What was the scope of their involvement?
We range from doing software development, QA automation, and backend development. We’re doing a lot of native web developments with Java, and there are a lot of integrations with providers as well. We cover the whole stack and lifestyle.
They do frontend web development, mainly single-page applications. They build native applications for iOS and Android, and the platform allows user registration, login, account history, and placing bets. There are a lot of microservices around KYC [know your customer], and they’ve also developed a lot of microservices data aggregation.
We built a single page application for our website. From there, we built a CMS system using NodeJS, Java, and Mongo, which defines the specifications of the app on the fly. We’ve been working with them on the CMS for our apps and how we can roll that out to the wider business. We’ve been advising on this as they expand their business into customer managements and account managements.
They’re integrating with a number of sports feed providers for live video streaming. They’ve also integrated with Playtech and OpenBet, and have interacted with a lot of other development companies within our company’s project sphere as well.
They also do a lot regarding WebSocket technologies. We’re on the Amazon cloud, so it’s an AWS [Amazon Web Services] based solution. They do a lot of performance testing for us, as well as job site performance. Since we work in a regulated industry, they also do a lot around compliances with us to ensure and validate that the software agrees with industry standards.
What is the team dynamic?
We participate in their recruitment process and initial screenings of candidates, so there’s full transparency. It’s a very collaborative rather than a client-supplier approach.
We have 11 Agile development teams totaling 85–90 people with Symphony who are responsible for building features. They’re all very self-sufficient. Each team is comprised of a scrum master, QA, automated QA, front and backend full-stack engineers, dev ops, native engineers, and automation engineers. We also have about 20 people total involved with QA.
In the last 2 ½–3 years, we’ve built our whole product engineering team with Symphony, so we are a large part of their customer base. They’re actively part of our Scrum or standups. Our product engineers and engineers work closely together on the product. I don’t just hand them requirements and expect them to deliver. We work with them on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis. They’re a very integral part of what we do.
How did you come to work with Symphony?
We looked at development companies in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and Poland. We did a review based upon our ability to recruit the relevant resources and scale to the level we wanted to be at. Within a year, we wanted to have 80–90 resources working within the organization, as well as a close collaborative process between engineering and product. Many companies we went to see were only going to write code, but we needed a team that would be an active part of what we deliver, have ownership, and have a buy-in to our product.
One of my colleagues had previously worked with Symphony for 3–4 years. I met Symphony in 2014 when I was head of software development and architecture prior to our merge. We liked how they approached the business and their ability to actually influence the way the processes were driven. We liked their attitude, recruitment policy, and availability of resources. Their rates were comparable with the rest of eastern Europe, but when it came down to their recruitment process, their quality of engineers compared to other companies was much more attractive.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working together in September 2015, and the relationship is ongoing.
The company is satisfied with the new professional look of the brand and the internal team has already received positive feedback from end users regarding the branding. The team's project management style was efficient as all issues were quickly reported and fixed before any serious obstacles arose.