Ibuildings puts ‘skin in the game’ at Five

New style partnership drives success in enterprise web development.

Ibuildings is working in new ways with the UK's most innovative terrestrial TV channel; sharing risks in digital media strategy. The result is agile development that delivers fast results and ground-breaking concepts – all under the tightest control.

Digital media plays central role

"Digital media plays a central role in our strategy," explains Francois Chabat, Technology Manager at Five. "Part of our remit is what we call our 'content verticals', launching websites that capitalise on some of our strongest brands. Instead of launching sites designed to support specific programmes, we are grouping programmes together, commissioning new content, and launching "content verticals" targeted at specific audience groups (for example young men, young women, children). We drive the traffic initially from our core linear broadcast audiences and keep them engaged online through compelling video rich content offerings. The sites generate revenues through multiple forms of advertising and also push audiences back to TV."

Multiple partnerships – tight management

Another major element in Five's business model is an outsourcing strategy which it applies to both broadcast and digital media. The company is really just a management layer made up from a small team with strong IT skills and management practices. Together, they drive the products and work with selected best-of-breed partners for design, content and delivery.

"We use PHP and Rails for web development and work with multiple partners that specialise in these platforms," says Chabat. "The idea is to build strong relationships with partners we can come back to without going through a whole pitch and proposal process every time we have a piece of development coming."

"The key things we were looking for in our partners are alignment with our technology strategy, willingness to give us intellectual property on the code delivered to us and expertise in agile development. That means they have to collocate with us, becoming very much part of the team, managed in a very sophisticated way."

"We chose Ibuildings from around 40 potential partners as one of our selected agencies. We were very impressed with their track record in major enterprise-strength web projects, as well as the way their working ethos matched our own. They put forward a strong case for being a strategic partner, rather than just a supplier and they have certainly delivered on that promise. They are embedded in the projects and sharing the risks."

Fast expanding project portfolio

Ibuildings was initially commissioned to build a single sign-on service, giving users easy, secure access to multiple systems, a key plank in the overall service-oriented architecture. The project was delivered on time to a tight schedule.

As the relationship developed, Ibuildings was commissioned to work on the main Five site, both the back end systems and a moderation service tool. Five has been a pioneer in the concept of viewers commenting on programmes almost in real-time and moderation is the process of ensuring that objectionable material is filtered out. Messages are fed to a team of moderators who vet for unacceptable content. The tool, invisible to viewers, spans all sites.

Ibuildings is now working very much across Five’s digital strategy, helping select technical components and Open Source technologies.

Secrets of success

"The secret of success lies in the use of agile project management methodologies within a strong commercial framework," explains Paul Wander, Ibuildings. "It involves tightly compartmentalised projects, each lasting from 6 to 12 weeks, that undergo frequent inspection and adaptation – an approach that depends heavily on teamwork, accountability and adoption of best practices."

"On completion, each performance is measured against initial objectives. Objectives include 'hard' elements, such as time to complete, something Five calls Velocity of Development, and 'soft' elements such as communication skills. Risk sharing comes from a fee structure that includes a bonus/penalty scheme attached to Key Performance Indicators."

"This approach works very well for us – call it the Ibuildings sweet spot."

Last word

Last word goes to Francois Chabat: "We have good personal relationships with Ibuildings. They are easy to work with and they have been very proactive, feeding into our processes – how we test, how we develop, how we integrate with the hosting platform. All that is tried and tested and so efficient. A great relationship."

Now, can we help you?

Would you like to know how Ibuildings, our partnership approach and PHP platform could add value for your operation?

Do call us on 020 3179 9555 or fill in our contact form.