Adapting to the Future: Flexibility in Tech Isn’t Optional Anymore 

Adapting to the Future: Flexibility in Tech Isn’t Optional Anymore 

By Helena Matamoros, Human Capital Manager at Scio
Top view of a person holding a black clock next to a blank notebook and laptop—symbolizing hybrid work, time autonomy, and modern work flexibility.
As someone who’s spent the last few years helping tech teams thrive at Scio, I’ve witnessed a dramatic shift in how we define “work.” Today, flexibility is no longer a perk; it’s a strategic foundation, especially for companies building nearshore teams or expanding globally.

Hybrid Work Is the New Normal

At Scio, we embraced the hybrid work model early not as a temporary fix, but as a long-term evolution. By allowing team members to choose the environment where they perform best, we’ve not only improved work-life balance but also unlocked new levels of performance and creativity.

For tech companies anywhere in the U.S. looking to build high-performing teams in Latin America, flexibility is key to attracting and retaining top talent.
A man participating in a video call with a distributed remote team—symbolizing trust, autonomy, and communication in hybrid work.

Beyond Remote: Flexibility Means Trust

It’s not just about location. True flexibility is built on trust, autonomy, and outcome-based leadership. We’ve invested in tools for asynchronous collaboration and immersive communication to support a distributed workforce across LATAM.

The result? Teams that feel connected, regardless of time zone. People who are empowered, engaged, and motivated to do their best work.

A More Inclusive Way to Lead

Shifting to flexible work requires a new mindset. One that prioritizes inclusion, psychological safety, and leadership that listens. For us at Scio, that’s meant helping our clients build teams, not just fill roles.

Because when every voice is heard, whether from Monterrey, Mexico City, or right here in Texas, innovation accelerates.

Why It Matters for Nearshore Growth

For U.S. companies looking to scale through nearshoring, flexibility isn’t optional, it’s your competitive edge. Hiring beyond borders means designing workplaces that work across cultures and contexts.

And that’s what we do at Scio:
We help companies build strategic nearshore software teams that are trusted, bilingual, aligned, and easy to work with.
A diverse group of hands connecting colorful gears—symbolizing collaboration, unity, and the collective future of hybrid work.

Let’s Keep the Conversation Going

If you’re navigating this shift in your own organization, whether you’re in HR or leading tech teams; I’d love to hear from you. What has flexibility looked like for your company? What challenges have you faced?

Let’s connect and shape the future of work together.

Suggested Reading

Helena Matamoros

Helena Matamoros

Human Capital Manager

Your Dev Team Needs Coaching Skills 

Your Dev Team Needs Coaching Skills 

Written by: Yamila Solari

Software development team collaborating during a team meeting in an Agile work environment.

Nowadays, it’s not enough for software development teams to be technically brilliant, they also need to know how to learn, adapt, and grow together. As Co-founder of Scio and a certified organizational coach, I’ve seen firsthand how the right coaching skills can elevate an Agile team from simply functioning to truly thriving.

Let’s unpack why coaching skills are essential for every dev team, not just managers or Scrum Masters, and how to bring them into your day-to-day practice.

Why Coaching Belongs in Agile Teams

At its core, coaching is a way to help others learn or change. Unlike mentoring or directing, coaching relies on powerful questions, deep listening, and trust to spark self-discovery and action. That’s exactly the kind of dynamic learning we want inside Agile teams.

Agile teams work in environments of constant change and iteration, where new technologies, tools, and requirements emerge faster than most formal training programs can keep up. In this setting, the ability to teach each other, problem-solve collaboratively, and reflect as a team becomes critical.

Here are a few characteristics that make coaching especially relevant in Agile teams:

  • Cross-functionality: Everyone has a different specialty, and often, different viewpoints.
  • Self-organization: Teams are expected to take ownership, not wait for top-down direction.
  • Frequent feedback loops: Scrum ceremonies demand reflection and adaptation.
  • Psychological safety: Learning can’t happen without trust.

