Hi, Habr! We have already written about how in November last year we started work on the largest update of the Otkritie mobile bank over the entire period of its existence. In this article we will talk about the processes - about how we develop the product together with Discovery Digital.

From Waterfall to Agile

Two years ago we went to the AppStore and Google Play
Then, in the “Discovery” they lived in the waterfall system and did not split up the big features yet to introduce them in parts, and the first major update happened several months after launch, when the opportunity appeared to open deposits directly in the application. But gradually the length of the iterations began to shrink, and the transition to Agile made it possible to improve the product almost continuously.

One product and two teams

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Today, a special division of Discovery Digital is responsible for most of the digital products of the bank, and Redmadrobot has a dedicated team of 10 people, which, together with Discovery, has been working on the bank’s mobile application since its very first version.


Office Discovery Digital

The Discovery and Redmadrobot teams sit in different offices, but this does not interfere with the super-tight product interaction.


Office Redmadrobot

Anton Poderechin, Redmadrobot iOS Developer
“For the first six months, we regularly landed at the Digital Discovery office, and it happened that I worked there 3-4 days a week. It was necessary for tight synchronization, plus security did not allow access to some test environments from the outside. Now both teams constantly visit each other for meetings, but no more ”

Some time ago we switched to a special sprint pulse (a work schedule for every 2 weeks, according to which the team releases product updates), which is convenient for both teams - now everyone who “supplies” any features for a mobile application works in within this sprint pulse. At the start of each sprint we synchronize, pronouncing goals, objectives and how they will be implemented during the sprint. In the course of work, syncaps pass between the teams every week. Sprint can include both the implementation of one or several new features, and tasks for R & D - whether it be changing the pincode of a card or analyzing the technologies of scanning and recognizing documents available on the market. Now application updates in the store appear every two to three weeks.

Veronika Vasilyeva, Project Manager, Redmadrobot
“There is a release policy in the bank when there are updates on the production environment, and we try to get into them when we need some improvements on the backend, because if we don’t roll out our update on time, then the client will have nothing to connect to server side and have to wait a few weeks or months until the next release. When we decide to add any functionality, we always weigh how best to do it, so that it is as convenient as possible from the point of view of implementation for all participants in the process. For two years, we have learned to work with the bank as if we are actually a single team. ”

In Redmadrobot, product development — an area of ​​responsibility for the art director, team leader, analyst, and project manager, who designs the work of the team — plans to load developers, designers, testers, and is responsible for financial performance.
The team has a rotation principle, aimed at ensuring that all its members develop professionally - developers regularly switch to new interesting tasks (about once every six months), designers grow into art directors and are included in product management.

Arthur Sakharov, CTO, Redmadrobot (@mc_murphy)
“We have rules within the company - regular assessments, rotation, etc. And we do not change this practice, including in food teams. Yes, with rotation, there is a partial loss of efficiency - any new person needs time to get used to the project, but both we and Otkritie understand that risks are fulfilled in this way - stagnation threatens with the loss of valuable professionals who always want to develop. It is under this type of people that we build our infrastructure in Redmadrobot, which allows us to saturate the production with various projects and technologies and support movement around them ”

Demo days

Once a month in the “Opening” a demo is held - this is a four-hour event where all the teams involved in the development of digital bank products (not only mobile), in an informal setting, talk about their work for the month in the format of short presentations. This is a translation of experience on all digital teams, and a demonstration of products to top management. We participate in the demo by two teams - the product owner from the “Discovery” side talks about the performance of the application, and Redmadrobot about the new features.

Danila Berezin, project administrator, Redmadrobot
“We must understand that the demo cannot simply be said that within a month we refactored and fixed bugs. No one “outside” will understand this. Thus, the need for a demo presentation has always been some criterion in determining the sprint skoup and the mandatory presence of significant features for the user in it ”


Opening Digital and Redmadrobot after the demo day

We liked the demo days so much that we borrowed this practice and now we are holding similar events inside Redmadrobot - thus we set up to inform employees about all the products of the company.

Roadmap and review

Every year, together with Discovery Digital, we shift the list of business tasks to the product component (that is, we look at how to “smack” the requirements of the bank and our application) and then approve the document — this is how the roadmap of the mobile product and business is formed. Once a quarter, the Redmadrobot team reviews all the features of the application in order to prioritize and determine what exactly will be included in future releases.


