Some time ago I wrote about the continuous path of growth that small companies walk. In the past few months we’ve seen the single biggest increase in members at MyRoute-app as well as the biggest organisational changes since the inception in 2013. Finally, we’ve all had a well-deserved holiday break to catch some breath before shifting back and slamming the throttle again. In this blog I’ll tell you all about what we’ve been up to in the past weeks.
Since October, 35.000 new members have joined MyRoute-app. On average, 101 new members join MyRoute-app every single day. In addition, partnerships with both for-profit and non-profit organisations have skyrocketed. We’ve closed contracts with our primary suppliers that incentivize symbiotic growth and we’ve outsourced many non-vital processes to optimize company performance.
For starters, we’ve decided to outsource knowledge that comes secondary to our own programmers. Instead of focussing on many things at once, our core development team will prioritize on the development of MyRoute-app WEB and MRA Video. Specialized expertise such as server maintenance and DevOps is now in the hands of a contractor. Additionally, the development and maintenance work for our apps is in the process of being transferred to a second contractor. Going for outsourcing has created much more capacity on building out MyRoute-app WEB, MRA Video and MRA Navigation. Separating these tasks allows us to work in parallel on features, maintenance and bug fixing.
Directly related to this is how we’re now drastically reducing the number of bugs in MyRoute-app. There’s a big backlog of problems that need fixing, but we’re pushing through them at previously unknown speeds. To immediately reflect on our own performance on where we can improve: we’re not communicating enough about which problems have been resolved. This too will change in the very near future. The support team now uses smart tagging to mark support tickets that demonstrate the behaviour of certain bugs, so that the development team can easily access all the available information regarding a certain bug. In addition, two-weekly sprints are held to review and assign bugs with the team.
As for MRA Video we’re now in the last stages of the closed beta. Having built a stable concept that’s been thoroughly tested we’re almost ready to move forward into a second stage beta for early contributors. Currently the main blockers for this move are not with the core tech of MRA Video, but making sure that opening the second stage will go far smoother than the original MyRoute-app WEB beta and the release of MRA Navigation. We’re trying to learn from our mistakes after all. As for the practical terms of the second stage beta: it’ll become available for MyRoute-app All-in-one members as well as people that pre-order MRA Video. At the end of the second stage beta a survey will go out to gather features for a MRA Video specific roadmap.
Shortly after opening the second stage of MRA Video we will finally release the RoadMap for MyRoute-app WEB. This long awaited plan has crept in scope, which explains the longer wait. Why have we let the scope creep? Because we decided that if we’re making a RoadMap then everything should be on it. In light of continued transparency we will showcase everything on our RoadMap that the team could possibly be working on. This includes things that might be of less interest to individual members, but are important to the continued prosperity of our platform. Contrary to many companies we’re not hiding the commercial parts of MyRoute-app. Having a great route-planner is important, but so is having a high-conversion shop to buy products from. With this we continue the trend of full transparency and high member-satisfaction.
In conclusion we’re at the metaphorical night before the party. There’s plenty of reason for excitement and we’re glad to share it with you.
As always, feel free to discuss and comment.
Your community manager,
Timo