When team members are equipped with coaching skills, they’re more effective at giving and receiving feedback, challenging each other constructively, and making sure that learning sticks—without turning every mistake into a crisis.

What Coaching Skills Bring to the Table

Training team members in coaching techniques builds essential competencies that go far beyond people management:

  • Active listening – really hearing what’s said (and unsaid)
  • Powerful questioning – opening up thinking without prescribing
  • Building trust – essential for psychological safety
  • Giving and receiving feedback – candid, kind, and constructive
  • Following through on action plans – turning insights into impact
  • Supportively challenging teammates – helping others grow, not stay comfortable

These skills not only improve collaboration but support the Agile principles of transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

Puzzle pieces forming a white arrow pointing right on a yellow background.

Team-Led, Not Top-Down

While having an organization-wide coaching culture is ideal, that kind of transformation can take years and requires deep buy-in from senior leadership.

I want to make the case for a more accessible approach: let every team create their own coaching culture, with the support of a coach when needed. Agile teams are already empowered to self-organize, why not self-develop too?

By starting at the team level, you keep it practical, grounded, and tailored. Over time, these micro-cultures create a ripple effect throughout the organization.

A Road Map for Bringing Coaching into Your Team

You don’t need a full-blown organizational transformation to start cultivating a coaching culture in your team. However, you may need the sponsorship of a manager to get access to a team coach for training and support. Here’s a practical rollout plan:

1. Start with your Team Lead(s) and senior devs

Train your team lead(s) and senior devs first. They’ll model the skills in one-on-ones, the agile ceremonies, code reviews, and standups.

2. Then train the whole team by focusing on the Basics

Start small with three core skills:

  • Active listening
  • Powerful questions
  • The GROW coaching model (Goal, Reality, Options, Will)

3. Build It into Agile Practices

Coaching works best when it becomes part of how the team communicates, reflects, and improves every day.
Start by making small but meaningful adjustments to your existing Agile ceremonies:

  • Daily Scrum

Add one coaching-style question, for example: “What’s the small experiment you’ll try today?” This encourages learning through action and supports a growth mindset.

  • Backlog Refinement

Invite developers to coach the Product Owner on how stories could be sliced thinner or clarified. This creates shared ownership and teaches developers to ask thoughtful, outcome-focused questions.

  • Sprint Review

Help stakeholders structure their feedback using a coaching-inspired format:
Appreciation → Question → Suggestion.
It frames feedback constructively and invites dialogue instead of judgment.

  • Retrospective

Rotate the facilitator role so each team member gets to guide the session.
Use the GROW model to turn insights into real action. Over time, this develops leadership and coaching confidence across the team.

Additionally:

    • Add “ask before telling,” “coach, don’t criticize,” and “we give timely, kind, candid feedback” to your team working agreements.
    • Set aside time during the sprint for informal peer-coaching conversations and practice.
    • Host a monthly “coaching development series” where more nuanced knowledge about coaching can be discussed.

    By weaving coaching into the fabric of Agile, you make it feel natural and not like another task, but simply how the team works and grows.

    Person holding glowing icons representing knowledge, collaboration, and innovation in a tech environment.

    Final Thought

    We often talk about upskilling in tech—new frameworks, new languages, new stacks. But what if the biggest unlock for your team isn’t technical at all?

    Teaching coaching skills may be the smartest, most scalable way to build adaptability, trust, and sustainable high performance into your development teams.

    Start small. Start where you are.

    Further Reading

    The Leader as Coach – Harvard Business Review
    A compelling argument for why coaching is becoming the most effective form of leadership in fast-paced, knowledge-driven workplaces.

    The GROW Model
    A breakdown of one of the most popular coaching models used in organizations, perfect for Agile retrospectives, one-on-ones, and learning conversations.

    Psychological Safety – Amy Edmondson
    The foundational research article that introduced the concept of psychological safety—crucial for any team trying to implement a coaching mindset.

