{"data":{"allArticles":{"edges":[{"node":{"excerpt":"","id":"cc9ad27c-1e05-5a65-b6b8-fd0fa0fe3340","fields":{"slug":"/work/case-study-sonnen-customer-portal/"},"frontmatter":{"title":"Visualising Energy","order":null,"content":null,"job":null,"photo":null,"cover":"/img/sonnen-web-app-mockup.jpg","lead":"**How to create an app that connects users with the intangible world of solar energy.**\n\n \n\nWhen sonnen turned to Boldare they had only a few months to develop an MVP of their customer portal that would engage its customers with their sustainable power source. Their in-house development team was tied up with other products, and the deadline did not allow sufficient time to recruit new developers and designers.","templateKey":"case-study-page","settings":{"date":"June 05, 2018","slug":"case-study-sonnen","type":"work","category":"Case Study"},"contributor":"Karolina Kołodziej","box":{"content":{"title":"Visualising Energy","tags":["ReactJS","MVP"],"clientLogo":"/img/sonnen-logo.png","coverImage":"/img/sonnen-case-study-boldare-min.jpg"},"settings":{"tileColor":"white","textColor":"black","link":"/work/case-study-sonnen/"},"type":"CASE_STUDY"}}}},{"node":{"excerpt":"","id":"12ceee0c-1750-5780-b53a-7dbefa112d19","fields":{"slug":"/blog/designing-a-simple-search-experience-for-a-complex-product-with-a-luxurious-interface/"},"frontmatter":{"title":"Designing a simple search experience for a complex product with a luxurious interface","order":null,"content":[{"body":"## Summary\n\nWhen Eres Yachting approached Boldare they had a successful business as a mediating agency, helping keen sailing enthusiasts rent luxury yachts in the most beautiful locations around the world. They offered over 13,000 luxurious yachts in 475 destinations along with additional amenities needed for their upmarket customers. Boldare provided a team who grasped the problem quickly and created a state-of-the-art booking experience with a simple customer journey and a classy design that would fit the affluent bookers that Eres is targeting. \n\n## Problem: too much choice and the criteria can be overwhelming and exhausting for users\n\nEres saw an opportunity to grow in a new market but first needed to shift their whole booking process online. They needed experts who could transform their entire offer into a premium digital experience. Unlike traditional e-commerce, their booking system was complex and required users to select from over 10 criteria to book a boat. They knew that this could be a potential problem and needed experts who could design a simple customer journey that wouldn’t overwhelm the user with a stylish interface for the upscale target market. \n\n## Solution: a team of experts who can analyze the offer and target market, and provide a luxurious yet simple booking experience\n\nBoldare provided a team equipped with [UX/UI](https://www.boldare.com/work/why-design-matters/) skills, fluent in building application architecture. Team members had worked together in the past and were experienced in designing complex booking systems and eye-catching websites. They had all the skills necessary to translate the offer online and design a user-centered web experience with a simple booking journey, as well as deliver a stylish design that would fit the product persona. \n\n\n\n### Step 1: Product Vision Workshops\n\nThe Boldare team ran a product canvas workshop with the Client. This allowed Eres Yachting to clarify their vision and share it with the Boldare team. After gathering all the information, the team was able to form user stories which outlined the functionalities of the product.\n\nThe workshop also led the team and the Client to create a system story, which later guided the entire [design of the product](https://www.boldare.com/product-design-and-development/). The elements of the system story included answers to a list of four questions - what, how, who and what for.\n\n### Step 2: Moodboards\n\nThe Boldare team sent the client a choice of three moodboards - a snapshot of images, colours and fonts that gave a taste of what the design would be. After selecting the winning moodboard, the designers could start the design process. \n\n### Step 3: Application architecture\n\nFollowing that, the Boldare team created the app architecture, a tool necessary to understand and explain the application’s structure with all its complexities. This allowed easy explanation of the relations between almost 50 elements contained in the app. \n\n### Step 4: Wireframes\n\nThe Boldare team created more than 50 wireframes - a tool used to map out the app features and components (without the graphic elements) as well as the user journey throughout the booking process. It allowed clear explanation of the logic and features of the product. \n\n### Step 5: A simple search experience on the homepage\n\nOne of the critical features to the sales process was a search bar that allows users to filter through the 13,000 boats available. The new homepage search bar included two main criteria (location and dates) instead of the previously used ten which would overwhelm users.