Product-market fit and scaling for a large EU gas capacity management platform

Disclaimer: All the information relating to the client is protected by an NDA agreement, therefore we have avoided using names that could identify them. For the purpose of this case study, we’ll refer to them as ‘the client’.

The client

The client is Europe’s leading gas capacity management company with offices in Brussels and Leipzig. They operate a large digital platform for buying and selling gas transmissions in Europe (one of three such platforms present on the market). The client’s platform is financed by around 20 shareholders who invest in its constant development and scaling.

The client’s teams are working toward a common goal: making fair markets happen. They want to be a driving force in establishing a fair, transparent and integrated market that’s truly beneficial for both the economy and society. Their success is nurtured by a simple drive: they want to get things done in the best way possible.

The client has their own in-house development teams that are composed of tech-savvy senior developers. They work in an Agile environment, using the Scrum framework.

The initial phase

The client’s platform is demanding. Its technical architecture and back-end environment are quite complex. It takes a lot of domain knowledge to develop and scale it. This is why, after choosing Boldare as their development partner, the client engaged one of their in-house senior developers to work together with Boldare’s team (to introduce the complex platform’s environment and product roadmap to Boldare’s specialists).

Boldare’s team, consisting of a scrum master, six developers, and a designer, started with a five-month pilot development. Led by the client’s PO, they have focused on practical functionality as part of the product-market fit phase. After that initial period, we began two years of effective cooperation that has brought benefits for both sides. Let’s look at the details.

The challenge

Despite having excellent in-house teams, the client was looking for outside support as they wanted their platform to grow faster without losing its high quality. The challenge was to find a partner who would be savvy enough to get to work within the complex product domain, and who would be available for long-term cooperation. Onboarding to the client’s platform takes a lot of resources, and bad choices are costly. This is why the client has been looking for a recommended and stable development partner who can work in Scrum and who cherishes Agile culture and transparency.

What we did (approach and process)

Boldare provided the client with a team of experts and developed a very specific area of their platform. First, Boldare’s team developed a registration module, which is one of the initial processes that users go through when entering the app. The next step was to build a contract management module.

During the product development process we used the following tech stack: JAVA, Spring Boot, AWS, Event Sourcing, domain-driven design, Storybook, and React.

The Boldare team delivered actual user value with each sprint (every two weeks - for two years). What helped us to achieve that?

At Boldare, we base our partnerships on effective and undisturbed open communication. This time, as per the client’s request, we used the Microsoft Teams app for constant communication between the Boldare team and the client’s specialists. The PO also met with the Boldare team face-to-face a few times. We believe personal meetings help to build stronger relationships and support smoother daily cooperation.

Boldare’s teams always go the extra mile and help their partners by improving cooperation and team processes. For the client, we facilitated their event storming session and we helped them to strengthen their Scrum processes by engaging Boldare’s scrum masters to work with one of the client’s in-house teams.

What happened (outcome)

The client hired Boldare for their digital platform development, but they got much more than that. Thanks to a well-established partnership, they trusted us, and many times asked for our advice on their users, the product roadmap, their ideas, etc. When it came to coding and design, the Boldare team worked on:

• registration module,
• contract management module,
• notifications library used by other teams,
• document exchange module,
• functionality for inviting other users,
• migration of consumer data into the new contract module.

Partnering with Boldare, the client gained long-term support with the product-market fit and scaling of their platform. They can now rely on the Boldare team if they want to build other functionalities and modules. They don’t need to spend their budget onboarding a new partner (as this takes up to six months). They can also access and use Boldare’s business knowledge and product discovery services.