When Urb-it came to us in March 2021, they were on a mission to make urban deliveries more sustainable. Using couriers on bikes, electric vehicles and public transport, they were reducing carbon emissions while offering same-day deliveries. But to grow, they needed to reliably connect with multiple delivery partners - and that's where we came in.
As the Head of Engineering explained, Urb-it wasn't just looking for developers. They needed a self-organized team that could understand their business and build integrations that would scale with their growth. Most importantly, these integrations needed to be absolutely reliable - when you're handling thousands of deliveries, you can't afford to lose track of packages.
We assembled a four-person team that took a different approach to integration development. Rather than jumping straight into coding, we first ensured every team member deeply understood Urb-it's business model. Before starting each integration, we spent time analyzing partner documentation and understanding potential business challenges. This preparation helped us avoid costly mistakes and identify dead-ends-integrations that wouldn't have worked because of business or technical constraints saving effort and budget.
Understanding that package tracking reliability was crucial for Urb-it, we designed a distributed system where issues with one integration wouldn't affect others. We implemented extensive logging and monitoring solutions that allowed us to track every package's journey and quickly resolve any issues that arose. As their Head of Engineering noted, "The service-level agreement was high. We didn't have any issues."
As the project progressed, we developed a system to make adding new integrations faster. We created template repositories and extracted key parts to ruby gems that cut development time by 50-70%. More importantly, we maintained clear communication - no sugar-coating, just honest updates about progress and challenges. This transparency built trust and allowed for effective problem-solving, where both parties were invested in finding the best solution.
By the end of our collaboration in 2023, we had built and maintained several integrations that helped Urb-it handle more deliveries. But perhaps more telling than the numbers was their Head of Engineering's feedback: "Working with them is easy because we don't need to micromanage anything. We just give them directions and boundaries, and they work within them."
Key achievements:
In June 2024 Urb-It Technology was acquired by fin sustainable logistics.
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