\n\n### Step 6: The booking process\n\nThe next step was constructing a user-friendly app experience. Based on user stories, Boldare devised a four-step booking flow: Time and location, Advanced filtering (with 10 criteria), Choosing a yacht, and Booking."},{"body":"### Step 7: A premium design for a premium user\n\nFinally, the Boldare designers were ready to create a premium look for the product that would correspond with both the affluent audience targeted by Eres and the client’s brand identity. \n\nFrom the very beginning, the Boldare team was fully aware of the product target persona. In a nutshell, he was a reasonably rich man, over 40, with family, and a love of traveling, sailing and nature. Knowing that, the team could create something exactly suited to this profile.\n\nTo create a premium look, the designers used classy light fonts, toned colours and elegant gold details. Another very important factor was the use of specific language suited to the target user. \n\nEnjoyment of sailing is closely related to feelings and experiences, so Boldare proposed a graphic design reflecting just that. To achieve this, the designers used high quality marine photos and details, and light, sophisticated fonts. They also decided to create a specific color palette, completely different to the client’s competitors. These decisions resulted in a completely fresh and attractive graphic style."},{"body":"## The collaboration: iterative delivery and frequent communication were critical\n\nFrom the start, the Boldare team and the Eres Product Owner worked in a scrum framework with a dedicated Scrum Master responsible for the process and the project’s transparency. The team met for daily meetings to discuss plans for the day and any obstacles that threatened the weekly sprint goal. Once a week, they held a review and planning meeting along with the Product Owner, where they discussed increments delivered and planned the next sprint. Weekly retrospectives allowed discussion of obstacles, future improvements and good practices. \n\n> “Boldare stuck to our budget and timeline. If anything took longer than anticipated, it was immediately communicated to us. They were always transparent.”\n\n\nThe constant communication was critical to the success of the product. The team had over 20 remote meetings with the Product Owner based in Switzerland, held via Skype. They wrote hundreds of Basecamp posts to keep the client up to date with progress and the project’s compatibility with the agreed guidelines. Additionally, team members were in constant contact via Slack.\n\n## Results\n\nWe believe that the clients should talk about the results for themselves so here is a quote from Eres:\n\n> “The feedback from customers and everyone else we've shown the website to has been that the site is exceptional… Clients and partners have mainly cited the website as the reason for choosing us. They found it to be professional, beautiful, and elegant.”\n"}],"job":null,"photo":null,"cover":"/img/yacht.jpg","lead":"Eres Yachting, a luxury boat booking service turned to Boldare to revolutionize their sales system and shift its entire catalogue to a new online booking system for their affluent audience.","templateKey":"article-page","settings":{"date":"June 05, 2018","slug":"case-study-eres-yachting-booking-platform","type":"blog","category":"Case Study"},"contributor":"Karolina Kołodziej","box":{"content":{"title":"Designing a simple search experience for a complex product with a luxurious interface","tags":null,"clientLogo":null,"coverImage":null},"settings":null,"type":null}}}},{"node":{"excerpt":"","id":"6d31c771-b3eb-519e-850c-bd4b6ddb51d0","fields":{"slug":"/blog/from-design-to-development-in-4-weeks-creating-a-mobile-and-web-mvp-for-an-iconic-brand/"},"frontmatter":{"title":"From design to development in 4 weeks. Creating a mobile and web MVP for an iconic brand","order":null,"content":[{"body":"## Summary\n\nWhen [SABCO Media](http://www.sabcomedia.com/) turned to Boldare, they had only four weeks to develop a web app and two mobile apps for [Virgin Radio Oman](http://virginradiooman.com/), a brand new radio station targeting the country’s young, hip demographic. The Boldare team proposed a lean startup approach, an ideal framework when launching brand new products to the market that minimizes risks and maximizes learning based on real data. During the product workshop, the client and the team got to know the product requirements inside out and selected the core features for the MVP. In order to meet the tight deadline, each development team member worked simultaneously from day one and the product was tested daily. \n\nThe Boldare designers who created the apps’ [UX and UI](https://www.boldare.com/work/why-design-matters/) from scratch had to take special care to let Virgin’s strong visual identity lead their designs. Apart from the lean startup approach the development was delivered within the Scrum framework. Working increments of the product were released every week, allowing the Boldare team to deliver on time without compromising on the quality of the solution. Currently, the apps have been tested live and data gathered from real users. The analysis will serve as the basis of the second phase