Dedicated Development Center: Becoming an Inseparable Part of the Whole
- Long-term partnership by the dedicated team scheme
- Technology consulting and knowledge sharing
- Commercial websites co-development and support
- BI-enabled engine implementation
- Corporate CRM maintenance
Large-scale manufacturing enterprise specializing on full-cycle production of high quality yet affordable furniture hires Iflexion to extend the IT pool with external sources
Partner Selection
To select the best-fit supplier, the Customer launched tender outlining strict requirements for the engagement. The list of criteria for evaluation embraced:
- Experience and keen practices of collaboration by the dedicated team scheme
- The relevant technology expertise and extended portfolio of similar projects
- Possibility of on-site presence on demand
- Operational efficiency and flexibility
Corresponding to the set criteria, Iflexion was shortlisted together with another software development company. The Customer started with a pilot project to verify the potential partners’ technology and operational expertise.
Having organized on-site trip to our development center, Iflexion demonstrated the current Scrum-based development processes, peculiarities of internal collaboration and communication in the course of the development. Seeing Iflexion’s maturity with their own eyes, the Customer engaged us for long-term collaboration.
Team Structure
People working together effectively are the foundation of any successful project. Recognizing this fact, Iflexion assigned clear roles and responsibilities to each person in the project, both from the Customer and Iflexion sides. These two communities worked very closely together in order to break down possible communication barriers and reach proper synergy.
As presented on the scheme above, the efficient collaboration framework for this engagement rested on synergy of development teams guided by team leads; technology CTO, technical coordinators and tech leads responsible for technical planning and review and resource and account managers providing overall strategic direction and handling budgeting and staffing issues.
Divided into 3 teams in correspondence with the project scope, Iflexion’s engagement has been gradually increasing:
Development Methodology
Considering the project’s specifics, the Customer chose Scrum development methodology based on iterative and incremental software product build-up. Led by a Scrum coach on the Customer’s side and backed up by a project manager on our side, the development process falls into 3-week sprints, each following the scheme:
Flexible approach to customer relationship building enabled our team to become an intrinsic part of the company’s IT department. Working over the same piece of code, the unified team never stops communicating, holding every-day video conferences and organizing regular on-site business trips.
Additionally, every newcomer joining the team comes to the UK office for active knowledge transfer and faster adaptation to the project.
Perceptions
Despite being successful in the core business activity, the Customer were extremely conservative and firm about IT workflows organization.
Iflexion was the first company they asked outsourcing services from, so we conducted solid education work before the collaboration started. Our team depicted the fundamentals of the dedicate center model to the Customer and suggested comprehensive and mutually beneficial cooperation patterns.