    Coaching Agile Teams – Lyssa Adkins
    A must-read book for Agile coaches and leaders, exploring how to blend Agile principles with coaching stances to help teams mature.

    Yamila Solari

    Yamila Solari

    General Manager

    How to Build Culturally Aligned Nearshore Teams That Actually Work 

    How to Build Culturally Aligned Nearshore Teams That Actually Work 

    Written by: Denisse Morelos
    For U.S.-based engineering leaders, nearshoring has moved from an interesting option to a strategic capability. Mexico and the broader Latin American region offer a compelling blend of engineering skill, time zone alignment, and cultural proximity—traits that support product velocity without the operational strain of managing large offshore gaps. But logistics alone don’t make a distributed team effective. The variable that consistently determines whether a nearshore collaboration becomes a true extension of your engineering organization is cultural alignment.
    Cultural alignment influences how teams communicate, resolve conflict, give feedback, plan work, and take ownership. When alignment is strong, collaboration feels natural and predictable. When it’s not, even talented engineers struggle within mismatched expectations. This article explores how cultural alignment works in practice, how it impacts delivery and ROI, and why Scio’s nearshore engineering framework—shaped by years of working alongside U.S. product teams—creates clear, dependable, and high-performing partnerships.

    Why Cultural Alignment Matters in Nearshore Software Teams

     

    More Than Shared Time Zones

    Time zone alignment is a strong operational advantage, but it only solves half the equation. Real-time collaboration helps teams resolve blockers, clarify requirements, and keep roadmap progress stable. Yet shared hours don’t guarantee shared understanding. If two teams work at the same time but operate from different assumptions about communication, decision-making, or ownership, the collaboration becomes fragile.
    Consider a common scenario: a U.S.-based product manager gives concise, straightforward feedback. In many U.S. engineering cultures, candor is seen as efficient. But for an engineer unfamiliar with direct communication styles, that same feedback may come across as abrupt or discouraging. One side believes they’re being clear; the other believes something has gone wrong. Velocity slows not because of technical decisions, but because of cultural interpretation.

    The Hidden Operational Costs of Misalignment

    Cultural friction rarely appears in KPIs, yet it materializes every day in ways that directly affect delivery. Leaders consistently report four recurring symptoms:
    Extended onboarding cycles resulting from unclear expectations

    Repeated corrections and rework due to mismatched assumptions

    Lower morale and increased turnover when engineers feel disconnected

    Delays in decision-making when communication requires translation of intent

    These issues compound over time. A team might meet the technical requirements but still struggle to operate smoothly. This is where many nearshore projects lose momentum—not because the talent isn’t there, but because alignment never fully formed.
    When cultural expectations are aligned, distributed teams move with greater clarity, handle challenges with less friction, and sustain high performance longer. Without alignment, even highly skilled engineers expend unnecessary cognitive energy navigating communication instead of solving engineering problems.

    Key Elements of Cultural Alignment

    Shared Work Values and Expectations
    High-performing distributed teams don’t succeed by following a checklist. They succeed because they operate from shared values. Ownership, curiosity, collaboration, adaptability, and proactive communication are the patterns that enable engineers to thrive in fast-moving environments.
    At Scio, we select engineers not only for their technical expertise but also for their ability to integrate naturally into U.S. engineering cultures. Our recruitment and vetting processes focus on:
    Communication style

    Problem-solving approach

    Comfort with ambiguity

    Feedback responsiveness

    Initiative and accountability

    These attributes determine how well an engineer will collaborate across borders. When values align, trust builds quickly, and teams can navigate complexity without unnecessary friction.
    This emphasis supports Scio’s core purpose: to provide high-performing nearshore software engineering teams that are easy to work with.
    Communication Norms and Language Nuance
    True communication goes beyond fluency. It requires understanding complexity, tone, directness, and context. In cross-border teams, communication style is often the biggest variable in early integration.
    Examples include:
    Direct vs. indirect feedback