of development, due to start soon. \n\n## Client: Oman’s biggest media company launches Virgin Radio Oman\n\nSABCO Media is the biggest media provider in Oman. Their portfolio includes radio station, magazines, and outdoor media. They are focused on aggressive growth and are constantly on the lookout for new expansion possibilities. SABCO spotted a niche in the Oman market - the Generation Z and Millennial demographic. The company acquired the rights to the Virgin Radio brand and planned to launch a new radio station targeting that specific market: young, fashionable people who enjoy contemporary culture and music. SABCO executives realized that in order to really conquer the hearts of Generation Z and Millennials and match their lifestyles, they would need to employ the latest technologies. This meant, first and foremost, online streaming from desktop and mobile devices. They had four weeks to launch the radio station and needed a team who could deliver a perfect product for a specific and demanding audience. \n\n## Problem: 4 weeks to deliver three products\n\nSABCO doesn't employ inhouse development experts and thus needed to find a partner to deliver their new digital product to the market. They wanted not only technical experts but also a company who could develop a website and mobile apps with a fresh, appealing design for the chosen demographic. That partner company would have just four weeks to complete the web and mobile apps (Android and iOS) as well as develop the main website. \n\nSABCO’s IT Manager, Neil D’Souza, had specific criteria for the partner company. Firstly he researched their past work, looking for clean, fresh, responsive designs and web products addressing a certain segment of the market. Secondly, knowing such products can be tricky to develop, he focused on technical experience. Thirdly, he searched for companies with a fresh take on websites and apps, looking for something that could disrupt standards, fit the target market, and most importantly, something that fitted the Virgin brand. After careful consideration, D’Souza chose Boldare. \n\n## Solution: lean startup and delivering simultaneously on all fronts\n\n### The Team\n\nTaking into consideration the timeline and the scope of the work, Boldare selected a team of eight to kick off the [product development](https://www.boldare.com/full-cycle-product-development/): two designers, three frontend developers, one iOS developer, one Android developer and a Scrum Master. The team was fully self-organizing and had all the skills necessary to complete the products. The core members had worked together in the past, which allowed the team to reach a high-performance level quickly.\n\n\n\n### Product Vision Workshop\n\nThe Boldare team held a product vision workshop with stakeholders and the Product Owner. These workshops are one of the most efficient methods to gather all information regarding the client, product and the target audience. It also allowed the team to grasp the whole vision and ask questions, as well as give the client an opportunity to verify the product goals. As a rule, the entire [development team](https://www.boldare.com/development-teams/) takes part in the workshop, which allows everyone to be on the same page from day one. \n\nHaving the deadline in mind, Boldare and the client shortlisted all product goals but as usual they needed to pick only one main goal: in this case, introducing young, hip music lovers to a completely new disruptive and innovative place they can call their own.\n\nThe platform that the team set out to create was a completely new formula for the average teenage music lover in Oman and so there was no legacy data they could build on. Keeping that in mind, the team set up, “convert users into active and returning radio listeners” as our number-one key metric.\n\nAs the first result of the workshop, the client was able to select one system story - answering 4 key questions: what? how? who? what for? The system story acts as a guide for the team through the entire product development process - when in doubt, refer to the system story. \n\nThe second result was the user stories - high-level requirements for the system which create a basis for the development backlog. The user stories allow the team to think what specific, low-level tasks must be completed to achieve those high-level requirements. User stories also allow the team to re-estimate the product scope after the workshop and propose a solution to fit the time and budget of the client. \n\n### Lean Startup approach\n\nBoldare estimated the scope of work and and having the deadline in mind, proposed to SABCO a lean approach to product development. The team would first provide prototypes, which would be mostly peer-reviewed (both due to time limitations and lack of access to the target users) and then put together an MVP with only key functionalities in place. Following that, the radio apps would launch to the public and the team would be able to gather real data from the users. The rest of the planned functionalities would be delivered and tested iteratively during the next stages of product development. \n\n### Agile development within the Scrum framework\n\nAs well as taking a lean startup approach, the product was delivered within a Scrum framework. Neil D’Souza became the Product Owner on the client side and although he was new to Scrum, the introductory sessions with the Boldare Scrum Master allowed him to quickly get the hang of it: prioritizing the backlog, feedbacking the team’s efforts, answering their questions and helping to alleviate the obstacles.