The solution
Although the client faced numerous IT challenges, they were able to address them all with one single IT outsourcing solution. They decided to team up with Pentalog developers in Romania in order to benefit from a nearshore partnership.
Phase One
The collaboration started in 2014 when three of Pentalog’s Java developers were given the task of performing maintenance on and making improvements to an internal warehouse management tool. By the end of the year the improvements were finished and the team was ramped down to just one developer who continued maintenance for a few months until the project was entirely completed. This small project served as the prologue to a long partnership between Pentalog and this client.
Phase Two
Later in 2015 a new team of Pentalog developers in Iasi began the more challenging project of creating a single product catalogue feature for the client’s e-commerce stores. It was decided that Hybris would be used to develop this solution, however this would entail a lengthy R&D period as Hybris has a steep learning curve and Pentalog’s developers had to take time to find the best way to design and implement the new feature.
This project began with 5 Pentalog developers who used Kanban techniques and self-learning to complete the project. Before work on the single catalogue feature could begin, the developers had to migrate our client’s existing solution from Hybris 5.0 to Hybris 5.7. The team then started coding the single product catalog feature, but before the project was finished the team was ramped down to only two devs who had to finish developing this feature and then deploy it by themselves. At the same time this two person team took over a project to create a single article price tool that could compare our client’s prices to those of their competitors and then calculate the best new price to set for a specific product. On top of all of this the two man team was responsible for monitoring the client’s e-commerce stores, making sure they stayed up and running during business hours.
Phase Three
In parallel to Pentalog’s Hybris team, a second two man team operated for a short amount of time on a business partner tool that was completed in 4 months. This is an internal tool that helps our client manage communication and collaboration with their various partners. After this short project was finished, these two devs started working on the single article price tool. However, our client decided to ramp down the team again so these two devs left the project and handed the development of the single article price tool over to the original two man team, who became responsible for completing all of the tasks described above.
