Boatsgroup Opensource Marine
Proximity Costa Rica integrates and standardizes multiple technologies for Boats Group
Client Profile
Boats Group drives boat sales globally through its four industry-leading brands (boats.com, YachtWorld, Boat Trader and CosasDeBarcos, and YachtCloser). Boats Group formed in May 2010 and is the internet partner of choice for the recreational marine industry.
Location
Miami, FL
Industry
Recreational Marine
Operation Scope
Worldwide, 98 million site visitors annually
The Challenge
The client had a dispersed team in the US, Canada, and England, and were facing challenges to grow the team in those locations.
The business model for Boats Group has been to grow by acquiring competitors and similar companies, leading the software development team to a model where multiple technologies were in place with a strong need for integration and standardization. With this scenario, the idea of bringing in additional talent from an additional location was considered a challenge so the company decided to narrow down their search for partners to a Nearshore destination.
After evaluating multiple options, the company decided to run a pilot project with 3 companies from 3 different countries, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Colombia, where the teams were facing the same project and the same challenges.
After the pilot, Proximity Costa Rica was chosen because of their capacity to communicate, to learn (it had the shortest learning curve, very similar to internal new employees), and their technical expertise. Additional factors were the management involvement from the company, and the easiness to work in a collaborative environment using an Agile approach
The Solution
We follow scrum-based Agile software development where the client gets full transparency into the development cycle, including a constant line of communication, frequent exchange of artifacts and builds, and real time collaboration.
As an extension of our client, our involvement extends into the following processes:
SPRINT PLANNING SESSIONS
DAILY SCRUM MEETINGS
SPRINT REVIEWS
RETROSPECTIVES
MENTORING AND TRAINING TO NEW MEMBERS
TECH TOPICS
Others
“Your communication skills are fantastic, especially when you consider that English is not your native language. I know I can trust you… to write solid solutions to any software problem. I know I can count on the quality of your work.”
Marius de Beer, Dominion Marine (Boats Group)
The Results
The team at Proximity is now the second largest for the client, working fully integrated in a multi-country team, where one of our senior developers is actually one of the Tech leads worldwide. We have been able to participate in improving our client processes, managing constant organizational changes from the client side, and being part of a team working in a highly complex development environment that involves:
Very limited documentation
Interaction with Legacy applications
A very complex environment configuration
Multiple technologies such as:
Java
PHP/LAMP
SCALA
NodeJS
Technologies
