SaaS Company

Learn how a SAAS company hired an Interim CTO to help their technology group with an agile transformation while simultaneously delivering software.

About the company*

The client is a New York City–based company with 100+ employees that sells a subscription-based software-as-a-service (SAAS) product.

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Challenge

The company wanted a boutique consulting firm to help their technology group with an agile transformation while delivering software critical to their business.

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Solution

Discovery and planning

The company was undergoing a transformation, and they wanted to be able to streamline their team to be more efficient and effective. Originally, a Stride Delivery Principal was brought in to analyze the team and understand what needed to be done to improve the technology organization.

Stride’s Delivery Principal interviewed executives, stakeholders, and staff to understand the culture, how things were prioritized, and how they were engineered.

Through those interviews, we gained an understanding of the engineering and product teams and the people who were on those teams. Working with stakeholders from the company, we identified products to build and the engineering teams that would build them.

Separately, at the same time Stride was conducting the discovery process, the CEO of the company determined that they needed an Interim CTO to lead the technology group. The Delivery Principal assumed the role of Interim CTO and took on the responsibility of leading the technology group and formulating a technical strategy.

Consulting and building

The company’s 50+ person engineering group included 40 offshore engineers. As a result of due diligence, Stride’s Interim CTO reduced the offshore staff by 50% in order to focus the remaining team on well defined priorities. Additionally, four new teams were created to back the product initiatives they had been working on.

Team 1 focused only on fixing bugs. It was composed entirely of offshore engineers.
Team 2 was a greenfield team. The Interim CTO mentored this group in Extreme Programming (XP), resulting in a high-performing team.
Team 3 was a hybrid team of engineers having both front- and back-end experience, who started reskinning the application and created APIs that drew off the back end.
Team 4 was focused on replatforming. This team was composed of more experienced internal engineers, who focused on re-architecting the application.

Transition and training

Stride worked with the company to launch job searches for a DBA (database administrator) and a CTO. This included building everything from the job description to the interview process.

Stride teams handed the project off to product and to the internal lead on the greenfield team. Stride’s Interim CTO worked with the lead engineer and CEO to transfer their responsibilities.

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Results

Stride’s Interim CTO put programs in place to upskill the technology and product teams. This resulted in high-performance teams with a shared understanding of technical excellence.
Stride successfully hired an internal DBA for the company.
The Interim CTO led architectural design and strategy, resulting in new approaches to building software.

*Due to the sensitive nature of this project and the early stage of the company, we have redacted all sensitive information.

Solution

Results

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Addressing the problems of growth

Plated increased visibility of work, improved key engineering metrics, and found a partner to rely on long-term.

Delivering quality code for edtech

Learn how Stride helped to transform and deliver quality code for an EdTech company.

Case Study

Agile transformation and software delivery

About the company*

The client is a New York City–based company with 100+ employees that sells a subscription-based software-as-a-service (SAAS) product.

‍

Challenge

The company wanted a boutique consulting firm to help their technology group with an agile transformation while delivering software critical to their business.

‍

Solution

Discovery and planning

Stride’s Delivery Principal interviewed executives, stakeholders, and staff to understand the culture, how things were prioritized, and how they were engineered.

Consulting and building

Team 1 focused only on fixing bugs. It was composed entirely of offshore engineers.
Team 2 was a greenfield team. The Interim CTO mentored this group in Extreme Programming (XP), resulting in a high-performing team.
Team 3 was a hybrid team of engineers having both front- and back-end experience, who started reskinning the application and created APIs that drew off the back end.
Team 4 was focused on replatforming. This team was composed of more experienced internal engineers, who focused on re-architecting the application.

Transition and training

Stride worked with the company to launch job searches for a DBA (database administrator) and a CTO. This included building everything from the job description to the interview process.

Stride teams handed the project off to product and to the internal lead on the greenfield team. Stride’s Interim CTO worked with the lead engineer and CEO to transfer their responsibilities.

‍

Results

Stride’s Interim CTO put programs in place to upskill the technology and product teams. This resulted in high-performance teams with a shared understanding of technical excellence.
Stride successfully hired an internal DBA for the company.
The Interim CTO led architectural design and strategy, resulting in new approaches to building software.

*Due to the sensitive nature of this project and the early stage of the company, we have redacted all sensitive information.

explore more

Results

The first team hit the initial goal, releasing the new Cheatsheets product to the company.
Successfully coordinated retrospectives for teams that had previously worked in silos; introduced the assignment of points to stories.
Worked with the Codecademy team to evangelize for and write unit tests.
Worked with the Codecademy team to build a dashboard that allows clients to assign seats, buy more seats, and bulk-invite users.
Worked with the Codecademy team to automate recurring subscriptions for Business to Business (B2B) users without interrupting renewal processes and Business to Customer (B2C) subscription flow.

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Delivering quality code for edtech

Learn how Stride helped to transform and deliver quality code for an EdTech company.

Impact

Stash’s new-at-the-time Auto-Stash feature enabled recurring deposits into Stash. In three months, we built a service allowing investors to schedule their recurring transfers. Upon launch, Auto-Stash helped Stash customers automate money movement and investing, ultimately helping millions of Americans more easily continue their journeys towards building long-term wealth.

This content is for informational purposes only. Investment advisory services offered by Stash Investments LLC, an SEC registered investment adviser.

Scala Microservices For Stash Invest

Learn how Stride Consulting worked with Stash Invest to develop a scala microservice that stores user preferences for deposit scheduling.

Our Desired Outcomes

Implement processes around code at scale
Continuous Deployment
Establish clarity on Plated's priorities
Become successful both inside the code and out
Increase transparency within the development process

Our Impact

Stride hit the ground running with minimal ramp up time. Our team added Agile expertise that Plated was able to seamlessly leverage at pivotal points in their business growth. We got to the root issue and adapted to their culture in a way that was welcomed. Stride helped Plated’s underlying agile and lean processes run smoothly through well-tested and refactored code. As a result, Plated had increased visibility of work, and were able to be their best both inside the code and out.

Addressing the problems of growth

Plated increased visibility of work, improved key engineering metrics, and found a partner to rely on long-term.