into play makes everything seem more formal? Who would take notes? How would we communicate that we needed to ask or answer a question to the other panel interviewers?

, we’re all familiar with time boxing and making sure time is used valuably, so we needed to know, while accounting for the human piece of interviewing, how much time would it take to facilitate a conversation where we felt we could say yes or no to someone.

We couldn’t leave that to chance. So we practiced. And the unsurprising outcome was that when we had our first interview, we ended a bit early.

Like all good product people, we iterate and learn

When we ended our first video panel interview early, we all felt a little bit concerned. Perhaps we weren’t being thorough enough, or maybe we didn’t ask enough follow up questions.

But there’s always the human side to everything. There are very few situations where a one-size fits all approach will work, and it turns out that a video panel interview, of course, isn’t one of them.

We realized that when we were talking to people, they may not have as many questions about our company and our team as we as individuals may have. They may not have long responses to our questions, and if they provided a satisfactory answer, then why would we just ask the same question in a different way?

Our biggest takeaway from our first interview was while we had constructed what we felt was a bulletproof plan, maybe we couldn’t plan for everything.

Going forward, we adjusted our expectations around time a little bit, and found that when we loosened our grip a little bit, we got better outcomes and had more fruitful conversations.

In all, we conducted 6 video panel interviews over the course of 2 weeks, which was time consuming, but we expected we would have had to spend the same amount of time parsed out over a few weeks had we gone a more traditional route, which might have meant we missed out on great talent.

In the end, we are thrilled with the new hires that we brought on board and what we learned as a team going through this process. We hope our experience can serve as a framework for other organizations pulling in new talent during this strange time.

foxbox-team-photo-2020

Since my last quarterly update, so many great things have happened, and we actually continued to grow at a steady pace. This means we’re officially out of survival mode, which we were in when the pandemic started. We’re also learning a lot about how we work, and just how important our culture is to us as a team.

Foxbox Digital 2020 Q2 Update

Since our last quarterly update, so many great things have happened, and we actually continued to grow at a steady pace. This means we’re officially out of survival mode, which we were in when the pandemic started. We’re also learning a lot about how we work, and just how important our culture is to us as a team.

Here are the highlights of what’s happened.

We continue to grow our engineering and product team

All of our core team members that were put on furlough are now officially back from furlough because of increased client demand. It was a painful decision to put them on furlough, but it was necessary to protect the future of Foxbox.

My good friend and one of our earliest team members, Jasmine Slivka left Foxbox to lead product for another organization. She's had a huge impact on Foxbox - our culture, our team, and of course, our clients. She set the foundation for how we deliver for our clients and her successors have a lot to be thankful for. So, I wanted to personally say thank you, Jasmine!

This quarter, we brought on 11 new team members!

3 Engineers (Mariano, Bruno, and Lautaro)

2 in operations (Luciana, Operations Coordinator, and Karina, Finance Analyst)

And we're looking to hire two more for our Chicago office:

We closed a few new deals and launched the new Brideside.com 

, a Chicago-based retailer that sells beautiful bridesmaids dresses. They came to us to re-platform their infrastructure in order to provide a whole new shopping experience and a reliable operational backend. Brideside is powered by Shopify, React, Sanity CMS, and Salesforce.

On the same day as the Brideside launch, we kicked off a project for a company that owns and runs a portfolio of residential buildings. As a member, you'll have access to coworking space, special events, and other really fun things. What sets them apart is that you don't have to rent a full apartment, you could rent a bedroom and share the apartment with other cool people. We're building a mobile app that residents will use to access their space, and I'm excited to show you the end result when we’ve officially launched.

We signed two new deals with companies that are on the cutting edge of innovation of technology and business models. We also renewed a few projects, and we’re seeing a trend of many of our clients renewing for future phases. I'll take that as a sign that our execution capabilities are maturing, and renewals are great for everyone involved.

On a side-note, our win rate is increasing

 because we’re doing much more work upfront to close deals. Instead of sending over a deck with a final number, we’re working hand-in-hand with prospective clients and doing a lot of work upfront to showcase our capabilities.

On one deal, we researched, architected, and planned meticulously for months, for free. We’re doing work that no other agency would do, and being flexible with how we do it. We start early with brainstorming ideas and strategy with our prospective clients. It’s a lot of work, but it’s paying off.

