About the Client
Based in Switzerland, umantis AG was a pioneering European provider of talent management solutions before merging with the German Haufe group in 2003 to form Haufe-umantis AG. Since then, Haufe-umantis AG has established itself as a leading provider of HR process solutions that facilitates cooperation between the HR department, executives, and employees.
With that in mind, its product portfolio ranges from traditional HR tools to innovative online platforms that aid in creating collaborative work environments. HR solutions provided by Haufe-umantis AG have been successfully used in more than 75,000 companies, including the BMW Group, Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, and many more…
Problem
By joining the much larger Haufe, umantis AG was faced with a corporate management style and decision-making process that considerably slowed down productivity. While acknowledging that its strength lies in product innovation, the newly formed Haufe-umantis AG did not have the capacity for the in-house implementation of such innovations.
Haufe-umantis AG decided to find an external partner that could better respond to its ongoing innovation needs, thereby closing the gap between desires and possibilities. At that time, Haufe-umantis AG could only provide a vision for the future product—named Agile Hats—based on a limited set of requirements. As such, the challenge was to find a partner that could bring to life a functional product based on minimal information.
Our approach and solution
While Haufe-umantis AG had a vision for a new product and a short list of requirements, they did not have the complete picture or product documentation.
With only a vision for the future product and a limited set of requirements, Atlantbh delivered a functional product within 100 days.
Our goal was to deliver a turnkey service to the client by productizing the concept from a functional, architectural
and UI/UX perspective, implementing an appropriate technical solution and then testing the quality of that solution.
For the MVP implementation, Atlantbh suggested using a cloud-based web platform built using a Ruby on Rails backend combined with Ember.js frontend. This combination enabled rapid development cycles and a single-page application user experience, as well as support for the subsequent development of mobile apps.
Using the available list of requirements, and with the chosen technology in mind, Atlantbh defined a structure for the product. Subsequent sessions with the client were used to ensure complete understanding of the product scope. During the first 15 days, Atlantbh defined the look and feel of the product and delivered a high-fidelity clickable prototype by prioritizing the main requirements. Following client sign-off, the next stage involved delivering 80% of the product functionality within the first 45 days of development.
The prototype’s main application screens and the most important features that included user interactions were implemented during this period. This unlocked the internal testing process, enabling changes in product direction to be made as required. During the following 10 days of the project, the team worked on improving the product’s stability and the features/functionalities that had already been laid out, as well as introducing new functionalities as required.
By the end of the project, Atlantbh produced a fully functional application that was stable and ready for Haufe-umantis AG clients. With this application, we managed to fulfill all of the required functionalities. In the end, we worked on polishing the application for the end user interface.
Benefits
With only a vision and limited list of requirements, Haufe-umantis AG received a ready-to- use application in only 100 days.
The process, finalized within these 100 days, covered the development stages including requirement analysis, technology selection, and UI/UX design, as well as the development of the full frontend and backend part of the system.
More importantly, Haufe-umantis AG gained a partner with whom it could continue developing new prototypes in the future. At this stage, the developed Agile Hats system is currently undergoing concept testing by Haufe-umantis AG clients.