\n\nAn agile, iterative approach to product delivery is ideal in situations when time is scarce. The team delivers often, and working increments of the final product are presented with every sprint. The Product Owner is involved all the way, seeing the work in progress, and can change the priorities and scope of work with every sprint. This means that when the product goes live, it is exactly in line with the Product Owner’s vision. \n\n> The team proactively developed a viable plan to deliver and implement the final product. During phase one, we needed to build a basic platform and mobile apps by our radio channel launch date. They managed minute aspects of design and development.\n>\n> * Neil D’Souza, SABCO’s IT Manager\n\n### Communication\n\nKeeping in mind the tight deadline, the team knew that this development would require constant day-to-day contact between the development team, stakeholders and Virgin employees. Apart from Scrum meetings held remotely via Google Meet, the team communicated with all the parties other using Slack and quick conference calls. Progress was monitored via Jira and all visuals were communicated using InVision, with the software development work being synchronized via GitHub.\n\n### Consulting\n\nBoldare teams are not only “doers” but also “thinkers”. An important part of every product development Boldare undertakes is the consulting aspect. In the case of Virgin Radio Oman for example, the team advised against using readymade plug-ins and solutions as they presented a serious security threat and offered little stability when exploited by a large number of users. Despite the lack of time, they proposed creating a custom solution for Virgin. The team created two custom plugins - one for the radio player and one for displaying content from Twitter and Facebook. \n\n> \"They took ownership of the product as if it were their own. The team took a hands-on approach, worked autonomously, and required minimal oversight.\"\n>\n> * Neil D’Souza, SABCO’s IT Manager\n\n### Workflow\n\nIn order to meet the goal and deadline, each development team member worked simultaneously from day one. While product designers worked on moodboards, information architecture and wireframes, the developers concentrated on a working prototype of the online radio player."},{"body":"Working simultaneously is always the best way to go as it keeps all team members (including stakeholders) engaged and, most importantly, it avoids the use of dry runs.\n\n> \"I admire their organized methodology. At several stages, their work made me feel confident I’d chosen the right partner. Their constant feedback at the micro level provided tremendous reassurance. Frequent updates let our management and in-house team easily track progress.\"\n>\n> * Neil D’Souza, SABCO’s IT Manager\n\n### Keeping the design in line with the brand guidelines\n\nCrucial for design work was staying in line with the brand guidelines. Virgin is a global and iconic brand and thus its identity must remain intact. However, the local cultural aspects should also be taken into consideration when designing for a specific region. The Boldare designers took special care to let Virgin’s strong visual identity lead their designs, adding only some subtle new graphic elements specifically for the Oman franchise of the radio.\n\n### Simultaneous testing\n\nSetting up and later reaching such a tight deadline required the Boldare team to test everything daily. Code reviews, implementation checks and design ideas (either based on wireframes or later on actually designs/prototypes) had to be done daily. Having such a confirmation system in place helped to keep the whole process going and predict future hiccups.\n\n### Technologies\n\nThe tech stack for the web app included WordPressie, Laravel (a PHP framework), ES6 (js) and jQuery. For mobile, the technologies used included Swift 4.0, VIPER for architecture, and SwiftAPI (Boldare’s custom Swift library) for iOS and Java for Android."},{"body":"## Results: launching a valuable product within the tight deadline\n\nThe Boldare team managed to deliver a responsive Virgin Radio Oman website, a web app featuring SHOUTcast live streaming and Google DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) for ad management, and two mobile apps (iOS and Android) in just four weeks, meeting the client’s tight deadline. \n\nThe radio was launched in March 2018. All apps received very positive feedback from the users and the team at Virgin and Boldare are currently gathering data for the next phase of development.\n\nSABCO has turned to Boldare to develop the next phase of the apps and the team has already started to analyze the data gathered from the MVP."