After careful market analysis and considerations, BAWAG P.S.K. has chosen Ciklum as the right nearshore fit for the company’s development needs. The formalized selection criteria used included amongst others proof of effective service delivery, ability to support BAWAG P.S.K. cooperation model, pricing options, industry expertise and technological skills, as well as cultural fit. Out of fifteen in depth assessed potential cooperation partners Ciklum showed the best performance during the evaluation and proved to be most cost-efficient.
Essentially BAWAG P.S.K. was looking for a supplier that was able to provide developers that have experience with Agile software development and were the right market fit for the company’s nearshore team needs. Furthermore, being close in terms of distance and culture was very important as these two factors, also collectively sometimes called the lost in translation cost of outsourcing, can have a significant negative impact on the development cost that could turn the whole outsourcing process into a big fiasco.
Being aware that successful development projects are based on continuous, efficient communication BAWAG P.S.K. decided to go nearshore, not offshore, to avoid work disturbances caused by time delays and to ensure that nearshore team members are reachable within a convenient travel time. Additionally the dedicated team model offered by Ciklum fits BAWAG P.S.K. essential requirement of (as far as possible) stable teams.
The cooperation between the two companies started in May 2010 with seven developers being hired and sent for initial training and knowledge sharing to Vienna, Austria. The long term plan is to extend the nearshore team considerably to supplement BAWAG P.S.K. in-house development capacity.
Together with ten BAWAG P.S.K. analysts and software developers the nearshore team members will build a brand new Internet Banking for BAWAG P.S.K. and its subsidiaries within the next months. Advanced new functionalities combined with a state-of-the-art user interface are implemented by a mixed Vienna-Kiev team using BAWAG P.S.K.’s well-established framework, J2EE technologies and Scrum (as methodological background of BAWAG P.S.K.’s software development process).
BAWAG P.S.K. sees the Ukrainian team as one of their development units, which happens to be located remotely. The first developers go through onsite training in Austria, learn the company’s culture and policies, and then pass on the knowledge to the future colleagues to be added later, guided and supported by the onsite senior developers and architects of BAWAG P.S.K.’s IT development team. Continuous remote as well as onsite face2face support, coaching and consulting offered by the onsite team members will enable the nearshore team members to develop a detailed knowledge about BAWAG P.S.K. technologies, applications and products.