DAS
Building a dedicated team for business analysis, design and development
Scaling teams for digital acceleration
Early 2020, the management of DAS Insurance had laid out its digital strategy for the coming 5 years. The ambition was to do a complete overhaul of their existing application landscape, adopting new technologies and adding new applications in the process.
This posed new challenges to the in-house development team of DAS. They not only needed to keep up with the evolving requirements of a complex business environment, but also with a technology landscape that is changing at an increasingly rapid rate. Moreover, if they were already responsible for the maintenance of their existing application landscape, how were they simultaneously going to deliver all these projects?
It was clear that such a digital acceleration required the help of an IT provider that could not only deliver the required capacity, but also the knowledge, expertise and ownership to make such an ambitious roadmap work. But how do you know whether such a provider will gel with your in-house development team? And how do you get them to work as a team?
First projects and trainings
The collaboration between Lemon and DAS began in 2018 when Lemon delivered its first projects for DAS: a new website and a Legal Risk Calculator application that allows users to more efficiently compose tailor made insurance solutions based on their profile and needs. Additionally, in-depth technology trainings were provided for DAS’s in-house development team in order to share knowledge about the applications in question.
Team as a Service and Design System
Gradually, the collaboration intensified and to accommodate for DAS’s ambitious roadmap, as of 2020 a Team as a Service model was set up. The goal was to build a dedicated team for DAS that could work together with the in-house development teams to define, design, plan and deliver projects while simultaneously supporting DAS in their digitalization strategy by offering workshops and presentations.
After a first new application was successfully designed and built, the opportunity was seized to develop the base design into a comprehensive design system that DAS could use to efficiently build new tools and overhaul all its existing applications using a set of predefined building blocks. The UI experts of Lemon and DAS continue to team up with the front-end developers to maintain and expand these reusable components.
Dedicated team with an entrepreneurial mindset
During a successful collaboration of 4 years, Lemon has built a committed team for DAS that both complements and challenges their in-house development team. Information and knowledge is shared, training and workshops are organised on a regular basis and decisions are made transparently and in unison.
Rather than limiting themselves to a mere execution of predefined projects, the team has adopted an entrepreneurial mindset, spotting opportunities and addressing issues that do not necessarily lie within the scope of a typical IT supplier. This entails setting up a monorepo, building a design system, identifying the need for mailcatcher and proactively addressing issues to make improvement plans.