}],"job":null,"photo":null,"cover":"/img/virgin-radio-oman-mobile-app-design.jpg","lead":"Sabco Media had a clear goal. They wanted to launch a web and a mobile app for the new radio station - Virgin Radio Oman. The trick? They had only 4 weeks to design, develop and test before launching their MVPs in the real world.","templateKey":"article-page","settings":{"date":"June 05, 2018","slug":"case-study-virgin-radio-oman","type":"blog","category":"Case Study"},"contributor":"Karolina Kołodziej","box":{"content":{"title":"From design to development in 4 weeks. Creating a mobile and web MVP for an iconic brand","tags":null,"clientLogo":null,"coverImage":null},"settings":null,"type":null}}}},{"node":{"excerpt":"","id":"98547217-caf0-56f6-955f-a615b8aaf688","fields":{"slug":"/blog/how-to-deliver-an-e-commerce-platform-mvp-in-just-6-weeks/"},"frontmatter":{"title":"How to deliver an e-commerce platform MVP in just 6 weeks","order":null,"content":[{"body":"## Executive Summary\n\nWhen [Takamol](https://takamolholding.com/en/) approached Boldare they had just six weeks to build an MVP of an e-commerce platform. The deadline had to be met in order to validate the idea with investors and secure funding for the full-scale product. Within three days, Boldare flew to Dubai for the product workshops, assembled a development team and started work on the product. Following that, the team delivered the product, on time, allowing Takamol to secure investment funding and build a full version of [Tojjar](https://tojjar.910ths.sa/), the eBay of the Middle East. Since then, the full web version of Tojjar and mobile app have been released. The platform has been further expanded by an Boldare development team, new functionalities being added with every sprint. \n\n## Client\n\nTakamol Holding is a publicly-owned corporation connecting the public and private sectors in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In recent years, the Saudi government has been focusing on shifting its economy from petrol-based to other industries, with a strong focus on stimulating the digital economy. Takamol, as a government-owned company, is tasked with supporting and stimulating entrepreneurship, improving the business infrastructure and labour market in the region. Under its [9/10ths](https://910ths.sa/en/) program the company offers a suite of digital products supporting employees, employers, individuals and jobseekers, SMES and the government. \n\n\n\nThe investors were focused on delivering the highest possible ROI under strict timelines and thus they required Takamol to pitch their products in a similar way to how startups pitch to venture capitals. The presentations required a live and fully functional MVP, a product roadmap for further development and a full business plan with KPIs.\n\n## The Product\n\nThe product Takamol envisioned for its 9/10ths program was [Tojjar](Tojjar), an e-commerce platform similar to eBay or Etsy but completely free of charge to buyers and sellers. This platform would enable small businesses and entrepreneurial individuals in the region to leave their brick and mortar locations and establish an online presence. Thanks to Tojjar they would be able to set up online stores, upload images and descriptions of their products, sell online and arrange delivery. Moreover, Tojjar would solve the current issues with online payments and delivery which create a major obstacle for small Saudi businesses wanting to use e-commerce platforms such as e-Bay or Etsy.\n\n## Problem: finding a team who can deliver the MVP in 6 weeks\n\nTakamol had only six weeks from start to finish to deliver a working prototype of an e-commerce platform in order to secure full funding for the product. During the presentation, the prototype had to be fully functional and able to present the entire buyer and seller journeys as well as admin panel functionalities.\n\nTakamol didn’t have an in-house development team for the job and no time to recruit one and still meet the tight deadline. They had bad prior experience with outsourcing, mostly due to the low quality of code delivered. Through the recommendation of Takamol’s Solution Architect the company decided to outsource in Poland due to the high number of skilled and well-trained developers. \n\nThey sent the product requirements to a number of software development companies and invited them to pitch in Dubai in less than a week. They had only two weeks to decide which partner they want to work with.\n\nTakamol required a partner who could assemble a full self-organizing development team within days and deliver the working prototype on time. The date of the presentation for the investors was fixed and there was no room for delays.