Happy Cog has crafted beautiful, intuitive digital experiences for nearly 20 years. You may know them as the folks that helped drive the web standards movement, or as one of the earliest proponents of Responsive Web Design, but these days Happy Cog partners with some of the biggest names out there, designing and building innovative solutions for almost every industry.
Sifter is our central hub to keep track of conversations and issues throughout the lifespan of a project. At Happy Cog we always aim to use tools that represent our values of being well designed and easy to use and over the years Sifter has become a cornerstone of our process.
While we handle the majority of our project management in Basecamp and code reviews in GitHub and Beanstalk, Sifter is our QA control center. Sifter integrations keep the other tools we use seamlessly in sync, allowing our conversations to be focused, no matter where they occur.
At Happy Cog we work through rolling phases of quality assurance and use Sifter intensely throughout the life of a project. In the beginning we use Sifter for internal reviews, prior to passing our work along to our clients. With each major deliverable, a designer will do a design review and a developer will test the functionality. Any issues that arise are tracked in Sifter and assigned to the appropriate team member for resolution.
When we feel that we’ve addressed the majority of technical and design issues we’re ready to add the client to the project in Sifter. A project manager will set up a meeting or post a message in Basecamp explaining how we use bug tracking to get the best results. Then, we’ll invite our clients to the Sifter project to perform acceptance testing to catch any issues that we may have missed.
While testing isn’t our only layer of quality assurance, it helps us close out projects effectively by minimizing the amount of issues that slip through. With Sifter, we can be confident that we’ve caught as many issues as possible and that our clients are thrilled with the results and their site.
By the Numbers…
- Founded In 1999
- Sifting Since 2008
- Company Size 30 folks
- Average Team Size 6-8 (plus clients)
- Projects Per Year 20-25
- Average Project Length about 10-14 months
Getting clients involved in our quality assurance process is an integral part of our method at Happy Cog. With Sifter, it’s incredibly easy to collaborate with clients and keep them informed. That kind of transparency can give clients peace of mind to know the issues they’re tracking are being addressed.Mark Huot, Development Director