    Expectations around urgency

    Degrees of formality in written communication

    Interpretation of silence or brief responses

    To address this, Scio integrates intercultural coaching throughout the collaboration. Engineers learn how U.S. teams expect information, transparency, and escalation. Likewise, clients gain insight into how Latin American engineers interpret tone and phrasing. This mutual calibration minimizes misinterpretation and builds confidence.
    Team Rituals That Build Trust
    Distributed teams rely on recurring rituals that reinforce connection. These rituals become the structure that creates predictability and shared rhythm across borders. Effective rituals include:
    Daily stand-ups focused on clarity and next steps

    Regular demos to showcase progress and build transparency

    Retrospectives centered on shared improvement

    One-on-ones that reinforce trust and psychological safety

    Informal conversations that humanize collaboration

    Celebrating milestones together, even virtually

    Trust develops through these repeated interactions. Over time, the team becomes a cohesive engineering unit—not a U.S. team with nearshore contributors, but a single, integrated group that plans, delivers, and problem-solves together.

    Best Practices to Build Culturally Aligned Teams

     

    Hiring for Cultural Fit and Soft Skills

    Success in distributed engineering depends heavily on traits that live outside the technical résumé. Skills like emotional intelligence, adaptability, constructive feedback, and collaborative decision-making make the difference between an engineer who simply completes tasks and one who becomes a long-term asset.
    Through ScioElevate, our talent development and vetting system, we identify engineers who demonstrate:
    Empathy and strong listening skills

    Comfort with direct communication

    Ability to work with evolving requirements

    Habitual knowledge-sharing and mentorship

    Openness to constructive challenges

    These traits strengthen collaboration inside complex, high-stakes product environments.

    Onboarding That Goes Beyond Tools and Access

    Effective onboarding aligns people—not just systems. Distributed teams need clarity on expectations, escalation practices, communication patterns, delivery rhythms, and cultural interaction norms. Scio’s co-designed onboarding framework includes:
    Technical and workflow alignment

    Communication protocols and meeting expectations

    Feedback standards and iteration cadence

    Cultural guidance for both sides of the team

    This approach accelerates integration and helps teams find their rhythm early. Engineers know what “good communication” looks like. Leaders know what support is needed. Everyone operates from the same definition of success.

    Feedback Loops and Continuous Improvement

    High-performing distributed teams rely on consistent, structured feedback. Not as a reactive tool, but as a proactive system that prevents misalignment from taking root. Effective distributed engineering teams use:
    Weekly one-on-ones for clarity and support

    Retrospectives that highlight both progress and friction points

    Informal check-ins for quick alignment

    Collaborative planning that reduces misunderstanding

    This feedback culture keeps communication healthy and transparent. It also reduces turnover by strengthening trust and giving engineers a voice in how the team evolves.

    How Scio Builds Teams That Actually Work

    Scio’s framework for building reliable nearshore engineering teams stems from nearly two decades of experience supporting U.S. software organizations. Our goal is simple and consistent: help clients achieve outcomes with ease and efficiency, while building long-term relationships rooted in trust.
    At the center of this approach is ScioElevate, our internal talent development and performance program. It strengthens both technical leadership and cultural competence, ensuring engineers integrate seamlessly with U.S. partners. Our focus includes:
    Long-term skill development

    Performance coaching

    Mentorship and peer learning

    Cultural calibration

    Collaboration readiness

    Because alignment is not a one-time event, Scio’s teams grow alongside your product organization, reinforcing the reliability and communication patterns that make distributed teams successful.

    Additional Benefits of Nearshoring to Mexico

    Cultural alignment is a major advantage, but Mexico offers several strategic benefits that go beyond communication:
    Large engineering talent pool with more than 700,000 IT and engineering professionals

    Real-time collaboration across U.S. time zones

    Strong IP protection through USMCA and aligned legal frameworks

    Cost-effective senior talent compared to U.S. and Eastern European markets

    Greater cultural proximity leading to faster integration and lower turnover

    These factors make Mexico one of the strongest nearshore alternatives for organizations that require reliable engineering expansion without sacrificing quality or long-term continuity.