\n\n## Solution: Product Vision Workshop to limit the scope and a self-organising augmented team to deliver the app\n\nBoldare responded to the enquiry on the same day and was ready to fly to Dubai to meet the Client within days from the initial contact. The Boldare team organized a product workshop with the Client in Dubai. During the workshop, the team together with the Client trimmed down the list of features leaving only the crucial ones for the MVP. This way the MVP could be delivered with the strict timeline. Both parties understood and agreed that refactoring will be needed if the product was to be developed into a full scalable app at a later stage. Although Takamol had never developed product in agile methodology before they were open to try. The client agreed to work in the Scrum framework, which ensured incremental delivery within weekly sprints. \n\nWhile waiting for the connecting flight back to Poland, the Boldare team delivered the final estimates to Takamol and the client signed them off shortly after the plane touched down in Poland. Boldare was the only pitching team who agreed to deliver the product within six weeks. \n\n> We moved away from our previous developer and made the switch to Boldare. After this, our process improved tenfold. They have a much better process with proper scrum, code reviews, automated testing, and a higher engineering quality.\n\n\nBack at HQ in Poland, Boldare had already assembled a self-organizing development team: two backend and two frontend developers, a designer, a Business Analyst and a Scrum Master."},{"body":"Takamol’s Product Owner was well-prepared for the job: the backlog was well-defined, his product vision was clear and well communicated to the team, he was responsive and ready to answer the team’s questions and give feedback. The Product Owner trusted the Boldare team with technological decisions. The Boldare team had complete freedom to choose technologies and solutions for problems which occurred along the way - this significantly speeded up the process.\n\nThe initial designs were already prepared by Takamol and the team only had to implement them, which made the process quicker but Boldare team took them to the next level.\n\n> Our projects had a great boost in productivity once we enlisted a full-time designer to be a part of the development team.\n\n\nThe Boldare Team in Poland communicated with the Product Owner every day during daily scrum, but also via Slack, Basecamp and Jira. The Product Owner was quick and very responsive in giving feedback and answering the team’s questions. \n\nAt the end of every sprint, the Takamol and Boldare teams met for a review and planning meeting, held remotely via Google Meet. Weekly retrospective meetings allowed the team to quickly eliminate all obstacles and reach the high performance stage quickly.\n\n> \"The e-commerce project had a very aggressive deployment timeline. We had six weeks to deliver a barebones MVP, and Boldare was the only vendor who was willing to meet that deadline. They were successful, delivering our initial feature-set after a six-week period.\"\n"},{"body":"## Results: Secured funding for further development and a flourishing business\n\nThe prototype was delivered on time to the client within the scheduled deadline. The Client presented the prototype and secured funding for the product development.\n\nAfter securing the funding, Takamol has continued the development of the product with Boldare and successfully launched the product to the public.\n\nIn August of 2017, there were over 1300 businesses registered on the platform. Currently the platform offers products ranging from children’s toys, handcrafts, art, food, home decor, fashion to health and beauty. Tojjar is now available as a web and mobile app - both developed by Boldare. \n\nThe Boldare team is still working with the client on further development of Tojjar – the collaboration has continued for over two years now."}],"job":null,"photo":null,"cover":"/img/arabian-women.jpg","lead":"With investor funding at stake, Takamol had to deliver a fully functional MVP of their e-commerce platform within a tight deadline. They needed to find a partner who can consult, develop and solve problems quickly. Boldare team hopped on board and brought to life an online marketplace that has a potential to revolutionise economy in MENA region.","templateKey":"article-page","settings":{"date":"June 05, 2018","slug":"case-study-tojjar","type":"blog","category":"Case Study"},"contributor":"Karolina Kołodziej","box":null}}},{"node":{"excerpt":"","id":"05a33609-f9e8-55af-a595-50e4bdd418a2","fields":{"slug":"/blog/how-to-scale-a-monolithic-mvp-application-without-losing-business/"},"frontmatter":{"title":"How to scale a monolithic MVP application without losing business?","order":null,"content":[{"body":"## Summary\n\nThe Client approached Boldare with an MVP of their SaaS app. The product had been tested on real users and proven to be a valuable. However, it was unscalable, needed stabilizing, and required a few new key features. The Client were ready to take it to another level but at the same time they wanted the app to be fully operational during the development. Realising they were unable to expand their inhouse development capacity in time, the Client turned to Boldare for help. Acting as solution and process consultants, an Boldare team of developers, Scrum Master, designer and QA have helped the Client to achieve its business and technological goals. The improvements made to the SaaS app have helped the Client raise $3 million in investment and the B2B users of the product have reported a 10-fold growth thanks to their web apps. What’s more, the Client's development team has grown significantly throughout the collaboration and Boldare continues to collaborate with them on the app.