Jeffrey Duncan

Review of Digital Garden Sydney

I've had the pleasure of working with Digital Gard...

I've had the pleasure of working with Digital Garden for more than two years now.
When we first engaged Digital Garden, we were a small two person startup with no real online presence to speak of. In the two years since, we've launched 6 market-leading websites in the careers and education sectors that have hundreds of thousands of monthly users across three countries.
I say we could not have done this without Digital Garden with confidence, because I can compare their work to no less than four other drupal agencies/ freelancers that I've worked with in various capacities, both here in Australia and abroad. Prior to working with Digital Garden, we made a lot of mistakes and wasted a lot of money, but it has given me a strong point of reference to talk about what makes Digital Garden different.
As a business without the internal resources to complete a project 'in-house', it's not enough to work with a technical 3rd party who just faithfully delivers the requested scope on time. In my opinion, just coding according to a set of instructions and timeline is a commodity (and one that doesn't justify the fees charged by most agencies in Australia). Digital Garden do deliver projects cleanly coded and on time, but you should be able to take this as a given. I've found Digital Garden goes above and beyond this in two main ways that, in my experience, are unique to their culture and way of approaching projects:
1) Smart decision making partner
There's a massive 'information asymmetry' that's inherent when working with external 3rd parties with technical expertise that you don't yourself have in-house - you're highly exposed and you're reliant on the 3rd party to make decisions/ recommendations that you're not equipped to properly interrogate yourself. If you're working with a 3rd party who see it as their role to deliver what's requested without question, this inevitably leads to problems. It's a classic case of 'you don't know what you don't know' - even if the project is delivered according to scope, if you haven't got the scope right, it's a bad businesses outcome.
Digital Garden have not only delivered the projects, but they've been exceptional as a partner to help think through the commercial/ strategic/ user experience considerations in conjunction with the technical considerations. This, in my experience, is a very rare quality - many technical teams consider problems through a technical lens only. Digital Garden are great at singling out and questioning parts of a scope that need more thought. They can be relied on to ask 'is there a better way?' and suggest alternative approaches. It's not their style to faithfully deliver something that they know is wrong because that's what the client requested. Rather than take advantage of the 'information asymmetry' to maximise billable hours, on numerous occasions, they've questioned assumptions and requests that have resulted in scope being significantly simplified or reduced, with a better business outcome. In my experience, it's rare to find technical teams who have the ability to think about a product and make recommendations based on holistic commercial/ strategic/ user experience and technical considerations, but Digital Garden are exceptional at this and it really sets them apart.
2) Flexibility
In the two years we've been working with Digital Garden, the project and our needs as a client have constantly evolved. From a rapid delivery wireframe/design/build fixed scope project in two months over Christmas, to an ongoing hybrid internal / Digital Garden team working in fortnightly sprints, Digital Garden have constantly evolved their offering to meet our needs. They've taken on board feedback and bent over backwards to adapt to changes as we've grown rapidly, including mixing and matched teams, fee structures and workloads. I've found this openness and flexibility to be unique to Digital Garden, and it has been key to us working together with them for so long.