Situational Summary
Your BusinessTidalHaus is an investor-funded technology company working to provide state-of-the-art, appropriate technology to the construction workplace, both on-site and in the back office.
Their vision is to provide a single source of truth for the construction site worker and back office by building technology solutions for construction sites (BIM) & back office through an ERP solution.
They generate revenue through an Enterprise software licensing model for software and Contract services for professional services.
Their customers are mainly construction companies, general & specialty contractors, construction managers, facility owners, and project design teams.
Their head office is in Gardena, CA (LA Area); technology leadership is also in the Los Angeles metro area.
Stakeholders
Andrii Hrushko, Head of Technical
Peter Laska, Head of Product
Nicole Bennett, Executive Assistant to Managing Director
Rami Shubbak, Managing Director
Vision
The TidalHaus team is looking to identify and engage the right fit partner who can provide a rapid ramp-up and launch of their development team and ongoing partnership.
Through this partnership, they aim to achieve certain milestones, the top priority being the availability of this product on iOS in less than one year. There are no immediate plans for Andriod, but it could be included later in the roadmap.
This opportunity includes both new scope and an existing product. The selected partner will need to pick up their development roadmap for existing deployed-on-Hololens product and construction back office applications. Then the partner will need to be able to execute the migration, translation, and rebuild of a new version for other platforms.
This engagement is the #1 priority in their business right now. They have experienced many challenges with development resource availability, timing, and quality. Any new partner must bring a solution that solves all of these challenges.
Offshore Experience
They have had many experiences hiring offshore software development teams with mixed success.
Most recently, they have wrecked with a team in Eastern Europe where there were timezone overlap, quality, and timing challenges preventing them from hitting key milestones.
In the past, team members have outsourced to India, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe.
Current State IT Capability and Capacity
Presently there are not many developers on the team. They worked in Eastern Europe and decided to move away from that team.
Internally they have a small team of Product Leaders and Technical Leaders.
They are looking for a partner to provide a development team that will act as an extension of the in-house team.
They expect the development team to apply a mix of Scrum and Kanban methodologies.
Sprints are defined by Kanban. The size and length of sprints are based on what was needed to be delivered.
The partner needs to provide a team of strong communicators that will work well and integrate with their product and technical team members. TidalHaus expects an open, two-way communication model with the partner.
Technology Stack
AWS/Azure, Kubernetes
MySQL, MongoDB
Java 17, Some Python/NodeJS services
React 17, Material UI
Unity, MRTK, ArKit for iOS
Working with a New Partner - Relationship Vision and Timing
The TidalHaus team envisages a fully embedded team and working relationship with developers from the partner. They would like the developers to be full-time and fully dedicated to their team.
They need to be able to say they have a fully integrated team invested in the vision. TidalHaus will work with the developers to build a culture inside the team that mirrors how they operate internally.
TidalHaus expects the partner to agree to performance terms and execute a governance process around replacing people if there is a performance issue with a team member.
Desired team size and composition:
From TidalHaus they will provide the:
1 Product Lead, 1 Tech Lead,
The product lead develops the product roadmap, features, and requirements with the Tech Lead.
From the Partner:
1 x Senior Unity Developer
1 x Senior Java Developer
1 x Senior React JS
1 x Mid-Level Unity
1 x Manual QA
1 x Mid-Level Business Analyst
- Collaborates with leadership to develop the features into actionable tasks for the Dev team. Manages the dev team's daily task load.
- QA tests and creates bug tickets.
- Dev team deploys to UAT environment.
Roadmap, Features, Requirements, and Tasks are described and managed in a workflow system such as Jira or similar.
The team will execute based on planned releases along Roadmap. TidalHaus expects the partner to provide a governance framework.
Management of the partner will be driven by TidalHaus’s Tech Lead (Andrii) with support from Product Lead (Peter).
Presently they do not intend to need much leadership, method transfer, IP ownership, and product management from the partner.
TidalHaus has its own MSA contacts but is open to looking at a Partner MSA. Their contracts are written for individual contractors, so it may be best to start with template MSAs provided by the partner.
Desired Partner Characteristics
- Location: LATAM, preference in Colombia, but are also open to other countries. Keeping in mind the ability to travel to see the partner and their developers on the team
- Time Zone: +/- 3 hrs from Pacific Time
- Industry Experience: Not required but a plus if there is gaming/ 3D or Construction / Design tools experience
- English Fluency: Yes.
- Sr Unity, Sr React resources at B2+
- Others at B1+
Everyone on the team needs to be able to speak English freely and understand each other.
Onboarding and Ramp-Up
They will need six resources at the commencement and ramp-up. They will determine additional roles and resources needed after the initial ramp-up stage is complete.
Ramp-up order:
Senior Unity - Onboard in the first 1-2 weeks
Senior Java - Onboard in the first 1-2 weeks
Mid-Level Business Analyst - Onboard within 2-3 weeks of engagement kick-off
Senior React JS - Onboard within 2-3 weeks of engagement kick-off
Manual QA - Onboarding within 3-4 weeks of engagement kick-off
Senior Unity will hire Mid-Level Unity, so it depends. Possibly four weeks into the engagement
They have six job descriptions they are willing to provide for the partner.
There is no transition from one partner to a new partner.
Budget and Funding
They are investor-funded by their primary construction client.
They are aware of the current market rates across the Latin American Region and are comfortable paying them.
Decision-Making Process and Timing
Key decision-making stakeholders
1. Andrii, Tech Lead - responsible for the technical screening.
2. Peter, Product Lead - Responsible for the business and project fit screening. He will execute the Project Management, SDLC, and broader fit interview.
Together, Peter and Andrii will make a hiring recommendation to their Managing Director.
3. Rami, Managing Director - Responsible for providing hiring approval.
They hope to sign contracts and begin onboarding a new partner within a few weeks.
Our Recommendations
Accelerance has considered your objectives and partner selection criteria in the context of all members of the Accelerance Global Partner Network. Given your declared needs and objectives, Accelerance is delighted to introduce the below Certified Partners as our top aligned choices to work as dedicated Partners.
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