Distributed development team. Concentrated IT expertise. Combined business experience.

Aareal Bank began developing a new, highly scalable ANTS (Aareal New Technology Stack) platform at the end of 2016. The platform consisted of several Kubernetes clusters as well as managed services such as Elasticsearch, Kafka, RDBMS, to name just a few. A continuous delivery pipeline allowed each team to continually develop and test their applications and delivery artefacts.

Aareal Bank was looking to provide all development teams using the new ANTS platform with the ability to easily configure and deploy their microservices applications across the platform (i.e. across different Kubernetes environments for development, testing, and production). It was decided to create a self-service tool with an intuitive user experience that would enable teams to manage their applications without extensive Kubernetes skills. The new software needed to feature an audit log, version control workflow, and rigorous authorization rules in order to comply with strict banking regulations.

The project had a tight schedule of 12 weeks. The team was responsible for the entire product delivery process including product discovery (with requirements management), project planning, implementation, quality assurance, and operation. The ANTS platform required expertise in the modern microservices stack, which included Spring Boot/Spring Cloud (backend), Angular (frontend) and Kubernetes (runtime). Aareal Bank's decision to work with codecentric was based on its conviction that the codecentric experts have in-depth knowledge of modern software development methods and tools, and that the company maintains high quality standards. It was decided to put together a mixed team consisting of a product owner from Aareal Bank as well as a proxy product owner and five developers from codecentric.

Given its extensive experience of working with high-performing distributed teams, codecentric AG offered to give Aareal Bank access to its company-wide talent pool. This had the advantage that the project could be launched within a very short time and also with an experienced team that already worked well together. This also helped to save costs compared to a team that works entirely on site. Note: codecentric employees in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia work on the same conditions as employees in Germany, including the 4+1 model (20% of working hours are available for personal development and projects), active participation in national and international conferences, international codecentric events, etc.

Due to its previous, not always positive, experience with distributed and nearshoring teams, the client expressed doubts as to whether

After discussing these concerns with codecentric AG, Aareal Bank decided to test this model and use it as a case study for future projects with distributed teams. All team members spent the first three weeks of the project in Wiesbaden in order to ensure an effective start to the project. This allowed the entire team to engage directly with the client and end users, and to participate in product discovery and planning workshops. In addition, collaboration and working together on site created a distinct team spirit that the team retained even during the remote phase.

At the end of the initial three weeks, codecentric's proxy product owner continued to visit the customer's site on a weekly basis, while the rest of the team worked remotely. The fact that the proxy project owner was able to devote himself full-time to the project allowed further steps to be taken in the product discovery process, including direct communication with end users on site.

Modern communication software (video and audio conferencing, screen sharing, and virtual whiteboards) proved to be very effective means of communication, almost completely eliminating barriers to communication. Collaboration was on a par with that of a team working in the same location. Other factors that enabled smooth communication were, firstly, the fact that all team members were in the same time zone and, secondly, the high level of cultural compatibility of the team members at all locations.

Since the team was not only responsible for the implementation of the product, but also for requirements management and project planning, it used modern product discovery techniques such as:

The team actively applied test-driven development and code reviews to ensure high-quality delivery standards. Continuous delivery practices enabled rapid prototyping and validation of new ideas and helped minimize the time between the initial idea and production as well as the duration of feedback phases. An important part of the project consisted of sharing knowledge of modern development methods and technologies with the Aareal development team, so that they would then be able to continue developing the ANTS cockpit application independently after conclusion of the project.

The successful delivery of the ANTS cockpit application on time and meeting all customer expectations convinced Aareal Bank that distributed teams are perfectly capable of achieving excellent results, cooperating efficiently, and delivering high-quality products.