    Comparative Table: Offshore vs. Nearshore Cultural Alignment

    Factor
    Offshore (Asia/Africa)
    Nearshore (Mexico/LatAm)
    Time Zone Overlap Low High
    Communication Style Compatibility Moderate to Low High
    Onboarding Speed Slower Faster
    Cultural Proximity to U.S. Teams Low High
    IP and Legal Alignment Moderate Strong under USMCA
    Collaboration Rhythm Requires async optimization Real-time collaboration
    Turnover Risk Higher due to market volatility Lower due to cultural affinity

    FAQ

    Cultural Alignment in Nearshore Teams – FAQs

    How engineering leaders evaluate, build, and scale high-performing nearshore teams.

    Cultural alignment is the shared understanding of communication norms, decision-making, feedback expectations, and work habits that allows distributed teams to operate as one cohesive engineering group.

    Go beyond technical interviews. Use behavioral questions, assess communication style, test how candidates receive and give feedback, and explore real problem-solving approaches to validate long-term fit.

    Mexico combines cultural proximity to U.S. teams, full time zone overlap, strong engineering talent, and legal frameworks aligned with U.S. expectations. The result is faster integration and higher team stability.

    Yes. High-performing distributed teams rely on shared values, communication alignment, and well-structured collaboration rhythms, not physical proximity.

    Final Thoughts: Cultural Alignment as a Strategic Advantage

    Cultural alignment is not soft science. It is a structural advantage that accelerates onboarding, strengthens communication, deepens trust, and improves delivery quality. When alignment is strong, distributed teams don’t feel outsourced—they feel embedded. They anticipate needs, solve problems proactively, and contribute to the long-term momentum of your engineering organization.
    If you’re ready to build a nearshore team that operates with clarity, consistency, and cultural cohesion, Scio is prepared to help you create the bridge that makes nearshoring work at a strategic level. Together, we can build a team that supports your product goals with reliability and ease.

    What does success look like to you?

    What does success look like to you?

    By Scio Team

    Scio software developer reflecting on personal definition of success</p>
<p>
    It’s easy to see the idea of success as a default goal, something everyone should be looking for in any endeavor they start. And while it’s true that always looking for a specific destination is part of our nature, what does success mean? Because when we talk about success, it’s easy to forget that it never looks the same for everyone.
    Truth is, success comes from a very personal place for most people, where our experiences and expectations shape the way we work and collaborate, and the specific things we choose to focus on. That’s why at Scio we believe that a good organization leaves enough space to let every collaborator reach success on their terms. So what is a success, then? As we were curious about what drives each of our developers and engineers, we sent a survey to all the Scioneers to ask this very important question: what does success look like to you?

    The importance of balance

    “Success is feeling in control of my personal life”, states one of the responses we got. “Being able to feel like I’m doing something valuable, having the strength and motivation to continue doing the things I love, and also being happy with the ones around me.” This image of success, for example, points out the important balance between work and personal life, one of the core values of Scio regarding their collaborators. We consider this is an important topic because developing software is as much of a creative endeavor as a technical one, and having people who keep healthy boundaries is crucial to always arrive at the best outcomes. To this end, fostering a good culture of collaboration and camaraderie is the best approach to ensure that a project is completed successfully, as it can also mean that your work doesn’t go unnoticed. “I like that Scio’s culture promotes the gesture of congratulating the team, both individually and as a whole”, says another of the answers we got. “I like the post-mortem charts we have about our successful projects, where they make sure all the team knows we are aware of their achievements. We even have social meetings to celebrate successful goals, which I think it’s a good idea. So let’s continue promoting the gesture of congratulating our teams for their achievements.” This is one of the examples of the ways Scio tries to maintain mutual support in everything we do, and something as simple as notifying everyone that a team has achieved a goal, or having a group call to just chat and relax, goes a long way toward it.

    Success beyond the office

    Illustration for blog What does success look like?

