Maple moves faster with augmented offshore team

Maple moves faster with augmented offshore team

Crypto

THE CHALLENGE

Augmenting development resource to launch a new stake, fast

Like with most projects involving blockchain, crypto-capital network Maple needed to move fast. Though they had an existing software development team based in the US and Australia, it was working at capacity.

They needed to extend their available resource to successfully deliver against their upcoming deadline and meet this business-critical requirement. Yet, they knew they couldn’t hire enough engineers to fill the gap quickly enough without outside help. And, if they were going to leverage the support of an offshore team, it needed to be financially low-risk and scalable.

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About the partner

Maple is an institutional crypto-capital network founded in 2019 by a team of former bankers and credit investment professionals.

Built on Ethereum and Solana, Maple brings capital markets on-chain. Its aim is to improve upon legacy capital markets by providing the infrastructure for credit experts to run on-chain lending businesses and connecting institutional lenders and borrowers.

INDUSTRY: Crypto
LOCATION: Melbourne, Australia

The solution

Our partnership with Maple began after initial conversations with the founders, Sid Powell and Joe Flanagan, and our CEO, Darragh O’Meachair. On hearing how our approach to offshore could help them beat the talent gap and collapse hiring times whilst not compromising on competence or experience, Maple was onboard and excited about augmenting its development team in India.

DURATION: 6 months
TEAM SIZE: 7 experts

TECHNOLOGIES: MERN ReactJs NodeJs Contentful AWS

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App functionality

Headless CMS
Seamless animation
Horizontal and vertical scrolling
API integration
Headless CMS

From the offset of this project, the client’s top priority was finding a quick solution that offered flexibility. When developing the crypto network’s new website, Maple’s development team used a headless CMS to host its content.

This allowed the team to efficiently populate the front end with content fetched from the headless CMS; this approach also allowed the content to be easily updated.

As the project had a stringent timeline, building the front end with the support of a headless CMS allowed Maple’s team to work quickly and deliver their new website with a quick turnaround time.

Seamless animation

Maple’s website design utilises animation to reflect the modernity of its approach to financial management. From a technical perspective, animation can present challenges regarding load time and front-end functionality.

To improve the user experience and support these heavy animated elements, Maple’s team optimised the upload of animations and illustrations, avoiding properties that slowed down performance or impacted the geometry of the page.

Horizontal and vertical scrolling

User experience was a key consideration for Maple at every stage of the development process. With an information-rich homepage, the developers were conscious that requiring users to manually click through horizontal elements could disrupt the flow of the page.

Instead, they implemented automatic horizontal scrolling, allowing users to seamlessly scroll to the end of the horizontal element, upon which the vertical scroll instantly resumed.

API integration

Maple’s augmented development team was tasked with displaying real-time data on the website’s front end in order to offer social proof to interested parties.

They built out an API that connected the front end with Maple’s PayPal account, instantly and securely pulling data for use across the website.

Rather than displaying static data on the total loans Maple has issued and the total sums deposited, Maple’s team simplified the process by displaying critical information.

Accelerated team building

As timelines were tight, we needed to accelerate how we built this extended team for Maple. This meant making sure we scoped the resources required accurately and taking advantage of a unique characteristic of the Indian job market: the ability to buy out notice periods for the chosen candidates. Working directly with our talent alignment specialists in our Indian offices, Maple defined its required job roles based on several factors: the technologies their existing team used, their culture and the project’s demands.

Constant opportunity, constant growth

This boiled down to WeAssemble seeking out highly-skilled individuals with experience across the MERN stack and the ability to easily fit into Maple’s fast-paced culture, with seven roles to fill. Maple needed their augmented team to have daily contact with their existing DevOps team to ensure smooth delivery and manage pipelines, so a good cultural fit was imperative. Finding engineers who had a personal passion for crypto, De-Fi and BlockChain technologies was key to making sure we built a team that could buy into Maple’s objectives and grow their own experience from working on this extended team.

Our talent specialists spoke to a selection of hand-picked engineers with expertise in Maple’s technologies. These individuals were found via our Filtered Talent process, which aims to only hire from the top 3% of developers in India. To expedite the process, they focused on selecting talent from WeAssemble’s extensive pool of existing resources.

After interviewing the candidates best suited for the roles and assessing their alignment with Maple’s values, we extended offers on Maple’s behalf. Maple’s team is made up of product managers, project managers, front-end engineers, back-end engineers and QA’s.

RECRUITMENT & SET UP

Enhanced collaboration and communication

Neckermann offshore team case by Weassemble

All this ensured that Maple’s newest recruits seamlessly integrated with their existing development team. Communication between the augmented team in India and Maple’s tech team in the US and Australia was smooth and execution effective.

For day-to-day communication, a dedicated Slack channel was set up to connect all components of the core team. While all sprints were driven from Jira, the extended team was able to accelerate delivery without any issues.

We set Maple’s new team up with first-rate equipment and ensured they had access to the correct technologies and communication tools. So, it’s no surprise they hit the ground running. The onboarding process also included getting the new recruits up to speed with Maple’s ways of working and security requirements.

Neckermann offshore team case by Weassemble
01
Achievement spotlight
Launched on time through efficient project management
02
Secured extensive cost savings that could be reinvested
03
Supportive and compatible team extension to offer ongoing support

THE RESULTS

Maple’s offshore extension integrates seamlessly with team culture

Maple’s development team extension was a huge success. Firstly, they coordinated with Maple’s technology, marketing and design teams to synchronise the project, going above and beyond to deliver the stake on time.

Secondly, Maple’s newest recruits integrated into their existing team flawlessly, embracing their culture and becoming an integral part of the team. They are now working on developing greater functionality for the product, which includes supporting an ongoing marketing push.

Not only did Maple deliver against their aggressive deadline, creating a safer cryptocurrency, but they also gained a flexible and cost-effective team that will continue to support the network’s growth.

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