Digested Read
As developers of the world’s leading social sound platform, with 175 million users each month, the team at SoundCloud are renowned for delivering exceptional quality products. As such a technology-led business, SoundCloud had found it challenging to find a partner they trusted to help them create their first artists’ app. When they asked us to help them deliver the first Android app for their artists, we knew they would have high expectations. The team at Novoda was excited to step up to the challenge.
Key Themes
Scaling Mobile Teams • Agile Leadership • Android Engineering
The Brief
- Artists needed to perform a specific set of tasks perfectly. They wanted no unnecessary bells and whistles — just simple functionality, done well.
- The code had to be structured so it was easy to hand over to their in-house team to build upon.
- Every element of design and functionality had to be consistent with their main app for music fans.
SoundCloud and Novoda began a partnership to develop a new and strategic Android application. From day one, the team from Novoda demonstrated both professionalism and deep technical capability.
Ashley Peter Ternes, VP of Engineering (interim), SoundCloud
Our Approach
Just like Novoda, SoundCloud follows strict quality processes, so our ways of working blended smoothly, in particular:
- Zero tolerance to errors – the build chain would stop moving whenever an error was spotted, ensuring we acted quickly to fix problems and produced the best quality codebase.
- Consistency – we reused parts of the code between the Listeners and Creators apps and rigorously ensured that any improvements on one were rolled out on the other.
- Collaboration – we worked in each other’s offices and held regular events to foster a sense of being one team.
- Trust and mutual respect – we brought the right people together to work in a respectful and supportive way to achieve the defined goals.
Working with Novoda felt like working with an expanded in-house team, rather than external partners. Collaboration was effortless, easy, and fun.
– Jamie Welch, senior product manager, SoundCloud
The End Result
After 10 months of collaboration we released the app and quickly grew an impressive user base and a positive Play Store rating. Our partnership resulted in a digital product that is –
- 99.9% crash-free
- 4.1 star rating
- 500,000+ downloads
A team of highly engaged engineers helped us build not only the application, but also worked closely with us on the testing infrastructure, app deployment and contributed heavily to planning and design.
Ashley Peter Ternes, VP of Engineering (interim), SoundCloud