    However, for some, success transcends the workplace and instead focuses on how it affects a collaborator’s everyday life. “Having my own home, seeing my kids happy, and maybe even running a marathon in another country is success” was one of the answers we got, as well as “Feeling full, and having yourself, your family, your significant other, your mind, your work, and your world in balance” and “Being able to do what I like in life and enjoy every second.”

    This topic keeps coming out because a clear balance between work and personal life has been increasingly desired among both developers and companies starting to embrace the advantages of remote work and hybrid collaboration models, so making sure a healthy equilibrium exists is one of our core values here at Scio. “Feeling happy and comfortable with where you are”, another one of our responses, sums it up very well.

    We understand that, due to the nature of software development, sometimes keeping this balance is tricky, even if Nearshore companies like Scio offer plenty of flexibility and options to work, so taking the steps to ensure that our collaborators can define success beyond the needs of a project goes a long way.

    This also ties with another concept that many developers find attractive in any workplace: the chance to learn and grow as they work, which seemed to be a focal point in many of the answers we received. “Meeting the objectives and goals, keep the things I learned, as well as learning from the mistakes to improve”, and “Creating something of value that has a positive impact on the people you care about” get to the point of it, as a successful person might also be one that learns, grows and creates useful things from the work they do.

    “Looks like having a clean conscience, lots of self-caring, not reserving everything to myself, feeling useful, achieving a wisdom state” was an unexpected answer. A lot of people can see success in purely personal terms (i.e. “how I feel about this thing I did?), so creating an environment where collaboration and personal growth are on the same frequency tends to deliver the best outcomes.

    The success of living well

    Blog header: What does success look like?

    And last, it’s not a secret that many go into software development because it’s a very in-demand field with lots of organizations to choose from to collaborate with, and compensation is always important for anyone looking to join an organization that shares their values. “For me, is to be financially stable enough to give my family a better life, while also being happy in your job and what you like. To be successful is also to be recognized in your work and know that you are an important part of your company”, reads one of the answers, highlighting success as having the means to support your loved ones while also working on something you feel passionate about.

    “For me, success is when your lifestyle and quality of life improves significantly and money isn’t an issue at all”, continues another of the responses. “While also achieving your personal and professional goals, feeling full and happy. Then you have a balance of these ‘pillars’ and yet you are further away from where you started.”

    As we reveal more responses, we can start to see that “success” is, at the end of it, directing your life in the way you want to, down to every detail, as this answer manages to explain beautifully: “For me, success has many shapes. From small achievements to the greatest goals, success can happen anywhere, in any place, both in our personal and professional lives, in the financial sense, or even with the people around you”, trying to get across how success is present in our daily lives.

    “Even in defeat, we can see success in learning something, feeling good about it, making ourselves proud, and gaining more knowledge in return. If we see it like this, anything we achieve is a success.”

    So what do you think? How do you personally define success and how does it get reflected in your personal life? Is it something concrete you work towards every day, or a state of life you want to achieve? Because no matter what your definition of success is, at Scio, we are willing to lend you a hand and achieve your best possible outcome.

    The show must go on: Developing a venue booking app with UPick

    The show must go on: Developing a venue booking app with UPick

    The show must go on: Developing a venue booking app with UPick

    As the year winds down, it’s time to look back and celebrate all of our achievements of 2021, the challenges and the goals we conquered, and the clients whose projects we helped to become reality. 

    This time, let’s take a look at the story behind the development of the UPick app, which had the goal of creating a useful and reliable booking tool for both venues and artists, and how we helped them bring that dream from concept to a product you can use today. Enjoy!

    What goes into making a good idea into reality? For the creators of UPick, it meant finding a reliable team that could build upon their idea, understand the concept completely, and offers the best technical know-how to bring it from paper into every smart device you can imagine. The beginning was simple enough; back in 2020, a couple of friends were looking into an area of opportunity no one else seemed to be exploring yet: what if you could simplify the process to book a show for a venue through an app?

