Project Background
The marketplace was already operating under different branding and already proved some market traction with rare transactions happening on the platform. The key growth potential was in getting to the platform more clients, as providers were already onboarded and ready to offer their services.
The tricky moment was that we, Corpsoft.io, picked up the project when global lockdown started. So together with the Product Owner we were searching for ways of keeping the platform live, offering services that are good for remote.
Project Description
Properguild is a niche marketplace for NY location, focused on connecting clients with local NY providers who offer a variety of services. Product Owner focused on such service categories as Health&Fitness, Beauty, Coaching, Household and repair, etc. The platform has the following functionality in place (Corpsoft.io contributed in refactoring, improving, and adding more features):
- Professionals listing;
- Search of services and providers;
- Chat;
- Online consultations;
- Work/contract request;
- Payment flow;
- … and more.
Project Challenges
We were challenged by the following:
- Product Owner required not only tech knowledge, but also domain understanding. We addressed this challenge as our team not only built marketplaces before, but also has been acquiring and accumulating insights from learning how other successful marketplace owners (for example, https://kabanchik.ua/) were sharing their knowledge and success recipes.
- The system had previously been in hands of 4 different other teams. The contribution was on different tech levels and on a different quality. To ensure the platform is working stable and well we had to study the code base in full, improve it and optimize without interrupting new features development.
Value provided
Corpsoft.io helped expand the platform, do UI redesign and rebranding, optimize SEO and performance metrics, along with adding in new features that bring in added value into the platform offering to its users.
Process of work
We took the Scrumban approach. Scrumban is a framework that combines important features of two popular agile methodologies: Scrum and Kanban. The Scrumban framework merges the structure and predictable routines of Scrum with Kanban’s flexibility to make teams more agile, efficient, and productive. Scrumban involves applying Kanban principles—visualization of workflow, and flexible processes—to a team’s Scrum framework. But, Scrumban removed some of the more rigid aspects of Scrum and left each team to create a custom approach to development.
We had regular calls (twice a week) about progress and product. Our board was based on Trello tool, as this has been a preference of the Product Owner. On a monthly basis we had strategic sessions in order to look at things from a helicopter view and decide and sync on a proper global direction.
Tools used: Trello, Zoom, Slack, Google spreadsheets.