We’re paying more attention to our company goals and OKRs

," we’re starting to be more serious about our goals and tracking our progress against those goals.

Our first attempt at company OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) were good, but a bit dry. I wanted them to be exciting and motivating. Instead of focusing on earning more revenue, 

 The core is basically the same, but I think these new OKRs are a meaningful shift in perspective to have us aligned toward the right goals.

Our revamped organizational OKRs revolve around three main areas:

Become the leading, go-to digital agency for mid-market businesses.

Delivering measurable value and delighting our customers.

Creating a highly talented, passionate, and driven team.

Improve the consistency of delivering stable products.

We are putting a bigger focus on automated testing and QA. To do this, we brought on two QA engineers to help us. This includes the work of writing effective automated tests across our backend, front-end, mobile, and web.

Every build-phase project will have dedicated QA hours.

Focus on improving our testing strategy and process.

We are changing the staffing mix to dedicate more project hours to Product Management. PMs will handle fewer projects than they have in the past, which is essential to delivering quality software.

Focus on growth, even during the pandemic.

Not growing is not an option for us, and this is the only approach to avoiding survivor mode. We are not growing for the sake of getting bigger, we are growing to make us more stable. Frankly, we need more clients in order to minimize the impact of any single client leaving us.

We’ve invested in account-based marketing/sales outreach to target the customers we believe we can help the most. We are in the early stages.

Improve our website to reflect who we are and how we work.

As we evolve, so does the website. It feels like we just re-did our website, but so many things have evolved in positive ways that we need to make sure our website reflects our new positioning as a full-service digital product agency.

We’re in a good position, and I'm cautiously optimistic

Covid-19 isn’t over. It’s not close to being over, so we have to work harder than ever to keep growing. I learned a lot from our Q1 update about going into survivor mode, and I will use that as a frame of reference as we expand and build our capabilities.

Thanks again for listening, and you’ll hear from me at the end of Q3!

Foxbox Digital 2020 Q2 Update—Big Product Launch, Steady Growth, and Less Covid-19 Chaos (For Now)

The rapid rate of technological change is forcing enterprises to reinvent themselves and provide more flexible approaches, so agile transformations are key. However, knowing that agile is important is one thing, but the ability to properly implement the main principles, tools, and techniques of agile is another. Let’s explore time-tested agile principles that will help your organization build innovative products that customers love.

How to Nail Agile Collaboration and Build Better Products

Agile, as a modern framework and approach to developing software, has evolved significantly over the last couple of decades. Today, 

 means producing quality software in short, fast increments, also known as continuous delivery.

The rapid rate of technological change is forcing enterprises to reinvent themselves and provide more flexible approaches to addressing the needs of consumers and individual business units. This is precisely why agile adoptions and transformations are key. Business today is different than just three years ago, and organizations must be quick on their feet to keep up with the competition, or they simply won’t survive.

Knowing that agile is important is one thing, but the ability to properly implement the main principles, tools, and techniques of agile is another. Let’s explore several time-tested agile principles that, if properly implemented, will help your organization build innovative products that customers love.

Don’t Move Forward without Total Agile Buy-In

In order for agile to work, everyone in the organization who will make that transition needs to buy in. It’s that simple!

Now, it is obviously difficult to switch a team—especially one used to waterfall approaches—to agile overnight. It doesn’t work that way. However, a good way to onboard agile into an enterprise is to start with one product team and build consensus on the team through meetings, brainstorming sessions, and actual Scrum adoption in order to generate total agile buy-in within that team.

This means bringing all of your team members together—the UX team, the product owners, developers, and IT operations— and getting them out of their silos and introduced to agile.

It’s important to note that the entire organization doesn’t need to be agile to succeed. A prime example is BMW. It's not that you must roll out agile across the entire enterprise to succeed, it's that you need to roll it out within a complete business unit to be successful. While BMW's mechanical engineering side is unchanged, its software development side is totally agile, and they do not function at odds.

When You Know You’ve Nailed Agile Collaboration

There are a number of core principles and qualities that constitute a true agile project.

People over process and features over systems

The first value in the Agile Manifesto is “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.” Putting people first means frequent and transparent communication to ensure that customer needs are being met at each stage of the development cycle. If the process or the tools drive development, the team is less responsive to change and less likely to meet those needs.

Within the Agile Manifesto, there are 12 key principles that characterize how agile works. Of those, three focus on the importance of collaboration:

Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.