The development process
wikifolio.com’s team contains 55 people, most of whom work on product development and IT operations. There are four development teams and a product-management team.
The platform works on the Microsoft tech stack using C# and MS SQL Server. The distributed architecture helps to optimize for latency and includes the following measures:
- Some parts of the software run on partners’ websites.
- They run one service on premise.
- A number of applications run in the cloud.
The development process is very close to Scrum, with two-week releases.
The product-management team has a product-steering committee that meets biweekly and decides which project shall be implemented. The team includes the product owner, who is focused on components, and the product manager, who contacts stakeholders.
“It’s the key task of the product owner and product manager to define projects in a way that [the] teams can work as autonomous[ly] as possible. It’s more an app than a science.”
When discussing data security, Andreas highlights that they do not have access to the customer’s personal data because the investors trade via banks. Nevertheless, all data is treated very carefully:
“Of course, we have analyzed our processes in terms of data protection [GDPR] and we have done some things a bit more serious[ly], but in fact nothing has changed. We treat customer data quite sensibly.”
Knowledge transfer
Like many executives in WealthTech, Andreas has to face the issue of developers who are focused on the technical part but have no experience in the domain. To move developers towards product thinking, the company has launched an internal academy where one employee teaches others about the industry topics they may need. Andreas hopes that such education will motivate tech people to be more free-thinking and make more decisions about smaller business things.
Future plans
At the moment, the company is actively developing its platform:
“We [are] now develop[ing] the wikifolio Media House around the platform offer… Media House will be focused on retail investors and aims to be a very high-quality source of information for investment decisions.”