Qonto reached out to Mainmatter looking for a combination of added engineering power and outside expertise to help their in-house engineers improve, we call this Team reinforcement.
This method of working sees our technology experts merge with our client's in-house engineering teams to share their know-how. Mainmatter engineers spearhead and guide new development initiatives while establishing best practices and transferring knowledge to in-house engineers on the job via reviews and pairing sessions.
Just as with previous Team reinforcement projects like trainline this approach brings "double value for the client" says simlpabs CEO Marco Otte-Witte, "short term value is added by the client immediately gaining more engineering power, but additional long term value is added through improved architecture, code quality, processes and leveled up in-house engineers."
Mainmatter engineers Tobias Bieniek and Ricardo Mendes who are both Ember.js core members are working on the Qonto project. They started by analyzing Qonto's code and found the templates were using the rather antiquated Emblem.js which nobody was really happy with but was difficult to migrate away from. To tackle this Tobias created and open sourced emblem-migrator which Qonto and all other Emblem.js users can now use.
Next Mainmatter engineers identified that Qonto's test suite speed was impeding progress. They showed Qonto's engineers how to analyse the underlying causes and then half the testing time.
Both migrating away from Emblem.js and halving the test suite running time happened in the first week!
Mainmatter CEO Marco Otte-Witte says "I'm really pleased that Mainmatter have been able to add so much value in such a short amount of time proving that our Team reinforcement method works. We're all looking forward to continuing the project and helping Qonto to succeed in their highly competitive market."