The Problem
H2Ometrics, a Michigan data analytics company, built a platform to support cities and municipalities in managing and analyzing their water and sewage data. Suddenly, their entire development staff decided to leave the company to pursue other career directions. H2Ometrics had a product, but no one equipped to provide development, maintenance or technical support. For the new platform to succeed, they would need to bridge this technical gap, and fast.
The Solution
Robert, one of the co-founders of the company, came to Menlo because of our paired programming practice. Menlo used paired programming to:
- Quickly learn the software’s architecture and technology by pairing with the H2Ometrics software developers before they left
- Rapidly build both domain and code context
- Complete several important maintenance tasks during the onboarding process
- Seamlessly rotate Menlo developers onto the project, expanding awareness of the technology and code base
- Build resource flexibility on the Menlo side to allow for uninterrupted support
The Results
- Reduction of product risk due to shared knowledge base spread throughout Menlo’s development team
- A flexible staffing model allowing for ongoing, on-demand support
- A part-time tech team, with a relationship that continues to this day
One of the biggest values that Menlo brought, in addition to pair programming, was a focus on our business needs and objectives, rather than the developers chasing the shiny new tools. The priority became to meet business needs which at the time were stability, sustainability in the dev team, redundancy and reliability in the platform, etc, because we had made big promises to several key customers who were depending on us. This was a major shift from the developer-led approach before where the priority was to build cool and fun things. Part of these needs were addressed by pair programming, and a lot of them were addressed by Menlo’s focus on customer needs and business needs, rather than developer preferences and desires."
- Robert Czachorski, President
H2Ometrics