\n\n## Client\n\nThe Client is an online marketplace for housekeeping services. The company operates in UAE, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. Apart from serving homeowners in search of help, the company also offers a SaaS product, web and mobile app for commercial and residential cleaning companies. \n\nThe product allows B2B users to carry out bookings, scheduling, logistics routing, payment and accounting for their cleaning business - a fully-integrated solution to manage the client’s housekeeping staff, drivers, and dispatchers. \n\nWhen the Client approached Boldare, their SaaS MVP had been tested on real users and responded well to the market needs. The CTO at Client's side knew that in order to take the app to the next level, they need to scale the app without losing revenue in the process. The transition needed to be seamless for SaaS users. \n\n## \fProblem: scaling a monolithic app and keeping the business running\n\n### Technical challenges\n\nThe core of the app was built in the Yii framework and was not scalable. The CTO decided to move the app to a more scalable framework, and chose Symfony. The app needed stabilizing - every time a new functionality was deployed, it affected the rest of the app and caused problems for end users. The lack of stability was a threat to business and a major obstacle in growing the company and the SaaS product. \n\nThe product also needed new features critical to the further development of the business, such as selling cleaning packages, as requested by their B2B clients. \n\n### Business and operational challenges\n\nDuring the development work, the product needed to be usable 24/7 to allow normal operations using the app. \n\nThe Client had a small development team in-house working on the SaaS product, which they wanted to scale but they knew that sourcing development talent in the UAE would be time-consuming and expensive. They needed a team to start working on the app as soon as possible. Outsourcing was their only viable option. However, the Client had had poor experiences with cheap software development outsourcing, mostly due to the quality of coding.\n\n### Finding the right partner\n\nThe Client also wanted to learn more about effective web development processes and code quality. Hence they wanted to find a partner who could help them improve their own work - a consulting company with rigorous in-house development processes and a solid track record of working in the Scrum framework.\n\nThe Client's CTO researched the software development companies specialising in Symfony via Clutch.co, a B2B research agency. They selected companies from countries with reasonable development prices: India, Pakistan, Hungary, Romania and Poland.\n\nThe selection criteria included a portfolio of clients, technical expertise, an experienced [development team](https://www.boldare.com/development-teams/), and prompt availability. \n\nWhen selecting Boldare, the CTO was impressed with the portfolio (including well-known brands such as Bla Bla Car). He also interviewed all members of the Boldare dev team selected for the product to assess their technical knowledge and looked into the company’s development processes and Scrum experience. The team chosen for for the product had also worked together in the past, which guaranteed they would reach a high performance level quickly. Finally, the Boldare team were available to start working on the SaaS app within 10 days.\n\n## Solution\n\n### A self-organizing development team with all the skills for the job\n\nBoldare started the development with a team of six, including backend and frontend developers, a graphic designer and a Scrum Master. The team composition took into account the client's priorities as well as the upcoming product development. \n\nThe main goal was to extend the Client's in-house development team, joining forces and working together on one backlog. \n\nThe size of the Boldare team was flexible during development (from 5 to 15 members) adjusting to The Client’s needs and workload.\n\n### Scaling the app\n\nThe very first task for the team was to determine the quality of the current solution and identify the most dangerous flaws, those which might affect the implementation of the planned features. \n\nThe developers also enabled and fixed all legacy unit and functional tests, prepared continuous integration, moved the development environment to containers, and aligned their configuration with the production servers. In parallel, the team also worked on fixing the major bugs blocking the app’s end users.\n\nIn the meantime, Boldare’s graphic designer was able to redesign some crucial parts of the system to improve the [UX](https://www.boldare.com/work/why-design-matters/).\n\nAfter the initial stabilization of the application, the development team was ready to start implementing the first functionalities, still within the legacy codebase.