_Outsourcing IT services for OneSpan R&D scaling

OneSpan R&D

OneSpan (formerly VASCO Data Security International, Inc.) is a publicly traded IT security/cybersecurity company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois with offices in Montreal, Brussels, Bordeaux, Vienna and additional locations worldwide.. The company offers a cloud-based platform with an open architecture to prevent and detect fraud, which also includes multi-factor authentication and electronic signature software. OneSpan is a board member of the FIDO Alliance Board.

Purpose and Start of Cooperation

Cooperation between TT PSC and OneSpan began in the fall of 2017. Now, in 2019, it has reached the level of 50 experts involved in several projects as an augmentation of the client’s Research and Development (R&D) department. To start the collaboration with OneSpan, TT PSC had to prove its readiness and competence in several areas.

The first of the key aspects for the client was the business and financial stability of TT PSC, as well as the access to a wide range of technical competencies. The corporate Grupa Kapitałowa TT (GK TT) and TT PSC, as its subsidiary with 100% Polish and private capital, have shown an increase in income, employment and financial liquidity in recent years. Thanks to the spin-off of subsidiaries GK TT does not lose its dynamics in development, flexibility and agility, thus maintaining the status of a large company with an access to over 2,000 employees located in more than a dozen offices in Poland and abroad. Currently, GK TT and TT PSC, in terms of their technical competence, are able to provide practical support in the most popular technologies and programming languages, including:

• Java,
• Front End technologies
• .NET
• C++
• DevOps/Cloud
• Atlassian implementations
• mobile technologies: Android, iOS

TT PSC provides not only individual experts, but entire Scrum teams including the Scrum Master and Product Owner.

OneSpan was also interested in TT PSC demonstrating technical skills in practice (in this case focusing on Front End technology), as well as agility in the team building process. Before starting the cooperation, OneSpan contracted TT PSC to design and build a prototype of a new version of the interface for OneSpan Sign (formerly eSignLive), the company’s electronic signature software. It is worth noting that the time we had to complete this task was two weeks, including setting up a small team to execute the job. Within two days, TT PSC was able to set up the team consisting of two experienced Front End developers and establish communication channels with the client’s team in Canada. After 2 weeks, TT PSC presented the prototype at the client’s offices in Montreal, where it was received with great enthusiasm and led to the client’s declaration of further collaboration.

OneSpan is a company specialized in cybersecurity solutions that are implemented at a large scale in financial services organizations. Therefore, the next formal step required to establish the collaboration was to show how TT PSC implements its security policy. The security concerns to which the client paid special attention were:

• ISO certificates (ISO/IEC 27001, ISO 20000, ISO 9001, OHSAS 18001)
• Presenting documents describing the following to the client:
  • The protection of intellectual property
  • Explaining the forms of collaboration between TT PSC and its employees to the client
  • Demonstrating how TT PSC protects a client’s intellectual property (through appropriate agreements with employees and securing IT infrastructure)
  • The process of introducing a new employee to the company and of employment termination

In addition, TT PSC and OneSpan agreed on the process of onboarding experts in the client’s R&D teams, that consists of several steps executed by TT PSC’s HR Department.

Having met all the client’s requirements, TT PSC began cooperation in the fall of 2017 by setting up a Scrum team consisting of five Front End experts, working with the client’s R&D department in Canada. The next step proved to be establishing cooperation with the client’s teams located in Europe: in Austria, France and Belgium.

Examples of areas of cooperation

Currently, TT PSC cooperates with OneSpan on several levels, focusing mainly on the client’s R&D augmentation. Below are examples of the areas in which our experts operate within the cooperation framework:

• Development and support in maintenance of OneSpan Sign (formerly eSignLive). TT PSC specializes here mainly in adapting the product to the needs of blind and partially sand-blind persons. PSC provides the development team (Java, FrontEnd) along with testers, Product Owner and Scrum Master.
• Development of SalesForce plugins for the OneSpan Sign product (formerly eSignLive.)
• Maintenance and development of mobile applications for OneSpan’s clients (mainly the financial sector.) TT PSC provides two dedicated development teams working both, on Android and iOS operating systems. Part of the team consists of mobile application testers. The whole team was set up in one location.
• TT PSC also set up a development team (Java) that works on the implementation of the FIDO standard. Team works in one location and is enforced by TT PSC’s Scrum Master and Product Owner.
• Maintenance and development of the OneSpan Authentication Server product, which is handled by the C++ development team.
• Support in the area of implementation of Atlassian products (including Jira, Confluence,) including the sale of licenses.

A characteristic feature of the cooperation is a very wide area of technologies and programming languages applied in the client’s projects (including Java, C ++, .NET, Android, iOS, SalesForce.) What is also common to some of the teams is that all the engineers work in the same location, which was explicitly requested by the customer. TT PSC succeeded with this challenge thanks to effective cooperation with other companies constituting GK TT and partners from the TT PSC partner network. With increasing number of projects and growth of the team dedicated to OneSpan, the number of locations involved increased. For example, one of the projects gathers programmers from three cities. TT PSC proved that different locations do not pose a communication problem in everyday work and in the execution of planned tasks.

TT PSC was able to build Scrum teams while meeting the above requirements within one to two months from the date of the order placement, which also shows the capabilities and organizational skills.

It is common practice among Scrum development teams working for TT PSC to strive for the best possible integration and flow of information through, among others, daily internal Scrum meetings, building a common knowledge base and integration workshops. Thanks to this, our teams can work independently on the Client’s projects, the best proof of which is that our Product Owners were engaged to prepare requirements for the internal teams.

Another element supporting cooperation is the readiness of TT PSC experts to visit the client and to organize meetings, during which persons from the Client’s teams can participate in workshops together with a TT PSC team.

Summary

Cooperation with OneSpan is an example of how it’s possible for TT PSC to develop the necessary relationship to augment a client’s R&D operations in a short time (one year). TT PSC has also shown great flexibility and agility in the process of adjusting to the Client’s requirements, such as ensuring an adequate level of security in the areas of IT, HR and the Client’s IP protection.