    The show must go on Developing a venue booking app with UPick_2

    The pandemic gave them a wide-open window to implement a solution for an industry that felt the consequences of this crisis deeply. Live shows account for nearly 50% of the music industry’s revenue, so six months into the pandemic, according to the World Economic Forum, shutdowns had already cost venues around the world 10 billion dollars in sponsorships and ticket sales, with no end in sight. 

    But with vaccination rates increasing, it was probably a good time to try and bring shows back, and UPick’s creators thought that an app that offered a quick way to reconnect performers with venues had some fertile ground to grow.

    So, in February 2021 they started considering Scio as a partner, looking for developers who could create this app from scratch, decide the full scope of the final product, and make important decisions about the direction of the platform.

    This was the first time our clients worked with Nearshore developers, and the advantages of having a fully experienced team equipped and ready to roll inside your own time zone became invaluable, keeping the costs of development down without sacrificing quality. 

    Since our clients had never been involved in a project of this size, constant communication to decide the specifics of UPick was critical, going from things like how to monetize the service, to the best hosting platforms to use.

    Typically, development at Scio consists of a 5-step plan designed to arrive at a solution in the most productive way possible. Understanding users and their needs, as well as the objectives and constraints of the app itself, was Step 1. Step 2 involved analyzing the requirements of the app in order to trace a plan for the UX/UI and architecture of the platform. Then, Step 3 is pure Agile Development, up to the official launch, which was Step 4. And after the kick-off, is a matter of support to ensure the quality of the app, giving ongoing maintenance and adding features as a Step 5.

    The Scioneers chosen were a Programming Lead who developed the architecture of the app, a UI designer tasked with creating a comfortable and stylish interface, another one assigned to create a search bar and review functions within the app, and a QA lead who would make sure everything worked perfectly.

    Communication was key. Thanks to daily scrums, a core pillar of our process, we walked our client through the progress of the project, needing nothing more than 15 minutes every day to discuss the changes and challenges that surfaced, as well as what we accomplished, every week.

    The show must go on Developing a venue booking app with UPick_2

    Here, we solved tons of questions born during development, like “how will a band schedule a show?”, “how will refunds work?”, and “how will the venues and bands make deals?” to more technical matters, like choosing a cost-effective hosting solution (AWS in our case), implementing login credentials from Apple, Spotify, and social media (including some necessary workarounds), to selecting the best payment processor. 

    Also, as we briefly mentioned, the business plan of the app had to be revised entirely once the booking process was decided, as Upick could easily be cut out from the deal between venue and performer, and our team took care of that.

    The biggest breakthrough was deciding to make UPick a “progressive application”, where a web portal could function as an app with consistency across devices, like desktops and smartphones, making it as convenient as possible.

    Then features were added, like the ability to share photos, videos, setlists, and even playlists from Spotify, and we had to rethink the way bands could contact venues as our understanding of these deals grew.

    Progress went smoothly until finally reaching our Minimum Viable Product, where one of UPick’s users, whom the client showed a preview, managed to run all of their bands through the platform before it was 100% finished, which not only showcases the talent of our team but also made the customer base excited about the final product.

    All in all, by September the app was ready to be launched, a whole project contained within the chaotic year of 2021, where Scio was able to offer the exact solutions UPick was looking for. A learning experience for both our team and our clients, we celebrate the effectiveness of Nearshore development, which can deliver no matter the circumstances.

    The Key Takeaways:

    • Since communication is crucial to make a product succeed, choose a development option that can communicate with you at the best time possible.
    • It doesn’t matter if the details of your idea haven’t been ironed out yet, a good team will help you with those decisions.
    • Development time of an app, depending on scope, doesn’t have to be too long. It took us around nine months to bring UPick from concept to reality.
    • Some APIs are not very friendly, but there are always workarounds to any obstacle.
    • If better ideas surge during development, it’s good to always voice them. The schedule might need to be reworked, but the final product is always going to be better.