\n\nSimultaneously, the Boldare team began researching options for migrating the legacy solution to supported versions of programming languages and more up-to-date frameworks. \n\nBearing in mind the application had to remain up and running 24/7, the team decided to bootstrap the legacy code inside the new Symfony2 application and implement a \"strangler pattern\" - incrementally replacing the functionalities written in the legacy system with new, high quality implementations, covered by unit tests and compliant with current coding standards.\n\nAfter replacing the core framework functionalities, the team were able to move the product to a cloud solution with a load balancer at the front and many instances of the application.\n\nMoreover, to speed up the process of improving the quality and the performance, implementations of some of the crucial business processes were moved from the monolith application to microservices. The process is still ongoing and soon the team expects the new applications to be released on production."},{"body":"### Scrum framework\n\nFrom the start of the product development, the team was working in the Scrum framework. With a Scrum Master on board, helping to the team to stick to the process, the Client's in-house team has soon started to follow it by the book. \n\nBoldare also provided complimentary consulting support for the Client to help them strengthen their Scrum processes. Boldare’s Scrum Master held regular 1-to-1 sessions with the Client’s Product Owner, helping him to better understand the framework and use its full potential in [product development](https://www.boldare.com/full-cycle-product-development/).\n\nThe Boldare team became an extension of the the Client's development team and the Scrum framework helped with the team’s velocity. The whole team, based in Gliwice, Warsaw and Dubai, has attend joint retrospectives to smooth out any tensions, improve performance, and strengthen good practices. \n\n### Constant communication\n\nThe team communicated via Slack or quick Google Hangout calls. Jira provided transparency for the whole team, including the Product Owner and external stakeholders. \n\nThe Product Owner was on the client side and was very responsive to the team’s questions and feedback requests. The backlog was well prioritized and the team knew the product road map and the end goals. This allowed to significantly speed up the development process.\n\n### Consulting\n\nThe Boldare team introduced the Client to quality code standards such as GitFlow and S.O.L.I.D. Boldare started off with proposing a code review of everything merged to a repository. The next step was to acquaint the Client with the CI process, enable tests that were commented out of the code, and enable static code analysis. In the end, the whole development team agreed to follow “The Boy Scout Rule” that every new change in code should have tests written to cover that change."},{"body":"## Results\n\nThrough collaboration, the team managed to stabilize the app, introduce Continuous Integration, improve the UX, and shift the monolith application to microservices.\n\nNew features developed to date include “incidents” ( helping the operations team to report problem occurring during a cleaning session), “generating automatic invoices” (saving B2B users time and better managing relationships with customers) and “packages” (to sell cleaning services in multi-session packages, drastically increasing the revenue for the Clients’s B2B customers).\n\nThe improvements made to the product have helped the Client raise $3 million in a Series A investment and roll out the product to more markets in MENA.\n\nThe product successfully served clients throughout the development process, facilitating more than 500,000 bookings for over 2,000 maids and drivers.\n\nCleaning companies partnering with the Client and using the SaaS product report growing their business ten times thanks to the Client’s products.\n\nThanks to the collaboration and knowledge exchange with Boldare, the Client development team has a better understanding of the Scrum framework, standardized processes for development, and better code standards.\n\nDuring the collaboration, the Client managed to grow its in-house development team but continues to collaborate with Boldare on further development of the product.\n\nThe team is currently working on new features, including a payment module to provide cleaning companies with a payment gateway solution."}],"job":null,"photo":null,"cover":"/img/dubai.jpg","lead":"The Client had already tested his MVP on real users and wanted to scale the product, however due to technological and business limitation he was unable to do it in-house. Acting as solution and process consultants as well as development experts, Boldare team guided the client through the transition, while keeping the app fully operational.","templateKey":"article-page","settings":{"date":"June 05, 2018","slug":"case-study-ionoview","type":"blog","category":"Case Study"},"contributor":"Karolina Kołodziej","box":{"content":{"title":"How to scale a monolithic MVP application without losing business?","tags":null,"clientLogo":null,"coverImage":null},"settings":null,"type":null}}}}]}},"pageContext":{}}