Office Discovery Digital

We refuse from any functionality at all, if it has lost its relevance, but usually a part of the planned is postponed and simply implemented later, in the next update. Some features lie in backlog for several months, since they require really complex and large-scale improvements on the side of the bank (for example, the autopayment function that we want to do for a very long time, just from this category). We always filter the application functionality with an eye on several parameters.

Large-scale update: program maximum and prioritization

In mid-2016, we decided to make a big redesign of our application. Over the time since the launch of the first version of the product, business requirements and customer expectations have increased, platform capabilities and development tools have changed.


Of course, this is a “maximum program”, which we did not plan to fit into the first release. Here comes the moment when it is necessary to prioritize. Before us was the need to preserve all the functionality of the application, (hello, Captain Obvious! - but everyone remembers the epic failure with the launch of the new “Film Search”), adding to its top priority from the list above.

Lean-approach and work in a startup mode

At the heart of our approach to major updates is the principle of lean - launching a product on the market that functionally makes everything conceived, but is not necessarily polished to the end.

Grigory Matvievich ( fountainhead ), head of iOS development, Redmadrobot
“We immediately start all the functionality, where each specific function will be efficient, but without frills. In no case can we launch a bank application without transfers or without displaying bills and other things that have de facto become the standard in mobile banking. At the same time, no one has canceled strict banking security requirements, tight deadlines and limited resources. ”

In a sense, the team working on the Discovery application is a start-up inside Redmadrobot, where the work on the product is going at a very fast pace and is accompanied by constant brainstorming. The final list of functionality as part of a large-scale update, we formed on the basis of analytics, as well as the expertise of the whole team. Each member of the core team analyzed and compiled its own top strong and weak points of the application. In general, the top features were:

• Payments
• Templates
• Transfer by phone number
• Transfer from card to card
• Chat
• Loyalty and tariffs for products

All feature candidates for release are run through the bank’s three business focus:

• Build an active customer base
• Increase transaction frequency
• Transition to digital

The application is covered by analytics, we constantly observe how scenarios go through, where users fall off and work on improving the product: reviewing some use cases, updating new features on the backend.

Anastasia Grafskaya, Project Manager, “Discovery Digital”
“It is important to realize that the ideal state of the product never happens - the perfect product today will be different tomorrow, and its improvement is achieved through constant updates. Thinking about how mobile banking should develop, we always proceed from user needs, which it should cover. Solving real customer problems is our priority, and good mobile product performance is always a product of positive user experience. ”

Design from needs and user involvement

We think over the ways in which users come to some function in the application, and with the help of usability testing we make them the shortest and most logical. But we do not proceed from the fact that each user must discover every function, but from the fact that he will find what he needs as the need arises.

Arthur Sakharov, CTO, Redmadrobot (@mc_murphy)
“To make an introductory, where all the features of the application are painted in as much detail as possible, or throw absolutely all functions onto the main screen - not our method. That is, we do not solve the problem to draw the user's attention to all the functions of the application at once. Our task is different - to calculate the user's need and context in which he will try to close this need - and then place the function in that context ”

Suppose a bank customer wants to reissue a card, goes to a mobile application and tries to find this function there. It is logical that most users will go into their card information, after that, most likely, the user will start to see what additional information is there and see the function of reissuing and ordering the card. Either the application itself should prompt the user about the expiration of the current card for a couple of weeks and suggest an automatic reissue.

The approach to design from needs suggests that the application can be quite complex in function, but if you don’t use them, they will exist seamlessly for the user. An example of such a product is Uber. When the user opens it for the first time, the application seems extremely simple. But if you start wanting more from him than just calling a taxi, you quickly reach new functions, and the two buttons turn into eight. And if you dig further to solve a non-standard question, a few more menus will appear.

Total

Due to the combination of technological and product-banking expertise, Discovery Digital and I have achieved a synergistic effect. The bank does not have to think about the organization and development of an effective inhouse product development process. We at Redmadrobot get insights and expertise in Fintech from the largest private bank in Russia. We work for one common goal - to make the most convenient mobile banking service in the Russian market. Minimize the number of actions that the user needs to do manually, shifting these tasks to the IT system through a mobile application.

Elisha Zakharov, Marketing and Mobile Application Development Manager, Discovery Digital
“The client of the bank is the center of the ecosystem. Each of us is in financial interaction with relatives and friends, government, employer, service providers, and the wider the range of transactional activities of a user that covers a mobile product, the steeper it is. It is impossible to build such a service in one month or even a year, but we are moving towards the goal, step by step. The next step is closer integration with external systems and further development of the entire payment functionality of the “Discovery” application. Well, very soon - a completely updated Android - stay tuned! ”