Whetstone Education: Creating Efficiency for School Leaders

School leaders spend nearly 10% of their time each week managing the mountain of paperwork that comes from teacher observations and feedback. Whetstone Education sought to change that, but its initial solution didn't deliver as planned — so they brought in Revelry.

The idea

Whetstone Education wanted to minimize the time school leaders spend on classroom observation and feedback paperwork. They had a platform to streamline observation notes, feedback, goal setting, and growth analysis, but users struggled to find what they needed and effectively share their work. Whetstone's CEO brought in Revelry to conduct a User Experience Audit to pinpoint and prioritize needs and opportunities.

The challenge

Initially, Whetstone planned to implement Revelry's UX Audit suggestions by building on its existing codebase. But it quickly became clear they needed to start from scratch and build a completely new platform to deliver the features and functionality users needed. The scope was complex and called for Revelry to effectively operate as the company's CTO throughout the project — while also providing product management, front-end design and development, and back-end engineering.

"Revelry acted as an advisor on all technical issues, and helped us hire our own set of engineers. Really, it was them and me building the whole product. I brought the vision of what it would look like, and Revelry handled all the technical components, from the UI/UX design to the process flows and information architecture."

— Eric Lavin, CEO, Whetstone Education

The results

Whetstone Education's new platform launched three months after the project started. It went live with 10 existing schools using it and had 40 total schools registered six months later — with expectations of tripling users within the next six months.

To position Whetstone's product for sustained success, Revelry also helped the company build its own permanent product organization.

"They're all great guys at Revelry, and very talented. They know how to work within a defined scope and tight budget, which isn't always the case when it comes to developers. It's been extremely valuable having them as our dedicated technology partner."

— Eric Lavin, CEO, Whetstone Education