Remote team extension with full stack engineers for German IT service provider

Introduction/The Client

Augmenting an existing in-house IT or software development team   with a team extension of nearshored software developers to manage increased workload can be a challenge. How to adapt standard procedures like stand-up meetings when one or several developers are 1000km away from the rest of the team? How to ensure remote specialists understand the wishes and needs of the product owners when it is not possible to talk face to face?

But the lack of experienced IT specialists on the market in western Europe means many businesses simply have to learn how to effectively set-up and integrate global teams efficiently.

With over 20 years of IT outsourcing experience, K&C has seen the pitfalls and how to overcome them. We have implemented German management standards and Agile processes across all K&C specialists and teams. And we make sure that every project starts with well-planned and intensive onboarding. As a result, the integration of K&C developers into in-house teams has become a well-oiled process.

In this case study our client is Burda – a major German media holding based in Offenburg and Munich.

A K&C team has worked on the single-sign-on solution of our partner – harbourmaster. The goal of the project is to analyze user behaviour in media portals so Harbourmaster tenants can approach their advertisers with more relevant, personalised offers.

Team size: 2 product owners, 8 engineers.

Project duration: Ongoing project for the last 1.5 years

The challenge

• Analyze user behaviour in media portals for perfect user experience
• Built a stable and flexible team, and integrated it to the customer’s in-house team
• Ensured a steady workflow that doesn’t require the client to shift in-house devs between projects
• Provided relevant knowledge, intensive onboarding, and ongoing training to engineers to ensure they stay up-to-date with the latest services and technologies pertinent to the project

The Challenge

We were tasked with building a stable in-house team and integrating it into the client’s existing team. A particular challenge was to find highly flexible full-stack engineers  able to work on both the backend and frontend and quickly changing environments.

The client’s In-house development team was tied up in long-term projects, while the management needed to focus on the release of new projects.

Why Burda Trusted K&C

Searching for a smart solution to their challenge, Burda’s team decided to collaborate with us due to the following reasons

Experience

Extensive experience in the IT industry for 20 years.

Significant enterprise-level background and references.

Scalability

Large team of top-level specialists that could be drafted in and out according to the project cycle’s needs

Expertise

Skilled developers capable of solving complex issues with minimal supervision

Full-Stack

Ability to provide a full-stack developer, who can shift between programming languages and FE/BE quickly

Legacy to Cloud

Skills and experience with both legacy systems as well as with cloud (AWS)

Our Solution

Flexibility

We ensured a high degree of intellectual flexibility in our specialists as they needed to adjust to rapidly changing environments quickly.

Knowledge

Due to the complexity and interdependency of the legacy systems, it takes time to understand the particularities of the projects fully. We solved the challenge by providing the right people with comprehensive knowledge about the legacy systems at hand, as well as about cloud technology.

Ongoing Training

Additionally, we established an intensive onboarding while providing ongoing training for the AWS services used. It allowed specialists to stay up-to-date with the latest services and technologies (especially AWS).

The Result

After integrating developers into the existing client’s team seamlessly using intensive onboarding about the sophisticated technologies and choice of architecture, Burda has a stable workforce and does not need to shift in-house devs between projects. As in many of our projects, the lines between external and in-house staff become blurred, so K&C and Burda engineers collaborate on an equal footing.

No suboptimal reallocation of in-house resources was necessary anymore and the client’s senior staff could focus on newly acquired projects

What’s your challenge?

Leverage our talent and 20 years of experience in the IT industry to find a solution and stay ahead!
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What Burda said:

We cooperated with K&C on multiple levels, such as consulting on niche topics as well as software development. The cooperation has started with a fixed price project which was followed by an audit at the sites of K&C in Krakow and Kyiv. The experience and professionalism of the management, proven best practices and the high quality of the tech experts lead to trustful cooperation from the very beginning. Furthermore, K&C’s developers are used to work on highly complex issues under minimal supervision, yet they communicate to the necessary stakeholders proactively in case of questions or uncertainties. This is of particular importance since shifting between technology stacks is common for the project at hand. Every developer on the project has to be able to work with both legacy systems as well as modern cloud platforms, in this case, AWS. With K&C we found a reliable partner who fits in very well with us in terms of quality, working methods and team culture. – Bastian Behrens, Head of Technology, Valiton – internal IT services provider to Burda