be2 – Success Story

be2 GmbH developed an online portal for matchmaking, helping its customers to establish long term relationships. The platform has grown very rapidly in time and developed a significant number of new services to offer to their customers. be2 operates in a constantly growing market, that becomes more demanding every day. This forced product management to constantly review priorities while on the other side the development teams strained to keep up with delivery dates, continuously changing requirements and a growing, complex platform.

The Management of be2 realized that quality levels, performance and market demands were no longer in sync. In order to extend their platform, reach out into new markets and satisfy the needs of a matured market they decided to analyze their current processes with the help of agile42.

“Quality, knowledge and transparency were deciding factors for us in choosing agile42”, said Dave Sharrock, Director IT at be2. “The Agile project approach allowed be2 the ability to monitor the project’s performance every two weeks, and to evaluate the performance and quality. agile42 did a perfect job in training and coaching distributed Scrum teams based in both Germany and Armenia for this project.”

Innovative service development is one of be2’s priorities. The unrivaled speed of innovation resulted in an enormous growth of the organization, and most of all the IT department. Be2 needed a mature structure where all of product development is handled as a process, from conception to deployment. The right method to do this was found in the agile methodology Scrum. agile42 introduced Scrum to the organization through a Pilot project, were first one team of Product Manager and developers were trained and coached as a Scrum team. agile42 coached this team during one release and reviewed the results with the management of be2. “I and the whole management team of be2 were impressed with the increase in development speed, higher quality output and above all, increased transparency”, says Dave with conviction.

“The creation and expansion of Scrum teams was of the utmost importance for be2 because of its innovation and entrepreneurship. be2 addressed the implementation seriously with the help of a dependable partner: agile42”. agile42 supported be2 with implementing Scrum by coaching of the product management team, assembling the Scrum Master team and by guiding and coaching the people on the floor, rolling out Scrum across the company in an end to end approach.

As direct benefits from working in Scrum teams the be2 employees are more involved in the projects and carry their own responsibility. The be2’s progress and the process have become extremely transparant. The Scrum implementation has lifted the product teams to a higher level, allowing be2 to keep delivering higher quality than their competitors.

“agile42 has been an indispensable link for a successful company transformation.” Dave Sharrock, Director IT, be2 S.à.r.l.

e2 is one of the world’s leading matchmaking services designed to unite soul mates for fulfilling longterm relationships. More than 14 million members in 36 countries on 6 continents trust in be2’s state of the art matching methodology, developed by a team of expert psychologists, sociologists, and statisticians. A success rate of over 40% proves them right! Within just four years, be2 has become the matchmaking service with the most visitors in Europe and worldwide as well as the one growing most strongly according to ComScore and Nielsen Netratings, the two main industry monitors. Currently, more than 20,000 new members join be2 every day. After going live in 2004, be2 was cash flow positive after only 6 weeks proving a strong business model. Since then, be2 has been growing at a tremendous rate of far over 100% every year – be it in visitors, members or revenues. be2 now employs more than 230 enthusiastic people from 43 nationalities who ensure completely localized services in its 36 markets.

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